Surely the most "fixed" calendar is simply to count the sols.
If I was going to live on Mars I'd prefer a calendar year based on the Mars-Earth Synodic cycle rather than Mars' orbit around the sun.
Quote from: Ludus on 11/06/2016 01:49 amIf I was going to live on Mars I'd prefer a calendar year based on the Mars-Earth Synodic cycle rather than Mars' orbit around the sun.That's a very interesting thought. Things to consider though: It'll certainly be a major factor for many decades at least, but how long until advances reduce the importance of the synod cycle? Similarly, how long before the Mars society isn't focused around the arrival of ships from Earth?However, it may be true that the colonists won't care about the Martian seasons. I was just thinking of how the rovers have had to hunker down for the winter and assuming that they would have an impact on people's lives as well.
People aren't going to use the 24-hour clock like the military. We could do that now, and often do for train times etc. But we don't.
People prefer to keep the am/pm distinction. So, unless you're going to criminalise people on Mars for answering six instead of 18 to 'what's the time?', I expect it will continue. And people will want a whole, preferably even number of time units in a sol. Who wants to do complex mental arithmetic to work out what half a day is?
Quote from: CuddlyRocket on 11/05/2016 06:25 pmso instead of hours, minutes and seconds, have ores, lepta and defterolepta Gak. If you're going to change the fundamental units, why copy the base-12/base-60 conventions from Babylonian time?Just use decimal fractions of sols. Half way through the day is 0.5. Each thousandth is nearly 90 seconds, each hundredth is nearly 15 minutes, each tenth almost 2.5hrs, so quick'n'dirty conversion isn't difficult.
so instead of hours, minutes and seconds, have ores, lepta and defterolepta
Decimal Timekeeping has already been done on Earth, but it never divided up the day as you have suggested.
Instead each day consists of 10 hours, each hour consists of 100 minutes, and each minute consists of 100 seconds.
Quote from: Paul451 on 11/05/2016 10:27 pmSurely the most "fixed" calendar is simply to count the sols.This seems reasonable, especially in technical applications. However, in the same way that timezones allow the various hours to correspond to traditional times of day (noon is about midday, 6 or so is sunrise, etc.) as Jim commented, the months do the same for the time of the year. Why not just have the same twelve months, just make them 57 or 58 sols long? That way, March would still mean the beginning of spring, August the middle of summer, etc.
Quote from: Ludus on 11/06/2016 01:49 amIf I was going to live on Mars I'd prefer a calendar year based on the Mars-Earth Synodic cycle rather than Mars' orbit around the sun.That's a very interesting thought. Things to consider though: It'll certainly be a major factor for many decades at least, but how long until advances reduce the importance of the synod cycle? Similarly, how long before the Mars society isn't focused around the arrival of ships from Earth?
So a Synod which is about 780 earth days is about 759.1 Sols.
Quote from: Hyperion5 on 11/06/2016 06:23 amDecimal Timekeeping has already been done on Earth, but it never divided up the day as you have suggested.Swatch company tried to introduce "Swatch time", which was based on 1000th of a day.Quote from: Hyperion5 on 11/06/2016 06:23 amInstead each day consists of 10 hours, each hour consists of 100 minutes, and each minute consists of 100 seconds.That kind of stupidity is precisely what I'm trying to avoid. Blindly mimicking hours/minutes/seconds. It's the kind of thing the metric system was intended to eliminate. Different countries (or parts of a country, or trades within a country) using different length feet or miles, different sized ounces or pounds, etc. "New Seconds", "Mars Seconds". Blah.
(IMO, one of the worst mistakes in the metric system was deci/deca/centi/hecta prefixes, in order to create sub-units sort-of/kind-of similar to imperial units, giving in to the urge to mimic those old units. Centimetre, which is not even close to an inch. Decilitres, nearly but not three fluid ounces. Hectare, nothing like an acre. Hectapascal, which.. okay, it is a millibar, but still, blah, blah I say.)[Edit: All of that said, it is interesting how easily the mission operators at NASA adopted a Mars clock by changing the length of the second, and hence minute/hour, even though the second is a metric unit, scientifically important.]
Quote from: Ludus on 11/06/2016 01:49 amSo a Synod which is about 780 earth days is about 759.1 Sols.Synod is not applicable. Musk intends to use fast transit which negates the need to launch at that specific time.
[Edit: All of that said, it is interesting how easily the mission operators at NASA adopted a Mars clock by changing the length of the second, and hence minute/hour, even though the second is a metric unit, scientifically important.]
Remembering that winter starts around Sol 400, etc, is easier to remember than the kind of arbitrary calendars proposed so far.
Quote from: CuddlyRocket on 11/05/2016 06:25 pmso instead of hours, minutes and seconds, have ores, lepta and defterolepta Gak. If you're going to change the fundamental units, why copy the base-12/base-60 conventions from Babylonian time?
Just use decimal fractions of sols. Half way through the day is 0.5. Each thousandth is nearly 90 seconds, each hundredth is nearly 15 minutes, each tenth almost 2.5hrs, so quick'n'dirty conversion isn't difficult.
I really hope they will use a logical regular calendar, such as the proposed International Fixed Calendar that we OUGHT to use here on Earth...- Every day of the month falls on the same weekday in each month—the 17th always falls on a Tuesday, for example."
Quote from: CuddlyRocket on 11/05/2016 06:25 pmPeople aren't going to use the 24-hour clock like the military. We could do that now, and often do for train times etc. But we don't. Who are these people you speak of?
I've lived in Germany and traveled to much of Europe, where practically everything runs on 24-hour time, although a 12-hour clock is still more often used in colloquial conversation.
It doesn't seem like adjusting to a 24-hour clock is all that hard given its widespread use, sometimes even in colloquial speech.
... it's just that 24-hour time makes a lot of sense. Obviously it's going to need some adjusting however, since we need to stuff more seconds into each hour. A Martian Hour would therefore consist 3,698.9675 seconds in 60 Martian Minutes. Each Martian Minute would consist of 61.649 seconds, while the SI second would be left as is. This would probably be a good compromise at doing an early Martian timekeeping system.
Quote from: Jim on 11/06/2016 12:24 pmQuote from: Ludus on 11/06/2016 01:49 amSo a Synod which is about 780 earth days is about 759.1 Sols.Synod is not applicable. Musk intends to use fast transit which negates the need to launch at that specific time.While true, launches ARE still going to be clustered around the Mars launch window.I think synods may be more important for the lives of Martians than seasons will be, at least for this century. It won't be "what year did you arrive?" It'll be "What synod? Oh really? That's a tough one. Must've been a long trip!"I think it'll be some mix of synods and Earth years for a while. Eventually Mars years.I also suspect Martian weeks of 7 days, probably grouped in fours like our months roughly are.
I just wanted to summarize a little more clearly my posts. This is all-in on a Mars-centric calendar, because I'm suspecting the colonists will have a little too much of an independent streak to base their new calendar off of Earth interactions. It also retains familiar associations of the time of day (in relation to sun position) and months of the year (in relation to seasons). Also, hours, minutes, and seconds are identical or nearly so to the familiar Earth variety.1 Earth second = 1 second on Mars59 seconds = 1 Mars minute60 Mars minutes = 1 Mars hour25 Mars hours = 1 sol12 months, January-December, 58 or 59 days each, with the summer solstice occurring around June 40th.Certainly sols since Jan 1 or seconds since midnight could be used for more technical applications. And of course smartwatches and other devices would have no trouble converting to Earth time. Hmmm, might have to write an Apple Watch app to do that....