From a CNN article regarding yesterday's demonstration launch of Boeing's Delta 4-Heavy:

"...each of the three hydrogen-powered Rocketdyne-built RS-68 main engines generates 17 million horsepower, about the equivalent of 11 Hoover Dams."

Anyone out there have any conception for how much 17 million horsepower is? How about 11 Hoover dams? How many Libraries of Congress worth of data would you have to process to understand these units?

A brief trip to Boeing's overview website for the RS-68 engine shows that the rated thrust of the engine is 650klbf. Great, so now we've got it in English units. Personally, I find pounds-force and pounds-mass to be the biggest embarassment ever on the face of English units and the fact that we still use this system (when even the English have abandoned it!) is disgraceful.

Just so you can all sleep at night, the rated thrust of the Boeing RS-68 rocket engine is 2.9 megaNewtons. If SI units aren't your bag, perhaps you'd perfer it in stone parsecs per fortnight femtosecond.

Also of interest in the CNN article is the fact that they refer to it as a "successful" demonstration launch. Nowhere do they mention that the burn times were anomalous and that the payload did not reach its intended geosynchronous orbit. In the world of satellite launching, we refer to that as a "total loss." Nice work, CNN.