Theta Fleet Forums

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.

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.

I would say Zulu time for transitory ships open space stations and local time for orbital stations, shipyards, ground stations and colonies.

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.

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