Any fans of For All Mankind out there? The TV series is an exploration of a fictional history in which the Russians beat the US to the Moon and the space race continued out to Mars.

In a recap of Season 4 we learn:

Her [Margo's] late-night re-calculations reveal that a flawed measurement unit conversion by Roscosmos engineers resulted in inadequate asteroid anchor bolts, leading directly to the Kronos disaster. The head engineer, Semenov, takes responsibility for the flaw and is swiftly shown the door . . . [Emphasis added]

At the end of the article:

• The fatal measurement-unit conversion error is just another example of why the U.S. should switch over to the metric system; imperial units of measure are generously described as whimsical, and now we know that they can be (fictionally) deadly!

It looks as if even TV scriptwriters and critics both realise that US measurements are a bad idea in space and should be replaced with the metric system.

Incidentally, does anyone know of a US/metric conversion error that was actually fatal, or could have been if not caught in time?