What time zone on ships and starbases?

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Penta
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What time zone on ships and starbases?

Post by Penta »

Random curiosity question:

What time zone do people use on their starships or starbases? To me, this isn't an obvious question - IRL, spacecraft use the time zone of where they're launched from (so the ISS uses Moscow Time, the Space Shuttle and US craft used US Eastern Standard/Daylight Time (or they may have used Central, I learned this a long time ago), and Chinese craft presumably use China's nationwide time zone), but (obviously) that doesn't work for starships or starbases.

The possibilities I see:

1. Zulu/UTC
2. Pacific Time - Because San Francisco is the location of SFHQ.
3. The time in Paris, France - as Paris is the capital of the UFP.

I suspect lots of people use stardates and ignore entirely the Gregorian calendar and 24-hour clock, but I don't, and I was hoping there were other people who didn't and had ideas on this issue.
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Re: What time zone on ships and starbases?

Post by jasoncollege24 »

When we post times on starbase 80, we don't really worry too much about timezones. If we're posting a time in a location where we might be working, we use that place's local time. That's pretty much how it has worked on any starbase or ship sim I've ever played on.
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Demetri Ivanov
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Re: What time zone on ships and starbases?

Post by Demetri Ivanov »

I would say Zulu time for transitory ships open space stations and local time for orbital stations, shipyards, ground stations and colonies.
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Re: What time zone on ships and starbases?

Post by Penta »

Huh. Interesting idea...Of course, it could make life hell for docking starships. "Dock lag". And God help em if the local planet doesn't use a 24 hour clock, but instead a 26 hour clock or something.
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Re: What time zone on ships and starbases?

Post by qazzy »

When encountering a planet that uses something other than a 24 hour day, Starfleet would most likely keep to the 24 hour time, since that's how they figure up the shifts etc
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