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We can
support Robert Zubrin's Mars Calendar
with the "Friendly Amendments"
Proposed Below
11-14-99
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Recommended Reading:
Mars
Calendar - Zubrin
History
of Mars Calendars
Mars
Time Web Site
Marstime
Virtual Conference at ONElist.com
Richard
Weidner's Mars Seasons Calendar
My "Mars
Pulse" Calendar
Effect
of Mars Time & Calendar on Culture
The Clock:
Zubrin proposes a
24:60:60 clock precisely analogous to the one we
use on Earth with hours, minutes, and seconds all
slightly longer than terrestrial values by a ratio of
1.0275:1
- the disadvantage of this is
that all science textbooks for Martian pioneer
students will have to be rewritten as the quoted
reaction times and values in Terrestrial textbooks
would be off by that ratio unless students can be
trained to automatically recalculate. But that means
that even textbooks written by Martian scientists and
educators will have to continue using Earth minutes,
seconds, hours to avoid confusion.
- Digital
timekeeping would seem to allow
Martians to use the same second, minute, and hour as
we do on Earth, with the day flipping over at 24:39:35
instead of 24:00:00
- The problem with this is
that it would not allow time zones, in which,
for communications purposes, every one has to have the
same time plus or minus an integral number of
hours.
- The apparent solution is to
have hourly adjustment - the hours would roll
over at 61 minutes 1.65 seconds. This would allow
broadcasts on the hour to begin simultaneously in
different time zones e.g. at the top of the hour, at
the half hour, etc. The advantage would be that the
scientific second and minute would remain standard
throughout the Solar System.
- A
better solution, offered
as a friendly amendment to the original Zubrin
proposal, is to adopt his 24:60:60 clock but give the
slightly longer units different names so that
there need never be any confusion:
- EARTH
Clocks: days -
hours - minutes - seconds
- MARS
Clocks: sols -
chrons - moments - tics
Nb. "zonal", or
simply "zones" taken from the time zones one
"hour-like period" (1/24th day or sol apart.) would be
an alternative to "chron". But with the
adoption of "zode" for the month analog (see below),
going with "zones" or "zonals" might be
confusing.
The Week: this is a
matter left unadressed in Zubrin's proposal
The 7 day week has been
historically the most change resistant feature of our
Calendars on Earth. Every attempt to shorten or lengthen
the week has failed. Should we use the same names for the
days of the week as we do on Earth, or their counterparts
in another language? There is good reason not to do
so:
- It is the unspoken corollary of all Earth's
religious fundamentalisms that the days of the week
are a cosmic constant. When it is Sunday, it is Sunday
throughout the Universe. But in fact, the 24 hour day
which keeps the days of the week occurring "on
schedule" is a purely local phenomenon on Earth.
- On Mars, the day is
somewhat longer, and in fact by the time 37 Earth days
have lapsed, Mars has fallen a day behind. So even if
we start out "Sunday here, Sunday there", in just a
few weeks, Mars will be a day behind, and in a about
eight Earth months, Mars will be a week behind.
- Put it simply, Sundays,
Mondays, Tuesdays, etc. are NOT cosmic, not even SOLAR
System wide.
- If we want a 7 day
week, and that is a life rhythm deeply ingrained in
all human cultures, it would be best to avoid
confusion and pick an altogether different set of
names.
- Here are some
suggestions
- * The
seven largest satellites in the Solar
System: Ganymede, Titan,
Callisto, Io, Luna, Europa, Triton in order of
size - Luna could be confused with Monday but here it
occurs in 5th spot instead of the 2nd. If alphabetical
order were followed, Luna would again be fifth.
- The seven largest
volcanoes on Mars: Olympus,
Ascraeus, Pavonis, Arsia, ?, ?, ?
- Names of seven of Mars
mythical-imaginary canals, as named by
Lowell.
