Units of Distance
I'm anouncing my creation of a new unit of length, the "k-klick".
As most of you know, a klick is a military term for kilometer. However, when talking about orbital distances, it can become a mouth full. For example, "forty two thousand klicks". and the "megameter" isn't much better.
Thus the k-klick. Named for being 1,000 kilometers, or 1 million meters, this is a convenient unit of distance to measure anything from here to the moon.
For distances beyond that, the Light-Second is useful not just as a unit of distance, but also to keep in mind how old the image you see really is.
Beyond that, I don't care. The AU seems useful, but I have no opinion yet. Besides, the distances are so large that they aren’t really meaningful anymore. (It would take 40 weeks to travel 1000AU boosting continuously at 1g. If your speed when you get there isn't an issue, you could get there in 40 days, but you'd be traveling 5.7% of the speed of light when you arrive)
There is, however a gap that DOES need to be addressed. Light-years are too big. At about 63,000 AU, it lacks any convenient unit 3 orders of magnitude smaller. If anyone has ideas, I’m open to suggestions.
To review:
1000 meters = 1 klick
1000 klicks = 1 k-klick
1000 k-klicks = 3 Light-Seconds
1000 Light-Seconds = 2 AU
1000 AU =....
1000 ... = 1 light-year
So, now you all know. I never want to see any number larger than 1000. Giving distances with more than two or three significant figures just isn’t practical. So lets jut cut it out.
Oh, and can we get rid of this unit "parsec"? Ya, it sounds cool and science-fictiony, but it's just 3.26 light years. 4 light-years = 13 parsecs. They aren’t even one order of magnitude different! Besides, a parsec is a unit of distance from the earth, it’s not used to describe distances between two other bodies. Just as a league isn’t a unit of depth and fathom isn’t a unit of distance, you have to use the right unit for the right distance.