It's a non-question anyway. Boeing planes already report fuel load in litres. Funnily enough, flight levels are internationally represented in feet (well, 100-feet) so there's a "win" for you. Also, ground speed is measured in knots!
1 knot = 1 nautical mile/hour
1 nautical mile ~= the distance travelled by someone at the equator in one minute due to the Earth's rotation
Since navigation at sea was strongly dependent on the position of the sun and stars, it makes sense to use a unit of speed that makes your calculations easier.
Even for modern navigation it makes sense to use a unit of measurement based on the circumference of the great circle surrounding the Earth.
No. It's approximately one minute of arc, that is, 1/60 of one degree.
In fact the speed of the earth's rotation at the equator is more like 15 nautical miles per minute.
GM already went metric.
Lockheed destroyed a half-billon dollar space mission by clinging to imperial.
If anyone wants more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
Like, I know there is a system and calculations behind it, but they are in no way friendly to any user.
Designing new products in metric wouldn't require old products to be replaced with imperial. Each product line has it's own special repair kit, spare parts, already. It's not like the suppliers who actually make parts aren't equipped to do metric if they're selling parts worldwide.
The UK went metric in the 1960s and it managed just fine, so there's no reason why it can't be done. Some pragmatism can be involved, for example road signs in the UK are still in miles, and one can still buy a pint of milk or beer (though the latter are technically labelled and sold in millilitres).
A move to metric wouldn't dictate the internal practices of a company like Lockheed, they could still require their suppliers to build parts in inches (even if that means that formally they purchase 2.6234cm sized screws or similar) and they can continue to do everything in inches. Not that they'd want to.
As an example, NASA is partially-metric, partially-imperial. Of course, they have that famous failure attributed to mixing units...
These articles make the rounds on the internet every few months, which gives the impression change should happen quickly. But, given the enormous costs that exist to switch over, I think it's more likely we'll see a gradual change over our lifetime.