posted
Recently I was thumbing through a 'Star Guide' and got to the part regarding the length of a year and day for the planets in our system and it got me a-thinkin'. How would they standardize time, in Trek (and eventually, in reality), for the colonies and bases stationed on Jupiter and Mars? Obviously the lengths of their days would be all messed up compared to Earth.
Consider that Jupiter has a 10 hour day, and a 12 year-"year". If you were to 'standardize' that to 'Earth time', over two days would appear to pass, when if on Earth, only 1 full day would have actually passed.
And for that matter, what do they use for 'standardized time' aboard starships? It would seem that they operated on a 24:00hr clock on the Enterprise-D, but what if you were a load of Vulcans serving on a Starfleet Vulcan ship like the T'Kumbra? Vulcan probably doesnt have a 24:00hr daily rotation to it as well, so it would seem to come down to everything being set at the Earth's 24hr timeframe. But wouldnt this really screw with a lot of non-Terrans, specifically non-Earthers? Obviously this would really interfere with the above stated situation with a 10hr day on Saturn or a shipfull of Vulcans used to a (total stab in the dark) 32hr day.
Ds9 seemed to adopt the 26hr day which would interfere with any ship or individual using the seemingly otherwise standard Federation '24hr Earth clock'. Evidence to support this seems to be related back to "Cause and Effect" when the Enterprise-D (on a 24hr rotation) accessed a "Federation Timebase Beacon" to reset its clocks.
THEN, there is travelling at warp speed, in itself has to mess with time altogether. At least according to Einsteins theories, correct? I may be totally wrong on this part, but it would seem that travelling faster than light would throw something out of wack according to time. The more I think about this the more confusing it gets.
Does anyone out there have any other theories on this? This would seem to 'factor' either not considered or inconsistant with the way time flows or time would be kept (to say, keep everyones schedules in sync) in the Trek Universe.
Personally, I vote: 'inconsistant', due to the mass 'errors' made regarding the lack of 'delay time' in subspace messages from say, Earth to DS9 and beyond. But what about the something as simple as what time it is on a specific location to Earth in relation to Jupiter, or Mars or the Vega colonies...?? Keeping track of time and deciding how long a day is and coordinating that with someone operating on a different time-scale must be a scheduling nightmare.
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Warp speed cuts around Relativity's time dialation effect for story's sake. No sweat there.
I guess that it's a compromise to the native culture on how long a given "day" is on planet based facilities and Starships have a standardized day of somewhere between 20-30 hours. I think this mainly because the majority of Starfleet is humanoid with simular evolutinary, nutritional and atmospheric backgrounds so it stands to reason that there are very close sleep cycle and fatigue patterns as well. Needing less sleep-time means more free time for some species or a chance for additional training. So far, I've only seen Data used to man extra shifts (likely by his request)due to his not needing any rest to perform at his peak. Nobody else gets the shaft except him because he's a toaster.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Actually, on occasion, Dr. Crusher has requested and served bridge time during a extra shift for her. It's usually during the night shift or when Data's out. The episode that comes to mind is the one where Data's lost his memories and assimilates into a prewarp culture. He had gone to retrieve a probe gone off course.
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She was just covering his shift though. Data served as Enterprise's XO as well as daywatch's Op's officer. Usually those would be two seperate positions on a ship.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: She was just covering his shift though. Data served as Enterprise's XO as well as daywatch's Op's officer. Usually those would be two seperate positions on a ship.
Actually, Riker was XO (Executive Officer and First Officer being the same thing). Data was 2nd officer (in theory right behind Riker in the chain of command).
Registered: Mar 2002
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Well, today, we use timezones, and not all timezones match up. Darwin, Australia is in zone minus 9.5, or 9 and a half hours before Zulu (Greenwich Mean Time/GMT). For most folks, GMT is irrelevant and not even referenced. For navigation and such, it matters. So, IMO, Trek uses GMT as their standard. All ships use it for navigation and comms purposes, but it's in the computer. So when Admiral noguwhachi at SFHQ in San Franciosco says "USS Eversail, your orders are to rendezvous at at 0630 zulu...", the universal translator/computer interface renders that as 1530 Local, whatever local time the ship uses. If the ship is on a 26-hour clock, then the crew responds to that time, and the computer translates all standard time inputs for the crew, and retranslates any local time inputs from the crew into standard time for external comms. So when the Eversail rendezvous' with the Ne'erdowell, it's 0630 zulu, 1530 Eversail time (based on Martian prime meridian time), and 2722 Ne'erdowell local mean time, based on Izaran time zone minus 12.
I picked zulu/GMT just because it's an already in use arbitrary standard, and since it seems that Earth provides the arbitrary standard, it's easiest to just continue using this one.
-------------------- Darkwing If you don't drink the kool-aid, you're a *baaad* person - Rev Jim Jones It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion - William Ralph Inge Almond kool-aid, anyone? - DW [email protected]
Registered: May 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: She was just covering his shift though. Data served as Enterprise's XO as well as daywatch's Op's officer. Usually those would be two seperate positions on a ship.
Actually, Riker was XO (Executive Officer and First Officer being the same thing). Data was 2nd officer (in theory right behind Riker in the chain of command).
Hih. While non-canon, several New Frontier books refer to the XO position as a commander rank that runs the ship's third watch (something largly ignored in Trek)and is technically third in command. In New Frontier, there is an entire third watch bridge crew with names and characters and everything. Cool eh? "XO" is not the right term but it's the idea I had in mind.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Jason Abbadon: Hih. While non-canon, several New Frontier books refer to the XO position as a commander rank that runs the ship's third watch (something largly ignored in Trek)and is technically third in command. In New Frontier, there is an entire third watch bridge crew with names and characters and everything. Cool eh? "XO" is not the right term but it's the idea I had in mind.
That was just Peter David's after-the-fact rational for his initial foulup. While it's cool (and proper) for the third watch to have names and all, the person standing in for the captain is called the 'Conn'. In today's navy, they're called the Officer of the Deck, or OOD, and they are assisted by the Conning Officer, who "has the Conn". I suspect that that's the origin of Trek's use of the term to indicate the officer we'd call OOD today. The OOD makes the decisions, the Conning Officer issues all orders dealing with course and speed to the helm and lee helm (helm steers, lee helm passes speed orders to engineering; both are deck seamen, usually E-3 and below).
And Data was the Second Officer, a Trek term, derived from First/Second/etc Mate.
-------------------- Darkwing If you don't drink the kool-aid, you're a *baaad* person - Rev Jim Jones It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion - William Ralph Inge Almond kool-aid, anyone? - DW [email protected]
Registered: May 2002
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You're right: I watched "Data's Day" and he refers to himself as "second officer" in his log.
I'd still think a Second Officer would have to be a Lt. Commander or a full Commander for such a imporntant position in Trek. Depending on the Starship and it's assignment, of course.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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I could imagine that the stardate is some sort of master clock and used to synchronize time within the Federation. Most likely the second is the unit on which time is based, and everything else is a multiple of it. Any planet or starship would use certain fractions of the stardate (or a certain amount of seconds) as their local time units. But with a rather pragmatic approach. Almost certainly the Bajoran day isn't exactly 26 Earth hours long, but only approximately. So the day on DS9 was divided into 26 parts that were roughly equal to one Earth hour, while keeping the day length in sync with the planet. Starfleet ships may have time in sync with Earth.
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