Mars will be built around a great need to save resources and be able to relocate stuff from place to place. Atleast in the first decades. Therefore there will probably be one door size, one type of door handle etc..About units it would obviously be metric and probably follow the SI standard. There is no reason and an unnecessary risk to deviate from that and create new standards. Power will most likely standardize on the voltage and type that is most convenient to produce and consume at the time of arrival. Maybe DC.Seconds can't really change because of all dependencies on a second being a second. Mixing up that would be just as bad as distances. Easiest solution is most likely to add 37 min to every day, like clock ends at 24.36.59.999 instead of 23.59.59.999. There will probably be no need for analog watches as that would work a little strange. There is a need for the local time to match the Martian day/night cycle, or it would be very confusing for the martians. Converting to earth time is a matter of converting the timezone like we would today between GMT to UTC+3.
Quote from: ChrML on 08/14/2018 04:09 amMars will be built around a great need to save resources and be able to relocate stuff from place to place. Atleast in the first decades. Therefore there will probably be one door size, one type of door handle etc..About units it would obviously be metric and probably follow the SI standard. There is no reason and an unnecessary risk to deviate from that and create new standards. Power will most likely standardize on the voltage and type that is most convenient to produce and consume at the time of arrival. Maybe DC.Seconds can't really change because of all dependencies on a second being a second. Mixing up that would be just as bad as distances. Easiest solution is most likely to add 37 min to every day, like clock ends at 24.36.59.999 instead of 23.59.59.999. There will probably be no need for analog watches as that would work a little strange. There is a need for the local time to match the Martian day/night cycle, or it would be very confusing for the martians. Converting to earth time is a matter of converting the timezone like we would today between GMT to UTC+3.many years/decades ago in Ad Astra Zubrin came up with a Mars time thing that unified the dates with the planets position ie fall stayed fall for a certain sky appearance of the stars and sun...it did require changing the second as he went to a 24 hour clock. his argument was that any other civilization in the solar system probably has a unique "second" or "Uberton" as well.when I wrote my Mars satellite and Moon tracking program I "thought" about doing that but never did...when I lived in the mideast..knowing the H day was important...so other calenders would not be "that" hard...My "guess" would be that likely something would evolve that gives Mars a "complete day" with hour cycles...but who knows..
Mars is a clean slate. A chance to stop having so much confusion about units. We can finally standardize on inches, feet, and miles and not have to worry about all this metric stuff that makes life more confusing.
Quote from: ChrisWilson68 on 08/14/2018 04:15 amMars is a clean slate. A chance to stop having so much confusion about units. We can finally standardize on inches, feet, and miles and not have to worry about all this metric stuff that makes life more confusing.Trying not to start a war here. But there is not really any good argument to use imperial over metric. Imperial units are familiar to many because they grew up with it, but they are not practical. Clean state and all one kind of leaves the familiar just for old time sake behind when moving to Mars.Gov organizations in America like NASA also has decides to go to metric, which makes pretty much the entire world uniform about it. For that reason I believe will most likely be the outcome.