What time is it?

[tangor]

If we plan to live on the Moon, it's going to need a time zone

There are a lot of technical challenges humanity will have to tackle as we prepare a long-term presence on and around the Moon, and the European Space Agency just reminded us of one more: we don't have an agreed, coordinated method of telling time on our natural satellite.

That hasn't been a problem up until now, the ESA explained, because the Moon hasn't ever had to deal with a crowd. Each mission to the Moon keeps its own time relative to the managing agency making the visit, which is synchronized with Earth using deep space antennas that relay communications and chronometric information between mission and control.

"As dozens of missions will be operating on and around the Moon and needing to communicate together and fix their positions independently of Earth, this new era will require its own time," the ESA warned.

[theregister.com...]

Among the many pressures of knowledge we need to navigate not only the web, but space and time itself (according to humans, that is!).

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Forget about it - every planet does NOT need their time based on earth time in any way. No time zones, no calendar, no months and no seasons on other planets or moons should be based on earth time. It should be their own.

A tool can be created to keep track of the difference, for scheduling, for communications etc. It would also take into account of the time current tech would need to send signals etc. When tech improves, the tool could adjust for the delay... and spare the people needing to do that.

Biology is why it matters that each celestial body people inhabit permanently needs it's own time NOT based on earth time.

Think about it, the time it takes for the moon to make one rotation on its axis is thousands of earth days long. It looks faster to us because the earth is spinning too, but it's very slow. The moon is on a different axis, too, so the back side never faces earth... timezones would not work based on earth time.

That's just the planetary stuff... but it impacts human biology.
- Moonians would become taller than earthlings, and weaker, which means their rest requirements would likely change over time too.
- Work time and sleep time would not be based on a 24-hour cycle, as their rest requirements change.
- there's more biology, but imposing a 24 hour day on people living on the moon would become physically cruel as they evolve biologically...

So from the human biology perspective, it's important to unshackle earth time from moon time and allow the moon to develop it's own schedule, as earth did.

You want to call your friends on the moon before they go to bed? Unfortunately there will be no set time that remains constant, physically moon people will evolve to need less (or more) sleep than humans, will have more (or less) time to work before they need recharging with some ZzzZs. etc.

Time evolved from the human condition.... and moonians will evolve into a different breed of human. Imagine you live on a distant planet and evolved to need 16 hours of sleep to be able to work for 8 hours due to conditions there... and you visit earth where the time dictates you only get 8 of sleep... it would be cruel, physically.

ESA has it backwards, the moon will have it's own timezones, but they won't be based on earth cycles. WE need a tool to compare the two, like calculators do for different currencies. 12pm here is 3pm there type stuff goes out the window when TODAYS 12pm is 3pm but TOMORROWS 12pm will be 5pm moon time...

I think that article was written by someone who knows nothing about the moon... a day there is thousands of earth days and they are talking about locations, not time.

[phranque]

a lunar year, which is one rotation around the sun, is approximately the same as an earth year.
a lunar day, which is one rotation around its axis, is approximately the same as a month.

discuss...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

and apsidal precession, for the moon, is approximately the same as 18.6 earth years, or 6,793 days.


Regardless, the problem humans will eventually experience isn't spacial, it's biological.

If you weigh 180lbs on earth you only weigh 30 lbs on the moon. How much sleep does a 30lb full grown earthling need, after 50 generations on the moon, when they've stretched to 12 feet tall but couldn't survive on earth anymore? You want to put them in time zones and on an earth day schedule?

Nah, let them figure out their own clocks and calendars and working day length... they'll just reject earth mandates anyway. A tool to tell you their time relative to ours is trivial. Communications don't need to incorporate apsidal precession on the same planet but once two celestial objects are involved it's required to know.

One day the distance is X and the next it's changed... at the exact same earth time between the same two points. To complicate things ever further, earth precession, lunar precession and the sun's precession are different as well.

If moon time and time zones and calendars evolve the same ways as ours did, for the people living on the moon, and we go assign time zones.... it's a chicken before the egg problem, and the chicken will have evolved.

TL:DR - Denver to NY is a fixed distance. Denver to ANYWHERE on the moon will NEVER be a fixed distance. Thus, trying to create timezones for the purpose of communications between earth and the moon doesn't work. Sounds great in theory....

[BeachWalker]

Whatever we do, let's make sure we have 2 versions.
Imperial and Metric.
And make converting between the 2 as difficult as possible.
Because we're used to that.

[tangor]

Don't forget US ... we need as much confusion as possible. And Daylight Savings as well. :)

HOWEVER it is all accomplished, there will need to be a STANDARD of some kind (sidereal constant?) else your order from Tran-syst-azom.com will not arrive "on time".

[Martin Potter]

GMT forever! (Not UTC.)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

May you all grow 12 feet tall, haha!