Tag Archives: Confederate

Time (Terran)

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While, as with any civilisation, the Terran people have used any number of calendars and measures of time through their history, there are two that can be specifically thought of as specifically Terran rather than simply one of its cultural or religious groups.

These would be the old, defunct Gregorian system, and the modern Universal Standard system.

Gregorian: Before the Tycho Convention gathered to found the Terran Confederation most nations and planets used, to varying degrees, the Gregorian system. Some worlds did attempt to adapt the clock and/or calendar to their own planet’s orbital and rotational periods, but based these very heavily on this Earth system.

At the smallest common unit was the second. Colloquially it was 1/86400 of the day, but officially was:

the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.

Either way 60 of them was the next sized unit, the minute. 60 of those to an hour, and 24 to an Earth day.

The notation for time had two varieties called the 12hour or 24hour clocks.
The 12hour clock used a denotion of AM or PM for morning or evening respectively and noted the hour using 1 through 12. Thus 1:30pm for one and a half hours after midday.
The 24hour clock dropped the AM/PM electing to count the hours as 00 though 23. So 13:30 for the above example. Minutes in either system were 00 through 59, and while either system had a preceding 0 for a single digit hour as optional, minutes and seconds were always 2-digit, and units below seconds were denoted decimally so 1:30:45.123456 might be seen.

The calendar was based on a solar/lunar cycle system and counted the time before or after the estimated birth of the Christian deity Jesus. Events after this event were left merely as a numeric year, or might be specified with A.D. From the Latin Anno Domini, The Year of Our Lord being the common translation. After Christianity fell out of major political influence during the century of the first two world wars C.E. was used instead and meant Common Era. Events preceding the birth were B.C. or B.C.E. for Before Christ or Before the Common Era.
The year, as with the Universal Calendar is based on the Terrestrial orbit of Sol.

This was achieved through estimation, however. The year was measured as 365.2525 days, and was tracked as 3 years of 365 days followed by one of 366, called a Leap Year except on centennial years that weren’t a multiple of 400.

The lunar element was in the subdivision of the year into 12 months as the approximate number of lunar cycles from full moon to full moon in one year. These twelve months had either 30 or 31 days, except the second which had 28 or during leap year 29.

The notation had virtually no standardisation. But the methods involved spelling out or abbreviating the month’s name, and giving the day and year as numerals, or by giving the month a numeral value and listing it all that way using various symbols for seperation. Often the first two digits of the year were omitted, and what order the numerals were placed was very regional.

Some examples:
1 February 2134
Feb. 1, 2134
01-2-34
2/1/2134

The system is no longer used for any official purposes but some religious groups do still use it to track holy days.

Universal Standard: Also called simply Standard or decimal it was first proposed some 43 years before the Tycho Convention founded the Confederation by Dr. Otto Smith of Universidad de Amazonis Planitia on Mars as a new calendar system that left behind the religious trappings that had led to the horrible wars that were still ravaging parts of the cradle of Mankind, and as a compliment to the decimal clock that had been gaining momentum for the previous fifty years as a result of the numbers of people who had had to adapt to it for military purposes.

The Universal Clock is, essentially, the same one proposed during the French Revolution centuries before even the first of the Big Three. It proposes the day be divided into tenths, and the accepted form used a division of those tenths by hundredths, then those to be further divided by an hundred. Lacking any proposals for an alternate name, and in the interests of tradition they were called hours, minutes, and seconds.

The length of a day, thanks to modern astrometric capabilities and the creation of the major time servers at each major System Hub means all clocks can adjust themselves to accurately subdivide the Terrestrial rotational period accurately into the required pieces.

The calendar elected to divide the year into ten, again for tradition’s sake the word month was chosen. These were declared to be 37 days on the odd months, and 36 on the even. The exact length of the calendar is automatically adjusted by the System Hubs throughout the year to keep 365 days precisely the span of that years Terrestrial orbital period.

The name Universal Standard is, naturally, because it is intended to be the standard time for all of the Confederation. Due to the exceedingly variable duration of extraterrestrial worlds, as well as spaceships and starships, space stations, etc. it was decided that the Terrestrial orbits and rotations would be the measure of time throughout Mankind and that no timezones need exist. The hour was calculated as 1.0 when The Constitution was ratified as and the date as 1.1.1.

The Universal months were given names for purposes of making saying the date easier, though numerals are to always be used when writing, and were given the Latin for First through Tenth. The clock and calendar were declared to be one and the same so correct notation should always be date, numerically, separated as year.month.day@hour.minutes or if greater accuracy is required .seconds or even further.

Colloquially the date is left out of the time in spoken conversations, but this is inappropriate usage when speaking in official or formal capacities.

The single time unit to be absolutely unchanged between either calendar is the week, a unit if 7 days. The week held more importance in the Gregorian eras, but even under modern circumstances a middle measure between day and month is useful and while it has been suggested that six might be a better choice the proposal always lacks support so the old measure remains.

Fabbers

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The fabber is not a new technology in the same way that the compact disc of the last decades of the twentieth century hadn’t been new when they’d become popular. It was invented as a form of field ration to simplify care for soldiers in the Franco-Portugese army in the fifth decade of the third world war. The technology was simplified and refined and an organic recycler was added making them further popular among many of the pre-warp starships, and when warp was developed found a niche there as well due to the extremely limited capacity of those ships.

The basic concept started out as an edible form of the plastic soup used in the rapid prototypers and 3D printers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. These used a mix of edible gels comprised amino acids, vitamins, minerals, or carbohydrates in balanced proportions; it would produce hot rapid meals by combining these according to information provided to ensure each soldier got no more than they needed. The next revision could recycle certain amounts and types of organic waste, but was not popular on the battlefield, nor is it currently common in the home due to the space that component takes up. This was not, however, a limitation on starships where it still takes up less space than foodstuffs and makes the food supply very nearly limited only to the availability of power.

Modern units can be given additional gels that can allow recreation of flavours and have assemblers that allow them to build what looks like a normal food, even reproducing textures and densities. Some claim that the fabber food is indistinguishable from the real thing except to be guaranteed healthful, others say that the end product is a crime against cuisine. Most, though, hold a position somewhere in between — it might not be perfect, but it’s edible. The fabber is, on many Confederate colony worlds, the only food available to Terrans. These would be worlds incapable of supporting Human consumable foods, and the cost ineffectiveness of hydroponics on such large scales, or shipping in food on warp freighters. A waste recycling center is established and colonists purchase food gelpacks from it. The fabber is also becoming a fad among the old worlds which can grow food out of the novelty of not having to worry about perishables, or even grocery shopping. Most packs are good for a month of meals for the average family of three.

The fabber has little popularity outside the Terran Confederation for various reasons. One is the lack of popularity of electrical power or the Terran’s habit of using digital computer systems making them difficult to integrate. Another is how few are willing to tolerate the taste (or even to understand how to convince the things of the dietary needs of anything that isn’t Human). Some of the techniques used for the food prep was adapted for the original prototypers that inspired these devices and a line of fabbers exists that can make clothes, simple household goods, and so forth do exist as well. These use oils and produce polyester type fabrics, hairbrushes, a passable toothpaste, etc. This particular form of fabber has gained a small following outside the Confederation,but still not much due to the afore mentioned electricity, and due to a view of its products being of quality inferior to the goods more conventionally produced.