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"it carries a world record payload of 250 tons (to put this into comparison, it can carry around 300,000 lbs more than the US military's Boeing made C-17"

What was the writer thinking? My readers won't understand what 250 tons is, so I'll use imperial metrics, too? Net effect is that this only makes full sense to those who understand both metric and imperial units.

(I think a pound is 454 grams ('easy' to remember because that's the unit most jam is sold in in the EU (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_King...). That would make 300,000 pounds about 135,000 kg or 135 tons, so it carries about double what a C17 can carry)

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It's also unclear why they compare to the C-17 instead of the C-5, which is larger and handles a heavier payload (by about 100,000 lbs). Heck, even a 747 has a higher payload than a C-17. Being the biggest wasn't the C-17s goal.

Might as well tell us how much more payload it has than a Cessna 172

Given the publication, I would imagine he's an American author writing to an American audience. I didn't think twice that 1 ton = 2,000 lbs so it made perfect sense here.

Makes sense it would be confusing to people on the metric system, but I doubt he thought twice about it.

I think the author just isn't very good at weights and measures. According to wikipedia the max payload is 253,820 kg which is 253.8 tonnes or 280 US tons or 560,000 lbs.

A C17 can carry 170,900 pounds so it carries 339,000 lbs more approx.

Reminds me of one of my high school geograph teachers who gave the length of the Grand Canyon in miles and the width in km because he couldn't do the conversion.

I think it's more like "my readers don't grasp just how heavy 250 tons is."

It's equivalent to saying "Mt Everest is nearly 6 miles, or 29,000 feet, high."

If it actually gave both versions of the same number, that would be fine. But this way is just confusing. It would be like saying "Mt Everest is nearly 6 miles high, or in other words more than 16000 feet higher than Mt Fuji"

Not really. It's more like saying "Mt Everest is 8,848 meters high, or 2,483.6 ft taller than Mt Annapurna".

Edit: Oops, I just saw the previous response. That's what happens when you open 8 tabs and read as you can.

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