Swatch's 1998 "Internet Time" flopped on Earth but it might actually be the right system for Mars
Hi r/Mars,
Mars isn't really my field of expertise. I'm a researcher and developer coming at this from the systems-design side, and I wrote a blog post that ended up being mostly about how we'd keep time on Mars. I'd genuinely love feedback from people who actually know this space better than I do.
The short version of the argument: JPL's approach of stretching Earth hours/minutes/seconds by 2.75% to match the Martian sol feels intuitive but is probably quietly dangerous because units that look almost like Earth units but aren't are exactly the kind of thing that catastrophic errors. Visibly different units (something like Swatch's old "Internet Time" beats, at 1 sol = 1000 beats) would be safer, not despite looking alien but because they do.
What I'd really appreciate from this community:
Does the stretched-Earth-units concern match what people working in planetary science actually experience, or am I overstating it?
Anyone here lived on Mars time during a rover mission? The "permanent jetlag" stories are the strongest evidence I leaned on but I only have secondhand sources.
Have I missed existing proposals for Martian timekeeping that I should know about? (I cited Allison & McEwen 2000 but I suspect there's more recent work.)
Link: https://zeitraum.blog/en/post/019da194-6bd0-7337-b7df-e0c2af9a7f73
Happy to discuss in comments and fully expect to get things wrong that the community will catch.