Adjusting To a Martian Day More Difficult Than Expected

schwit1 writes: Research and actual experience have found that adjusting to the slightly longer Martian day is not as easy as you would think. "If you're on Mars, or at least work by a Mars clock, you have to figure out how to put up with the exhausting challenge of those extra 40 minutes. To be exact, the Martian day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds long, a length of day that doesn't coincide with the human body's natural rhythms. Scientists, Mars rover drivers, and everyone else in the space community call the Martian day a "sol" to differentiate it from an Earth day. While it doesn't seem like a big difference, that extra time adds up pretty quickly. It's like heading west by two time zones every three days. Call it 'rocket lag.'"

Comments

Re:You get used to it.

[Trax3001BBS]

I can't post (new design) only reply so picked on you :) .

Ever been to Alaska?

Walk out of a bar at 4am and it's as bright as noon is very freaky, and your ready to start the day over.

Noon during the Winter is dark as midnight. Cabin fever is very real in Alaska when one lives far from anyone else (very common), the reason pot was legalized, it gave an alternative to drinking, as alcohol was being abused for relief.

40 extra minutes of daylight? pffft

Re:You get used to it.

[CrimsonAvenger]

No you don't. Your watch rotates on an 18 hour cycle, but the boats 'day' (and overall schedule) remains on the standard 24 hour cycle. On top of that, you make the swap from Lima (local time) to Zulu (GMT) once when you leave port and again when you enter port (days, weeks, or months apart)

Irrelevant. You roll out of your rack, go to your watchstation for six hours. Then you do PMS/training/whatever for six hours. Then you sleep for six hours. Repeat till you get back in port.

In other words, you live on an 18-hour day for the period of your patrol.

As I recall, it took two to five days to adjust at each end of the patrol.

Re:So live underground

[CycleMan]

Interesting. I had read that they adjusted to a 25 hour day, not 30. My source: Richard M. Coleman's book, Wide Awake at 3:00 A.M., page 8, "The results of these sleep-wake cycles shows that most subjects averaged a 25-hour day - that is, left on their own, free from time cues, humans have an internal day length of 25 hours." The problem isn't the Martian day, which is much closer to our natural biorhythms; it is trying to work a Martian time schedule while living on Earth with its time cues.