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NASA Scientists Get Custom 24h39m-per-day Watches
blair1q writes "In order to more easily keep solar time on Mars, (or maybe just as a lark) JPL has ordered specially-modified mechanical watches for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission. One wonders why these literal rocket scientists didn't just get a software programmable Linux or PalmOS based wrist-computer and hack together a Mars-time display application into it?"
And, as a layman knowing nothing about the intricacies of a 100%-mechanical wristwatch, it sounds like a frickin' impressive one.
Mad props to Mr. Anserlian!
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PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
If we're serious about heading into space, we need to develop a way of telling time that's not linked directly to Earth. Sure, we'll have conversions and such, but we need an independent time measurement.
One wonders why these literal rocket scientists didn't just get a software programmable Linux or PalmOS based wrist-computer and hack together a Mars-time display application into it?"
It is always such a relief to know that Slashdot readers know more about Astronauts should do and use than NASA engineers.
Maybe that was a bit harsh, but have you ever seen a sophisticated piece of consume electronics, such as a Palm Pilot or laptop, taken along with astronauts on their missions?
Electronics in space have to be able to handle conditions that your favorite PDA engineers did not exactly have in mind--even on an astronauts wrist. Notice that the watch is not even digital, and that if you think about it, it is probably not because the Engineers didn't read The Hitchhiker's Guide.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
That's a ThinkGeek thing :D
Great fun, allows you to prepare for the day Earth goes under and we all move to Mars, and you can start taking 1$ a pop for every person who wants to know what time it is!
Hmm, would normal Earthling solar watches still work? Might set one out of business.
I'll tell you why they got mechanical watches and didn't hack up a Linux watch:
1. Generally speaking digital watches are fugly. There's no Movado Digital Watch for a reason.
2. Commitment. This watch will ALWAYS run ~24h39m. You can give it to your grandkids. Your crap-ass programmable digital watch won't make it that far. Also, it can be made back into a 24h watch. There are no digital watch family heirlooms.
3. A mechanical watch is a thing of craftsmanship and beauty. A watch running Windows or Linux is cute for maybe 10 minutes then its a watch that does so many other things that they forgot the "tells time" part.
OK, that was a slightly trollish subject line, but I'll try to make up for it.
... efficiency is for machines, not necessarily for people.
I think that as geeks, we all (well, most of us -- I don't have arms, you insensitive clod!) go through the phase where we want that digital watch that has EVERYTHING. It should have at least two different clocks! And a stopwatch! And two timers! And, umm, a calculator. While we're at it, throw a little game in there (I seem to recall one of my first watches had a Simon Says game). Hell, these days, you can get a watch with a USB connection.
Nothing wrong with that, mind you, but at some point some of us change our preferences. Maybe it's because I spend my time on computers 85% of my waking hours, but I've become fond of such things as writing letters with a fountain pen on some nice vellum paper -- Coinciding with my preference for simple, elegant analog watches. This watch on my wrist can't do much -- it tells the time, and the date, and actually has an alarm, but that's about it. It won't tell me what time it is in Hong Kong and it's not heavy enough to kill someone with blunt trauma like those big Citizens. But you know what? I like it. It's light, it's thin, and it looks pretty on my wrist.
I don't mean to suggest there's some sort of 'maturity' that causes some of us to like analog watches -- liking analog watches isn't better than liking digital watches, just different. It's not the height of efficiency, but
If I could afford it and I had the same problem, I'd have gone for mechanical watches too. I'd buy one of these, but I'd feel like a total poseur.
If Think Geek could get someone to make these I would buy one just for the sheer geekyness of it ;)
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
The long version is written up here . The short version is: A handicapped friend had an unusual and extraordinary need. We met up with a master gunsmith who was so fascinated by this new challenge he'd never had before that he swept us to the head of the line despite having weeks of backlog and spent a weekend machining this unique one-off item for us. Oh and then, because "you couldn't afford to pay what this actually cost," refused to accept money for it.
