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Comment by Narkov | Hacker News Reader

Or perhaps a global time, such as UTC, given the global audience?

I'm just recognizing the facts of the planet we live in. Lots of interested parties are in the US, so it makes sense to also simply add US times. Especially considering its a US company (hopefully) launching from US soil.

I’m so surprised that a country who still clings to the imperial system would have any clue about UTC, the time standard that the rest of the world uses.

The launch is scheduled to 1300 UTC, for us engineering folks.

Its currently 6:10pm in Beijing. Its also 6:10pm everywhere else in China (https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/china).

Because that's a country that doesn't use the imperial system and still insists its the same time as the eastern capital no matter where else in the country people happen to be.

Lets also mention that China is almost the same width as the US, probably larger to be fair.

It probably pays off in efficiency.

I was gonna say it must be weird to see solar noon at 3pm, or live in one of the western provinces and have sunrise at 4:30pm / sunset at 9-10pm for part of the year, but that describes life in the Netherlands too.

UTC (Zulu) is universally used by airplane people. Most have at least heard of it, even if they don't easily do the math.

"airplane people" - technical term

Bit like crab people

Plane people, Plane people, Fly like plane! Lie like people!

The US doesn't use the imperial system.

Going back, I have a clear memory of big events with global viewership being typically advertised with multiple time zones at a time. It was almost a bit of a marketing gag even for financial firms to have a ton of clocks up with labels displaying many different time zones.

So yes, no reason to chose 1 time zone and force readers to do mental math. Just list “London: , Tokyo: , Sydney: , LA: , NYC: , Lagos: , Singapore: , Mumbai: “ etc.

at least they could have used good old internet time.

@490

> I'm just recognizing the facts of the planet we live in.

I think you will find, with absolutely no supporting evidence to back this up, that there will be more people outside of the US watching than from the US.

We don't really use UTC in the US, so for most Americans it wouldn't actually tell them much of anything. EST & PST are the most common.

Nobody elsewhere does either but everyone knows their offset, or at least should around here... this is clearly an event of worldwide importance, so adding a few more timestamps wouldn't hurt

> EST & PST are the most common.

Which is maddening because most of the year it’s EDT & PDT but people still reference them wrong, even in marketing and corporate communications where they really should know better.

Come on folks. It’s time to start using star dates.

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