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Is it likely in the first place that Mars inhabitants would bother minting coins? They might, but I'm thinking they'd have more important tasks/challenges to deal with. No trees on Mars (yet), paper scarce if nonexistant; no paper money.
--Cindy
Paper money is not made from tree fibre. I think it's made from cotton fibre instead. It's more durable.
Forget paper banknotes, it's old tech that is being phased out in many countries around the world. Polymer banknotes are now in circulation in many countries. To learn more, Google for "polymer banknotes".
What would a Martian currency be like? It will probably be a pure electronic currency. Such a currency will probably use low-value smartcards as the primary means of exchange. These smartcards would be used for day to day purchases like bread, protein rations, water and the like, and these can be recharged at the Martian equivalent of an ATM. For larger purchases, direct transfers between bank accounts would be employed.
I think the early colonists will have to forgo animal protein for the most part. A vegetarian lifestyle would have the protein that is needed.
The colonists would need to fix nitrogen so it can be assimilated into proteins. The growing of legumes (along with their symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria) would provide an efficient and natural method of converting gaseous nitrogen into protein.
Mars may be short of the nitrogen that is needed, I don't know for sure. Nitrogen can be obtained from the outer solar system. Titan has gaseous nitrogen in its atmosphere, and Triton has nitrogen geysers. The smaller ice moons of Saturn may have ammonia that can be mined.
Srmeaney:-
COnsidering the same will be done to other dead volcanos on Mars ...
Mining colonies in Mars' 'dead' volcanoes, eh?
How confident are you that they're completely dead?
It's not just the risk of volcanic eruptions that must be considered. There is also the real possibility of marsquakes. Those volcanic craters are not quiescent bowls; a lot of their shape comes from the collapse of underground magma chambers. Suppose that process is not complete? Suppose the very act of exploring those caldera triggered another collapse? If that happens, few would survive.
I'll assume for the sake of this discussion that regular space travel between Earth and Mars is readily available, using reasonable extrapolations of current technology.
The passenger spaceship of the future could be a large beast, comparable in size to an ocean liner, with rotation providing artificial gravity. If the rotation was Earth-normal gravity, those acclimatised to Martian gravity would find it tough going at first. The journey from Mars to Earth would take maybe nine months, which would be plenty of time to become acclimatised.
Not all would be able to make the journey. The elderly residents of Mars would find the journey too risky to make. Their old bones may be too brittle, and bone fractures in the elderly can be fatal. Thus, such journeys are only for the young.
If the ships had Mars-normal gravity, then more people would be able to make the journey to the Earth system, but a visit to Earth itself would be restricted to those with medical clearance. On the other hand, most if not all who are fit enough to make the journey would be able to visit the Moon. Such visits run the risk of the visitor becoming acclimatised to the Moon's gravity. Some may be unable to return to Mars if they remained too long on the Moon.
Bruce, this is the most intelligent summary of the calendar problem I have seen, and I like your solutions. I have no problem with an intercalary week. Another solution for names would be January 1, January 2, February 1, February 2, etc. There are calendars that do that as well.
-- RobS
I'm glad you like the calendar. I was surprised that nobody had drafted a similar calendar before. To my knowledge, there was no calendar proposal that had leap weeks with the extra week inserted at the end of the year.
I am familiar with KSR's double-Gregorian month names from the Mars trilogy, but I feel that they pose a few usability issues. January 1 looks too much like a date rather than a month name. This will confuse new settlers. Using letters may work better, like January A, January B etc.
I like the idea of naming the months after constellations, as a few designers have already done. If the months are named after constellations, it may encourage the Martian settlers to study science in general and astronomy in particular. Martian settlers will need a good basic grasp of science if they are to thrive, and having a calendar based on science may encourage them to learn the science that they will need.
Another idea for month names is chemical elements, but I would do it differently. If I was to use chemical elements, I would name the months after the chemical elements found in the human body, in decreasing order of abundance. Thus we would start with plentiful elements like oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus (arranged in decreasing order of mass) and end with the trace elements. The only problem with this scheme is that there are more than 24 elements found in the human body.
[Platinum group metals] are the only reason to mine the asteroid impact site.
I assume you mean mining for export to Earth? If there's plenty of iron and nickel at the site, as is likely given the typical composition of metallic meteorites, it's reasonable to presume that such metals will also be mined as a byproduct. Martian colonists would find plenty of uses for iron and nickel.
