Re: Interplanetary timekeeping
- From: Dr John Stockton <jrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 4 May 2006 13:54:01 +0100
JRS: In article <f1lni3-v0a2.ln1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, dated Wed, 3 May
2006 16:47:59 remote, seen in news:sci.space.policy, Glen Overby
<coreSPAMsample@xxxxxxxxxxx> posted :
I expect contracts would simply expand from the usual:
"This contract is governed by the laws of the state of <abc>"
to add:
... "based on Universal Coordinated Time on the planet Earth".
international contracts that cover many timezones have already had to deal
with this issue.
It should specify whether that UTC is based on received time signals
from Earth (i.e. delayed by speed-of-light lag) or on exchange of
signals with Earth and averaging (which seems right for a Newtonian
universe).
Contracts involving time generally have one or more places of
fulfilment; for example to accept a load at Kourou by a given Kourou
time and deliver it to an agent at Phobos Port by a given Phobos time.
A "civilised" place will have its own local time in general use; that
time may or may not be UTC, however propagated. An "uncivilised" place
will have no local time of its own, and either will use the time of an
adjacent "civilised" place or will use UTC.
Contracts should normally use the local time of each place of fulfilment
for that fulfilment, because it is more appropriate for the
comparatively small number of hauliers or distributed contractors to
keep track of varieties of time than for the individual localised
customer to do so.
The local time of a location on a large body may vary with location; in
that case the contract needs to specify either a "truly local" time
(e.g. UTC+1/UTC+2 for Paris) or a "body overall" time used on the body
(e.g. GMT/UTC for Earth, but possibly OMMT (Olympia Mons Mean Time) for
Mars.
One might look at the position with respect to "ten-day" cruises across
the Western Pacific - does it mean ten cycles of sunlight, or that the
finishing date is ten more than the starting date? If the Date Line is
crossed an odd number of times, there is a difference.
--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc : <URL:http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/programs/> - see 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm moredate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.
.
- References:
- Interplanetary timekeeping
- From: Jim McCauley
- Re: Interplanetary timekeeping
- From: Glen Overby
- Interplanetary timekeeping
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