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Comment by pndy | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't matter till we'll be actually able to settle down on Mars permanently, I guess and differentiating from Mars local time and its time zones will be an issue (and all parties involved in colonization will agree that Airy-0 crater will remain the 0° longitude equivalent as proposed by IAU). Beside, the perspective matters - for people on Earth it can be still UTC, for those on Mars it can be whatever term they'll find most suitable.

The scifi series Babylon 5 with its titular station used Earth Standard Time [1] while being placed in Epsilon Eridani system. That doesn't sound bad, I think.

The another issue the future colonists will have to deal with will be how to track days, months and years. There's Thomas Gangale's suggestion that does look interesting [2].

[1] - https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Earth_Standard_Time [2] - http://ops-alaska.com/time/gangale_mst/darian.htm

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> It doesn't matter till we'll be actually able to settle down on Mars permanently

Why? There's plenty of computers in Mars right now and they use martian time already [0]. It's not as if OpenBSD have invented anything new, they just adapted the OS to existing practices.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timekeeping_on_Mars

Yes, computers that are aboard rovers and landers which are being used for scientific purposes. Nobody needs timekeeping on Mars beside folks at mission centers or enthusiasts - even I don't know how long Perseverance is on Mars in Sols and what's its current Airy Mean Time (I'm aware its there and doing good atm).

Now, if we'd be there already for decades or even centuries with permanent settlement then perhaps we'd have some date and time formats that would be similar to what we're having on Earth (or maybe they'd use the exotic decimal time) and I wouldn't be even writing the parent comment in first place.

> Nobody needs timekeeping on Mars beside folks at mission centers

Well, these people can use OpenBSD now ;)

I understand the appeal of having time tracking systems related to easy noticeable celestial bodies movement, but when such enlargement to a multi-planetary context happen, it makes more sense to think of an entirely new system altogether. Even more so considering that almost everyone relies on tool based time tracking for their activity instead of looking up at the moon or the sun. The first direction towards a solution that comes to mind is about a natural-units derived system, like one based on Planck time or something.

One issue with these attempts to make a calendar for mars is that they assume you can equally divide the year and still get months that match up with the seasons. Mars has an eccentric orbit, so that's not a good matchup. You either accept that th calendar won't be good for tracking the seasons, or make a calendar with uneven months.

Considering that the weather outside will kill you year-round on Mars, debate is of course rather academic...

> It doesn't matter till we'll be actually able to settle down on Mars permanently

Mars is the least useful planetary body in the Solar System for human colonization, so that time may well be "never".

> Mars is the least useful planetary body in the Solar System for human colonization

I suppose you could construct criteria and assumptions that would support that conclusion, but I can’t see a reasonable set where that works out.

It's the best thing we have in our neighborhood beside the Moon; Venus is easier to reach but not very welcoming when it comes to atmospheric pressure and temperatures.

You don't need to land on Venus' surface; airships in the atmosphere are the closest thing to Earth in the Solar System.

The problem is that there is nothing useful on Mars and its location sucks. Any other planetary body makes more economic sense.

> The problem is that there is nothing useful on Mars and its location sucks. Any other planetary body makes more economic sense.

There’s nothing worth the shipping cost anywhere off the surface od the Earth, and all the rest of the planets are much worse locations than Mars. (Venus maybe slightly better if you are only getting to/from high atmosphere, but that has the “there’s nothing worthwhile there” problem more than Mars does.)

The problem with Venus is that it's exceedingly difficult to get local resources. Mining on Venus is practically impossible. Anything you can't suck out of the atmosphere basically needs to be shipped in from off-world.

I think one of the most compelling aspects about Mars is the thin atmosphere which enables a high degree of visual clarity, which is very appealing to humans. The atmosphere of Venus is very murky.

Mars is not the Mojave Desert; it's far away from the sun and always dark and cold. I'd think anybody going to Mars for the aesthetics would be disappointed.

> Venus is easier to reach but not very welcoming when it comes to atmospheric pressure and temperatures.

Or composition; its also not easier to reach (or return from) if you are going to the surface.

You can live on Pluto instead if you insist.

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