Some people have advocated decimal time with 10 hours in a day. This time period is not very practical because there is little need to divide the day into periods of time that are 2+1/2 Earth hours in length.
100 hours in a day is much more practical. One of these hours is equal to about 14+3/4 Earth minutes. Such a period of time would be suitable for such day-to-day needs as doctors' appointments and the like.
Consider the following, alll expressed in these "hours" of 14+3/4 Earth minutes:
* Working day: 32 hours
* Lunch break: 4 hours
* Favourite weekly television show from Earth: 2 hours or 4 hours
* Length of one class period at high school or university: 4 hours
* Appointment at the dentist: 2 to 4 hours
* Appointment at the doctor: 1 hour
Such a period of time cannot possibly meet all timekeeping needs, but as the first subdivision of the Martian day it would have many practical uses as demonstrated above.
I feel evil, being a new user stirring up old threads, but I feel it's better to use existing threads rather than creating new ones that discuss exactly the same material.
There seemed to be a lot of controversy regarding the days of the week and religion. The controversy existed because of the one unspoken assumption that everyone made: that the intercalation of leap years must be performed by inserting one day.
This is not true.
There are calendars in use today that have intercalary periods longer than one day. ISO 8601 specifies a 52-week calendar that intercalates an extra week when the corresponding year has 53 Thursdays. The Hebrew calendar and the Chinese calendar both intercalate entire months.
This is why the Martian calendar I designed has an intercalary week. The idea of intercalating an entire week may seem a little odd, but let's consider how the calendar will be used.
Any Martian calendar must meet diverse needs.
Religious needs have been discussed in depth here already, so I won't need to add my own arguments on that topic. Needless to say, I considered the religious need to meet the Fourth Commandment seriously, so my calendar design has an unbroken cycle of a seven-day week. There are no blank days, and no days missing from the week.
Business needs are also important. One important need that business has is to break up the year into various subdivisions to aid in fiscal management. For ease of use, it would be best if those subdivisions were as even in size as possible. This requirement rules out calendars where the months vary in length to match the seasons. The need to have the equinoxes and solstices begin on the first day of a month is not as great as the business need for efficient fiscal reporting. Therefore, to the maximum extent possible, the months in my calendar design have the same length.
Another business requirement would be for the calendar to have as few variations as possible. The Gregorian calendar has 14 variations, with years of two different lengths beginning on any day of the week. If a diary for a particular year gets printed and remains unsold, it is generally considered useless and is discarded. This wastes resources. Various resources on Mars may be in short supply, or may need to be imported from Earth, so minimising such wastage is important. A perpetual calendar minimises these variations in the layout of the year and thus minimises waste. My calendar design is perpetual, with only 2 year layouts - long years and short years.
Another requirement would be to make the calendar hemisphere-neutral as much as possible. So many designs for Martian calendars make the implicit assumption that everyone living on Mars will live north of the equator that I don't even bother looking at those designs anymore. As soon as someone makes a gross error like that, it's safe to assume that the rest of the calendar will probably contain errors as well. Suppose Mars was terraformed so that it had oceans. If that happened, most of the Martian northern hemisphere will be underwater and most people will live south of the Martian equator! Would they still use northern hemisphere seasonal conventions?
A final requirement would be to make the intercalation rules as easy as possible, both now and in the distant future when the number of days in the year has been reduced due to tidal friction.
My calendar design is a calendar with leap weeks. The year lengths are 665 days (short years) and 672 days (long years). 665 days is exactly 95 weeks, and 672 days is exactly 96 weeks. There are 24 months in the year. All months have 28 days, except the last month in short years which only has 21 days. A year is a long year with 672 days if (Year * 39) mod 76 < 39, otherwise it has 665 days.
The design has many strengths and few weaknesses. The strengths are fairly obvious. The main weaknesses are:
* The use of leap weeks may take some cultural adjustment. In particular, the anniversary problem for events that occur during the last week of long years needs consideration.
* The last month of short years only has 21 days, not 28.
* The date and time of an equinox or solstice will vary by up to 3+1/2 days either side of a mean date.
* The intercalation is not Gregorian, so it may take some getting used to.
I would like the weaknesses of the design to be discussed. Are the weaknesses fatal flaws that make the calendar unusable, or would they be of relatively minor importance that can be lived with?
The calendar design is discussed in more detail here:
http://www.bdm.id.au/calendar/MarsCalen … lendar.htm
Edit 2006-04-07: The page has moved to a new location, so I updated the link. -BDM
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