HOW MANY LDDBs IS THAT?

The coverage of the launch of Elon Musk’s sports car into orbit has driven me to another attack of unititis.

Unititis is a condition caused by the notion that no unit of measurement, however common, can be understood unless it is converted into some other unit.

The “Olympic Swimming Pool” (the OSP) is the standard unit of “gosh, what a lot”.

But how much is it? About 2500cu m.

The Boeing 747 (BSFS) is the unit of “golly, what a powerful thing that is” (280,000lb of thrust). The Sky Tower (ST) is the unit of “stone me, but that’s quite high” (328m). The Brontosaurus (BS) is the unit of “that, mate, takes some lifting” (15,000kg), as is the London Double-Decker Bus – or Boss, as I saw it once (LDDB) .

The Brontosaurus Brain is, by stark contrast, the unit of “geez, mate, you’ve got to be joking”; about the same as one walnut or one-fifth of a standard European Union avocado.

The first stage of Musk’s 0.22ST-high Falcon rocket burnt 0.11OSP of fuel in 170 seconds, as it rose from the 0.001-the-size-of-Wales Nasa complex, lifting a weight of four London double-deckers and “tore through the sky with a thundering force of 18 Boeing 747 jetliners” and sent up “a mountain-sized plume of smoke and” – surely a bit of a worry for those watching – “a rattling roar”.

David Woolner (St Heliers, Auckland)