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Living on Mars Time
Roland Piquepaille writes "When NASA's rovers, 'Spirit' and 'Opportunity,' touch down on Mars next January, scientists and engineers in charge of the missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), will start to experiment with a 90-day period of jet lag. Why? Because, as reports Astrobiology Magazine, 'a day on Mars is 39.5 minutes longer than a day on Earth.' To accommodate the requirements of interplanetary communication, during the mission the Spirit science and engineering teams will have to live on Mars time, in synch with the red planet's cycle of light and dark. This means that, here on Earth, they'll sometimes be working during daylight hours, and at other times they'll be working through the night. This summary contains more details and a screenshot of the Mars24 application, a Java program which gives you the time on Mars."
Have these people never had to work to a deadline before ???
:)
two words for them
JOLT COLA
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
"Time to scoop up dust, analyze it and try to forget the fact that we pee through a tube."
"Oh."
A Java Application to display martian time? That sounds like a Java 101 excersise :)
Although the screenshots do look pretty neat.
Which is, of course, totally and completely different from what we do as computer people.
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Will they also be learning to live with the Terrible Secret of Space?
This means that, here on Earth, they'll sometimes be working during daylight hours, and at other times they'll be working through the night. :)
Oh my! I 'm allready living in mars time!
- Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
a day on Mars is 39.5 minutes longer than a day on Earth.
Great. This is a project-planner's fantasy. Forget offshore, we should move our software projects off-planet.
...When are going to switch to the "Stardate" notation of time?
Do not read this
My understanding is that we (as in humans) are set up for a slightly longer day than 24 hours (I don't understand the science behind it). So perhaps it would be more appropriate for the crew to work to Mars time & the support team to *support* the people who are in a rather more stressful situation by working funny hours for a bit. Blimey, they can always record the Simpsons if they don't want to miss it.
But I wore the juice
'cause A Mars day helps you work, rest and play
Well, that dratted "24/7" slogan is definitely doomed on Mars.
Well, say you set up a lunch meeting with the Martians at 12 o'clock sharp and you show up 15 minutes late, what does that say about us as a species? Is that really the message you want to send them?
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Mars Time????
Is that Metric or is that Imperial?
I mean.. like.. shouldnt they wait to see if it actually lands this time?
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I was thinking more along the lines of.. "I'm sorry officer, it's this damn Martian speedo I had fitted..."
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30 24 * * * /usr/bin/phone.home >/dev/null 2>&1
actually we revert to a 24.39 hour life cycle which proves we are all really martians.
...will also be bombarded with radiation and have most of the oxygen removed.