- * The
seven "Mercury" astronauts, in
the order of their first flight:
Shephard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Schirra, Cooper,
Slayton - or in alphabetical order
- NOTE: Already suggested (by
Peter Kokh) for a proposed Lunar Calendar: The stars
of the Seven Sisters or Pleiades: in
alphabetical order these are:
Alcyone, Asterope, Celaeno,
Electra, Maia, Merope, and Taygeta (all Arabic
names)
- NOTE: Already suggested (by
Peter Kokh) for a proposed Lunar Calendar: The seven
major stars of the Big
Dipper: Dubhe, Merak, Phad,
Megrez, Alioth, Mizar, Alkaid (all Arabic
names)
- *
Keep the present
names (our Nordic or the Roman Classical set)
but substitute -sol for -day,
-tag, or dies, etc. Substitute Phobos for Moon
(~Monday), Earth or Earth-Moon for Mars (~Tuesday)
This has the two advantages of being easy to remember
in the proper sequence, yet without confusion with the
terrestrial days of the week.
- See my alternative
"Four Season Splityear
Calendar for Mars" for yet another option, based
on the familiar names for the notes of the diatonic
musical scale.
- Those suggestions that make
use of familiar
names* are in more
keeping with Zubrin's precedent in choosing the
familiar names of the twelve zodiac constellations for
his "season-proportional" Martian "months" or
"zodes".
- Perhaps you can think
of several more schemes - after all this is an
arbitrary matter - then we could put it to a popular
advisory vote among Mars Society attendees at the next
convention.
The Month:
Zubrin divides the Martian year
(I suggest the term
"versary", from anniversary, to avoid confusion
with standard Earth years)
into twelve periods in which Mars travels equal 30 degree
arcs of its orbit around the Sun. Because of Mars'
considerable orbital eccentricity, in which it travels
faster, covering the same 30 degrees in less days (or
sols) when it is nearer to the Sun than when it is
further out in its orbit, the twelve "zodiacal months"
vary considerably in length.
(I strongly urge the
adoption of the word "zode" for these time
periods. "Month" after all, refers to the "Moon", the
satellite of Earth.)
Seasonal Color Key:
- Northern Spring, Southern
Fall
- Northern Summer, Southern
Winter
- Northern Fall, Southern
Spring
- Northern Winter, Southern
Summer
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"Zode"
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"Sols"
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Begins
on Sol
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Notes
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Gemini
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61
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1
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Gemini 1 - vernal
equinox
(N)
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Cancer
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65
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62
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Leo
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66
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127
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Leo 24 - Mars at aphelion
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Virgo
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65
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193
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Virgo 1 - summer
solstice (N)
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Libra
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60
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258
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Scorpius
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54
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318
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Sagittarius
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50
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372
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Sagittarius 1 -
autumnal equinox (N)
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Capricorn
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47
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422
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Dust storm season begins
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Aquarius
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46
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469
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Aquarius 16 - Mars at perihelion
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Pisces
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48
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515
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Pisces 1 - winter
solstice (N)
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Aries
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51
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563
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Dust storm season ends
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Taurus
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56
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614
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Taurus 56 - Mars' New Year's Eve
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- This has the idyllic
cultural advantage of better marking Mars
all-relevant seasons, and of becoming one of the
foundations of what is sure to emerge as a unique
Martian
culture by tying the zodiacal months or
zodes tightly to the pace of the seasons.
- This system would seem to have
the strong accounting disadvantage of
being "accounting-unfriendly" in the extreme. The
businessman on Earth has enough trouble with the
months varying from 28 to 31 days, a factor of about
10%. On Mars this variation would be much more
pronounced with zodiacal months varying from 46 to 66
sols, a difference of 43 %, more than four times the
variance we struggle with on Earth.
- Conveniently, Mars
"versary" is 96 7-sol weeks long. So most Mars
Calendar-smiths divide that into 24 "months" each 28
sols or 4 weeks long precisely. This is convenient for
bookkeeping.
- But this is not the only
possible bookkeeping solution. On Earth, "quarters"
each 89-91 days or 3 months long, are the primary
bookkeeping units. Taking that clue,
the Martian versary, almost
twice as long as our year, could be divided not into
quarters, but into "eighths" or "octants", each
(12) 7-sol weeks long or 84 sols apiece. Thus
we could have a two tier way of dividing the
Martian season-set or versary:
- the
" zodes" which
accurately reflect Mars much more life-intrusive
seasonal differences and thus underpin culture and
holidays and festivals and the life-pace of how
settlers adapt to their new home-world in
general.
- the
"octants" (or
accounting eighth parts of the calendar
"versary", exactly 12 weeks long, divisible into
thirds, exactly 4 weeks long for those who want to
account on a shorter elapsed time basis. If
printed calendar included a running number count of
the weeks (1-96) this would help.