We're (pretty much) all geeks here. We're all attracted to that challenge, to that thing we've never done before. I know I'm much more likely to do something for free (or at least below market rates) if it's interesting and unusual than if it's yet another damned system administration task. I know I'm not alone in our field, and my experience suggests that masters of the more mechanical arts are often similar in their attraction to the unusual job. Especially given the small number of people who'd be worthy of having such a watch, and the fact that this isn't being asked for for-profit, I would't be surprised if this guy cut them a break on it if NASA wasn't paying.
It's kind of interesting how mechanical things seem to have much more value now than they did, say, 10 or 15 years ago.
I remember how, in the late 80's how it was the coolest thing to have a digital wrist watch. They were a -lot- more expensive than an analog watch of similar quality.
Now, digital watches are fairly dirt cheap. Sure, the newer ones are a bit more expensive, and they're always having some new, cool features, but...
They're nowhere near as expensive as, say, a high-quality Rolex. Not only that, but they won't last nearly as long: they'll either get wet, simply stop working, or wear out electronically long before a Rolex begins to stop keeping the correct time.
It seems to me that there's a large degree of anachronism going on in society in general right now - people want the simple, elegant mechanical watches instead of a wizz-bang digital watch. Or maybe they want a vehicle from the 90's tha doesn't have all the electronics and sensors that 'just runs', and costs less to maintain and own in general.
I wonder if this trend is due to people getting tired of shitty products always breaking, or something else. Personally, I'd much rather have reliability - I'm the kind of person that becomes "comfortable" with the things I have, they become familiar. I don't want to replace my steady Palm Pilot Pro, because I'm used to it, and it has a certain familiar aesthetic.
Anyone else feel that way?
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I wouldn't be surprised if the mission leaders bought them for the crew. A few of the mission leaders were my professors and they are all very generous - (one took time out of his schedule and wrote a recommendation which helped me get into medical school - what a great guy...)
:)
I saw in From the Earth to the Moon that the team leader of Apollo 12 bought his 2 crewmembers and himself matching Corvettes!!! So as you can see, NASA people are very internally-generous
That's why sites like Ars Technica exists. A *PC* site. Not a Windows site, not a Linux site, but a site for PC enthusiasts with assorted software, hardware, and other geek news. I follow that other posters advice about visiting Yahoo. :-)
Now, with the Mars day being slightly longer than the Earth day and there are watches to match this, how do they reckon the days there? Here on Earth there is the system of Julian Days, which serves well for Earth-bound day-counting and marking dates of interesting events. This, like the UTC clock, seems to be very Earth-centric.
So are anyone contemplating a Martian calendar, or some kind of linear numbering of Mars Days, so there will be a logical date for when the various Rovers and others have landed, and other interesting events?
For all I know, such a calendar may already exist, but all I have seen of it has been various science-fiction books.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
Besides which, modifying mechanical watches is a cool hack, although old school. Maybe you kids wouldn't approve, but guys like the TMRRC would want one so they could take it apart and do it themselves.
More disconcerting is the quote from the article;
One hopes the amazement is on the part of the JPL staffer, and not on the part of the master watchmaker. Such accuracy used to be commonplace on all but the cheapest mechanical watches. Or maybe since most market watches (as opposed to chronometers) are marketed for fashion rather than accuracy nowadays, it is astounding for a modern watch.a slideruler like conversion tool...something cheaper than having mechanical ones specially made.
I'd rather see that money go towards the next rover or the next Mars mission. But this does leave room for some ways for NASA to raise funds in other ways than from taxes....by selling merchandise to fans! A collector's Mars watch where the proceeds go towards funding the Mars Exploration Project.
When was the last time you saw someone desperately tweaking their carbuerator to get their car started? Or pumping the gas, flooding the engine, and turning it over for an eternity trying to clear it? You turn the key and it goes.
Don't even get me started on old, mechanically controlled automatic transmissions. These collections of flywheels, springs, valves, gaskets, and hydraulic clutches are practically works of art.. The result? A lousy transmission which breaks all the time. My friend and I drove an '85 K-5 Blazer (4x4) to Mexico and went thru two automatic transmissions in one trip, I shit you not. The first replacement didn't work, and ended up partially shredding itself. To its credit, AAMCO replaced it free of charge.
Of course, electronic ignition and computerized fuel injection allow spark plugs to go 100,000 miles or more. Did I mention that modern emission standards would be impossible without them? My current car only needs its oil changed every 10,000 miles, for goodness sake.
