Why is this in the SpaceX section?
Lots of interesting points in this thread.1. Time zones present difficult complications for coordinating events planet wide on Mars, & are a historical construct colonists could leave behind.
2A. Another possibly better analogy for guidance would be to look at how people stationed in Antarctica lend relevance to time. 24 hr daily cycles are important for biological reasons, but when it's 6 month long dark winter "night", they probably just count days & think about when it gets light again, & when do the re-supply planes start landing.
I think Mars timekeeping standards give a unique opportunity to correct some of the things we currently do wrong on Earth, due simply to historical accident.My recommendations for 'corrections':1) Get rid of AM/PM. 'Military' time only. The first hour is '0', not '12'.
2) Make all months the same number of days (sols).
3) Make each month an integral number of weeks. For Earth, this would best be done as 4 weeks per month, and switch to having 13 months. Leftover days (for Earth this would normally be 1 day, sometimes 2), would be placed at the end of the year after the last month and would just be 'Leap Days'. They would all be 'Sundays' (the last day of the week, see #6 below), i.e., they wouldn't advance the day of the week. Then the new year starts on Monday every year.
4) Make each month start off at the start of a week. Taking numbers 3 and 4 together means we just don't need calendars anymore. The Nth day of the month, every month, forever, would be the same day of the week.
5) Get rid of timezones. We'd all be better off if we just switched to UTC on Earth (Jim's objections notwithstanding).
Oh, and without timezones, 'daylight savings time' makes no sense. Jettison it as well.6) While we're at it, make the first day of the week 'Monday', so those two days we call the 'weekend' are actually at the end of each week.
Mars Specifics:A) Keep a standard 'second'. The second is sacrosanct.B) Keep a minute defined to be 60 seconds, and an hour to be defined as 60 minutes.
C) Have 'hour 24' consist of 39 minutes and 35 seconds. Then hour 0 starts. I slightly prefer this to Jim's solution of having hour 23 have an extra 39 minutes and 35 seconds.D) Retain a 7 day week (I think this is pretty culturally ingrained).E) So, to follow #s 3 and 4, above, we have to decide how many weeks per month, and the number of months. It looks like the best would be 5 weeks per month and 19 months. (This leaves I think 5, sometimes 6 'leap days' as defined above?)F) I'd suggest month names of Manuary, Mebuary, Arch, Mapril, Ay, Mune... Mecember, plus 7 more new month names.G) On the last 'leap day' each year, adjust for the built up leap seconds from rounding off the seconds of each sol.
1) Get rid of AM/PM. 'Military' time only. The first hour is '0', not '12'.
My preferred solution: sols, mours, minutes, seconds, meeks, marths, and mears.
E) So, to follow #s 3 and 4, above, we have to decide how many weeks per month, and the number of months. It looks like the best would be 5 weeks per month and 19 months. (This leaves I think 5, sometimes 6 'leap days' as defined above?)F) I'd suggest month names of Manuary, Mebuary, Arch, Mapril, Ay, Mune... Mecember, plus 7 more new month names.G) On the last 'leap day' each year, adjust for the built up leap seconds from rounding off the seconds of each sol.
Quote from: Stan-1967 on 11/05/2016 03:09 am1. Time zones present difficult complications for coordinating events planet wide on Mars, & are a historical construct colonists could leave behind.I disagree. Timezones aren't "historical constructs". [...]They were created so that the same time labels all over the world apply to the same parts of the day.
1. Time zones present difficult complications for coordinating events planet wide on Mars, & are a historical construct colonists could leave behind.
12 pm as noon, not midnight, is an absurdity.
Quote from: guckyfan on 11/05/2016 07:36 am12 pm as noon, not midnight, is an absurdity.Historically, the local day could start at sunrise, sunset, noon or midnight, depending on local custom. Solar zenith, noon, could be the seventh hour, the first, or the twelfth. (You see the remnants of this in many religious customs, where a holy day goes from sunset on one day to sunset on the next.)
"Stardate 2016309.22.....Mars Timekeeping System thread degenerates into free-for-all.
It seems like if we want to keep the second unmodified (a necessity IMHO) AND have timezones that make sense, you have to either modify the number of seconds in a minute or the number of minutes in an hour.
so instead of hours, minutes and seconds, have ores, lepta and defterolepta