Galaxy Magazine (September 1956) by Galaxy

Author:Galaxy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1956-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

FOR YOUR INFORMATION

Since Mars is near right now, interest in the construction of a calendar for Mars for the convenience of future explorers might be more widespread than at other times and I'll therefore go into the subject at greater length and with more detail. The two nat-ural units on which any calendar is based are the length of the day, which is the time needed by the planet to turn around its axis, and the length of the year, the time needed by the same planet to move once around the Sun.

Mars needs 687 days to go around the Sun once, but these are Earth days. The Martian day is 37 minutes and about 23 seconds longer than the Earth day; hence there are 668.59905 Mars days in a Martian year. For the sake of convenience, let's round this off to 668 6/10th days; we can take care of the tiny difference later. Using that figure, we find that five Mars years contain 3343 Martian days. Since for purposes of calendar making, every year has to have a number

of full days —you cannot end a year with half a day and three-tenths of a day —the five years comprising such a five-year cycle must be of unequal length.

Breaking up the five-year cycle is naturally an arbitrary procedure which could follow any one of several different schemes. Three possibilities are these:

Or:

Or:

In short, you can either have four years of equal length, with the fifth year two days shorter or three days longer than the others; or else you can alternate with each fifth year one day longer than it would come out if alternation were carried through.

ANOTHER and in some of spects better way would be to follow a ten-year cycle with alternating years. During such a ten-year cycle of 6686 Martian days, the five "short" years of 668 days each would have accumu-

72

GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION

lated 3340 days and the five "long" years of 669 days each would have accumulated 3345 days, totaling 6685 days. This is one day short, so every tenth year would have to have one additional leap year's day to make the cycle come out even.

So far, so good, but how do we

SPRINQ

divide the years into months?

Using the ten-year cycle, Dr. Robert G. Aitken, former director of the Lick Observatory, devised a calendar in which each year had sixteen months of six weeks each.

In an odd-numbered year, the four months of spring would all begin on a Sunday and the first

S M T W T P S

First Week 1 2 3 h 5 6 7 Sec'd Week 8 9 10 11 12 13 l*f Third Week 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Fourth Week 22 23 2*f 25 26 27 28 Fifth Week 29 30 31 32 33 3^ 35 Sixth Week 36 37 38 39 ho ^1 ^2

SUMMER S M T W T F S

1

2 3 *f 5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12 13 Ih 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 2*f 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 & 35 36

37 38 39 ho h 1 h 2 -

AUTUMN S M T W T F S / .

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