The american spend years in research and millions of dollar perfecting a pen that would work in space. The russians used a pencil.
Yes I know this is not true. The disprove(?) [truthorfiction.com]
But still it is funny. I watched Jay Leno for a while and he just wouldn't quit with jokes about the space station mir and how it was falling apart. Of course zero jokes about the over a dozen people blown up aboard the space shuttles.
Exactly what is the body count on both sides? And how does the body count stack up to the amount of time spend in space?
So once again the americans are looking to go the high tech way. Sure the russians have proven time and time again that the old pod on a rocket works best, hell the russians have got an escape mechanism, their crews aren't doomed to burn up without at least a chance of escape.
A space plane just for piloting people up? Cause the existing soyuz module is not big enough. Okay here is a bloody simple solution. Add more modules!
When was the last time you saw on say a passenger ship just ONE big lifeboat? Multiple small ones are way easier to implement and provide reduncancy.
Oh well no doubt the boys at nasa know better. After all it is not like they haven't learned from past mistakes eh?
The space shuttle was a great idea. It was part of a huge project to go into space and the shuttle would have been the first of a whole fleet of vehicles to allow this to happen. Instead it became the mainstay of american space exploration and it this role it fails. It is like SUV, nice in theory but in its attemps to be all things it fails at being good at anything.
Of course the article points out the reason pretty well. Lack of funding. I guess the americans just made so many jokes about mir that they thought they had the space race won and they no longer had to do anything with it. Pity.
Not to knock Linux or anything, but if the problem statement is "I want a watch to keep track of Martian time on my wrist wherever I go", the answer is a custom circuit in a digital watch (probably an extra capacitor or two), or a slightly larger gear in a mechanical watch. I think it's pretty obvious that you can write a Javascript Mars clock for your computer in about 5 minutes. I'd like to assume that NASA already came up with that idea.
I know this was a joke, but for the sake of clueless guys everywhere-
It's synced to the lunar cycle. Check the phase of the moon during her next period. She'll always have it at the same point in the lunar cycle.
Of course, if she ever spends several months with other women, their cycles will sync up and you'll need to check hers against the moon again.
When I did my MSc in RadioAstronomy way back in the 1960's it was common for those involved to have watches - one on Earth time, the other on sidereal time. In my flat overlooking the harbour I run a clock that runs on lunar time for the tides,
This site has a description of a Mars clock built by Ralph B. Mentzer of the Hamilton Watch Company, ca. 1954.
It's a fascinating timepiece, with a 16-inch diameter, a 24-hour face and almost 400 working parts. It could even keep track of the difference in calendar measurements between earth and Mars.
However, apparently only two of these clocks were ever built. One is at the Smithsonian Institution and the other resides at the National Watch and Clock Museum (and the clock seems to be visible on this page).
"Folks just call him Buckethead." -- Les Claypool
Some mechanical watches have value to collectors, but most are not considered very valuable, as most people who wear watches are perfectly happy with digital or mass-produced ones.
The one you saw probably had diamonds and stuff in it. There's a difference between a watch that was just made to be functional, and one which was made to be jewelry.
I've always thought the system proposed by (Kim Stanley Robinson) in the Mars Trilogy books was kinda neat:
All clocks stop at midnight, wait 40 minutes, then tick over to 00:01
(Yes, there are practicality and "yes, but *WHAT'S the TIME*??!?" issues, but I still reckon it'd be cool)
Personally I never use a watch my self.
1. why wear something that you use say 3-5 seconds per day, dumb shit really.
2. my mobile has the clock
3. my pda has a clock
4. my pc and every other pc has a clock
5. theres lots of clocks in the city churches
6. times are at all public transport places, and cars.
What is the point of wearing a watch, this dumbass old contraption.
If anything, id prefer a RING that has a tiny watch.
Watches, damn old shit, from the 17th century, out of date and useless, and damn anoying feeling wearing it too.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Sounds like a Seiko 7S26 or ETA 2846
Nothing wrong with either but but I'd assume they'd go for a faster beat 25 jewel ETA 2824 or 2892 (which is also 21 jewels but watches with this movt useally retail for a lot more than US$150, even though wholesale the movt is a lot cheaper than what people think)
The watchmaker's has the watches for sale on his website. Three different brand: Orient, Seiko, and Citizen. Prices start at around $145 for the watch and $35 for the upcoming Mars watchface.