- Since
the twelve-week long
eighths always begin on the same day of the week, this
is a physical calendar-page-friendly solution. With
this friendly amendment, we can wholeheartedly
support Zubrin's zodiacal / "seasonal-month"
plan.
Do we want a "traditional invariant
week" Calendar that always starts on the first day of the
week? On Earth, since there are not exactly 52 weeks in
the year, the Calendar shifts one or two days each year,
depending on whether or not that year is a leap year.
Mars' "year" or "versary" is likewise a non-integral
number of weeks long - 3 days shy of 96 weeks, to be
exact.
But on Mars, where we are
"starting over, starting fresh" we do not have the
onerous burden of cultural inertia to overcome. The
problem can be fixed.
I have laid out both options
fully, "calendar page by calendar page" so you can see
how the Mars Calendar would look on paper.
-
The Era:
- Zubrin begins the Martian
Era with the last occasion on which by happenstance,
Mars Vernal Equinox, the logical time to begin its
"year" or "versary" fell on our own January 1st. (1)
By luck, that was in the year
in which John F. Kennedy said humans would have a
place beyond Earth orbit, the year when, after eons,
Mars suddenly became a human destination,
beginning with sorties to the Moon. (2) By using this
coincidence, Zubrin sets up his "Areogator" for easy
conversion of Earth dates to Martian dates and vice
versa. The choice of any starting point other than one
coincident with a January 1st date on Earth would not
have allowed this. There are other reasonable starting
points. But none of them offer this practical
elegance. And who could argue with the time frame -
the year when it first became "respectable" to think
that humans would go to other worlds?
- The one sticking point is
that to distinguish the Earth year count from Mars
year count, Zubrin uses Roman numerals (I, II, III
etc.) for the latter, while we use Arabic numerals (1,
2, 3, etc.). Most educated persons can read Roman
numerals - but for the majority of us, this
"recognition" does not come with fluent rapidity. For
Martian pioneers and students, this familiarity would
soon come. For those who stay behind on Earth,
however, this form of year reckoning may never become
second nature. The insistence on use of Roman numerals
would instead place a practical and cultural barrier
in the way of hoped-for identification with the new
Martian pioneers and their causes. Even for Martian
students, calculating time spans by subtracting Roman
numerals from one another will introduce unwelcome
inconvenience in an already harsh environment.
- Another
way may be simply to use
M.E. (Martian Era) after the Martian Year ("Versary")
count given in familiar, arithmetically convenient
Arabic numerals. Earth years can remain in
A.D.
- "A.D., Anno Domini = The
Year of Our Lord = since the birth of Christ
(apparently miscalculated and probably in 4, 5, or 6
B.C.) is rapidly becoming C.E. (Common Era) in the
growing portion of the non-Christian world that has
adopted western timekeeping for everyday affairs
(while still using local calendars for cultural
events, e.g. Chinese New Year.)
- Yet
another
gimmick to differentiate
the two time counts, would be to put the Martian
"versary" count in brackets, e.g. 1 Gemini
[37] - any notation but Roman numerals!
Let's bear in mind that these nuances only
exist in print. Orally, there is no difference between
3 and III, both commonly pronounced "three", unless we
are now to start saying "I", "I", "I" instead of "3"
and so on ? !
Other Details:
Details such as the manner of
calculating leap years, are moot points, safely left up
to committees.
However,
to keep the first of the
year, and the first of each twelfthweek accounting period
always on the first day of the week, any intercalary
days / dates used to adjust accumulated fractions
when they amount to an integral sol, should be
"outside the week" e.g. "between Saturday and
Sunday or their Martian equivalents, or "subtracting" a
weekday that particular week, as the need may be (to add
or subtract).
A Summary
Comparison - any
school child can learn
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EARTH
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year
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quarter
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month
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day
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hour
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minute
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second
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MARS
|
versary
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octant
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zode
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sol
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chron
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moment
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tic
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Multiplier
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1.88
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0.94
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1.41 - 2.17
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1.0275*
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1.0275*
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1.0275*
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1.0275*
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* NOTE: 36 Mars
units (sols, chrons, moments, tics) = 37 Earth units
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