Wrong, and wrong.
Mechanical watches can be, and are made much less expensively than that (~US$200, or even less), and the taxpayer is *not* footing the bill. Individual project members are paying for their own watches out of their own pockets.
Forget faster, it's much more elegant. I would take a mechnical watch over a digital, PDA-on-my-arm miracle of technology anyday. I enjoy my mechnical watches, the precision that went into their design.
A good watch is a thing that tickles geeks because it's intricate, precise, mathematical and interesting. You deal with gears and springs in the watchworks....
I have a crystal-backed watch, you can see the mechanism running and it's simply beautiful to watch it as it winds down, ticking off the time in the process.
Accurate mechanical clocks were veritable engineering milestones.
:-)
They made it possible to determine longitude.
The available replicas (see e.g. http://www.clockmakers.com/john_harrison_sea.php) should make any engineer drool.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Get the Mars module from CPAN.
This comment betrays a certain lack of understanding of the functioning of mechanical watches.
They didn't put in any new gears. Doing so would have changed the gear spacing and required re-pivoting, an extremely laborious process. It would also have changed the ratio of seconds/minutes/hours. A custom made gear is also an extremely labor-intensive process. Also, because 1479 and 1440 have only 3 as a common divisor, it's not a small integral ratio and would probably take several additional gears (and would probably no longer fit in a watch case.)
What they did was adjust the period of the spring "pendulum" which forms the timebase. Increasing this by ~2.7% will make the watch hands run more slowly, so that it takes the watch 1479 minutes to register 2 full revolutions (12 "martian" hours each). 2.7% is much more than the usual tuning range for a mechanical watch, so it took much trial and error. The "more than $1000" (not "thousands") was for the watches sacrificed to the error part.
If it were a wall clock, with a gravity pendulum, you could just lengthen the pendulum appropriately, but the period of the pendulum wheel in a watch is more complex to determine.
As for "I'd be willing you could get a good watch repair joint to *make* you one of these", why that's just what they did! Mr. Anserlian's shop sounds like an outstanding one, and there aren't many left.
This kind of timebase tinkering isn't unprecedented, back in my radio astronomy days we had a klugy set-up that drove a wall clock with 59.8362... Hz AC so it would run at a sidereal rate (star time rather than sun time.) Eventually, we found it easier to program the computer to do the conversion and I pulled out the sidereal timebase (it was a pain to keep it running). The time for calculation might have been an issue for an optical telescope, but wasn't for our instrument.
If you could get 31,904 Hz quartz crystals, it would be trivial to convert an electronic watch to "martian" time. But the ubiquituous $0.66 32768 Hz miniature crystals are tricky little gadgets. Like so many gadgets, the 2nd and subsequent ones are cheap, but the first one cost literally millions. Custom crystals are easy to get for certain frequency ranges, where the shapes are simple and fundamental modes are used, but getting one that small to oscillate that low requires really tricky shaping. Easier to change the IC's divider chain to work off a standard crystal, but ICs work the same way--the first one is very expensive. Hence the reference in the article to large minimum orders.
All in all, though, I really think the easiest course would have been to program a PDA to do the time conversion...
It's been mentioned over and over that the watches were bought privately, they weren't gifts to the team by taxpayers. Gov't regs and all that.
It's also been mentioned that while you *CAN* get watches that are thousands of dollars, it's quite easy to obtain windup watches that are a few hundred bucks.
As to why they'd want to have something like this? It's a keepsake, a souvenir to mark a personal triumph. They're not getting these things to use as actual time pieces. If that were the case, I'm sure you're right, a cheap $10 digital watch would do the trick just fine. Of course, I've never owned a digital watch that survived more than a few years before it just up and died. Meanwhile, my great grandfather's and my father's pocket watches (bought for him by my great grandfather, it seems) still work fine, provided you bother to wind them.
Besides, what business is it of yours. It's their money. If they want to buy pocket watches, it's their business. You don't see them bitching about that bat'leth or the green lantern ring you bought on ebay.