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Post by Glom on Jan 12, 2011 17:32:03 GMT -4
Ever get tired of having months with so stupid a number days? Some having 30, some having 31 (a prime number!)?
The solution is simple. Reduce our semi-major axis. Shorten the year to 360 days. Then each month could have 30 nice even days. The reduction would only need to be 0.96%. And because the perihelion is 1.67% less than the semi-major axis, all it would require is to lower the aphelion.
What are the issues?
Climatic effects? Because we're only just the eccentricity, we're now exposing the planet to a new regime. We may even see more stability.
Reboost requirements? As the Moon continues to steal our angular momentum, the days will continue to get longer. We may need to constantly reboost to keep the year at an even 360 days. Fortunately, we have some assistance because as the Sun depletes, our orbital period will slow.
Eccentricity choices? The whole thing can be done cheapest and simplest by application of a retrograde delta v at perihelion. This would leave the eccentricity at 0.007. If we did a mix of lower the aphelion and raising the perihelion, we could circularise. The total delta v requirement would be no greater.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 12, 2011 17:35:00 GMT -4
Just make all the months 30 days long and use the last 5 days (6 in a leap year) as holidays not considered part of any month. We could either space them out throughout the year or have them all at once at the end/beginning.
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Post by LunarOrbit on Jan 12, 2011 17:39:55 GMT -4
Just make all the months 30 days long and use the last 5 days (6 in a leap year) as holidays not considered part of any month. We could either space them out throughout the year or have them all at once at the end/beginning. What about the people born on one of those days? They would not get to have birthdays. |
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Post by randombloke on Jan 12, 2011 18:44:48 GMT -4
Why not? I don't think anyone is suggesting the spacing be random or variable. Just that instead of being on the 30th of Smarch you'd have some other notation like "1st holiday" or something. Heck, what about folks born on the 29th February under the current calendar?
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Post by echnaton on Jan 12, 2011 18:53:31 GMT -4
Just make all the months 30 days long and use the last 5 days (6 in a leap year) as holidays not considered part of any month That would play havoc with calculating bond interest, which just assumes 30/90/360 and glosses over the different number of days in a month or quarter. But put those days together and people will want to be paid interest for them, messing up the ease of calculation. Just say no!  |
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 12, 2011 18:55:15 GMT -4
Just make all the months 30 days long and use the last 5 days (6 in a leap year) as holidays not considered part of any month. We could either space them out throughout the year or have them all at once at the end/beginning. What about the people born on one of those days? They would not get to have birthdays. ?? Why not? It would look something like this: New Year's Day January1-30 February 1-30 March 1-30 Spring Holiday April 1-30 May 1-30 June 1-30 Midsummer's Day July 1-30 August 1-30 September 1-30 October 1-30 Harvest Holiday November 1-30 December 1-30 End Year Holiday And on leap years have two "End Year Holiday"s. So if you had your birthday on the "Harvest Holiday" you would celebrate it every year on Harvest Holiday. By "We could either space them out throughout the year or have them all at once at the end/beginning" I didn't mean we could move them around every year - just that when we design the calendar we can decide which we like better. |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jan 12, 2011 19:51:01 GMT -4
Just make all the months 30 days long and use the last 5 days (6 in a leap year) as holidays not considered part of any month. We could either space them out throughout the year or have them all at once at the end/beginning. 12 months of 30 days. Each month has 3 weeks of 10 days. The remaining 5 days are used as special days, 1 for the Winter and summer soltices, and 1 for the spring and autumn equinoxs. The 5th day is added to summer for a secondary holiday. |
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Post by echnaton on Jan 12, 2011 21:10:57 GMT -4
Very interesting and it does address the interest problem, but the real question to be answered is how these odd days work with computers? Things like the pull down boxes for credit card expiration dates on web sites. Securities settlements will be an issue also. If I buy shares of Apple on May 28 I will settle three days later on June 1. If I buy them on June 28 settlement three days later will be what date?
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Post by BertL on Jan 12, 2011 23:29:43 GMT -4
Just make all the months 30 days long and use the last 5 days (6 in a leap year) as holidays not considered part of any month. We could either space them out throughout the year or have them all at once at the end/beginning. 12 months of 30 days. Each month has 3 weeks of 10 days. The remaining 5 days are used as special days, 1 for the Winter and summer soltices, and 1 for the spring and autumn equinoxs. The 5th day is added to summer for a secondary holiday. Sounds a lot like the calendar Tolkien designed for Middle Earth: 12 months of 30 days, with 5 special non-month days in there as well (in some years, 6). I really liked that idea myself. |
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jan 13, 2011 6:37:02 GMT -4
Very interesting and it does address the interest problem, but the real question to be answered is how these odd days work with computers? Things like the pull down boxes for credit card expiration dates on web sites. Securities settlements will be an issue also. If I buy shares of Apple on May 28 I will settle three days later on June 1. If I buy them on June 28 settlement three days later will be what date? Could do it two ways. Either add them to the month box and if selected they'd empty the day box as you didn't have to pick one, or you couls use the short day method I have in the game where the Feast days are often thought of as the Zeroth day of the following month. So in the case you list, the date would either be Midsummer's Day, XXXX or 00/07/XXXX. |
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 13, 2011 12:37:50 GMT -4
This is exactly what I did with my game world. 12 months of 30 days. Each month has 3 weeks of 10 days. The remaining 5 days are used as special days, 1 for the Winter and summer soltices, and 1 for the spring and autumn equinoxs. The 5th day is added to summer for a secondary holiday. Sounds a lot like the calendar Tolkien designed for Middle Earth: 12 months of 30 days, with 5 special non-month days in there as well (in some years, 6). I really liked that idea myself. Yes, it's basically Tolkien's Middle Earth calendar. Bonus Geek points for Bert for recognizing it. As for how the odd days work for computers - we have basically the same problem now with holidays and weekends, so doing it Tolkien's way wouldn't really cause any more problems. If you ever look at a mortgage or other real estate contract you'll see that they usually specify whether interest will be charged on calendar months or 30-day months. |
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Post by Nowhere Man on Jan 14, 2011 20:39:24 GMT -4
I've always thought that alternating 30-day/31-day months would be nice. Every fourth year December gets 31 days instead of 30.
Fred
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Post by carpediem on Jan 14, 2011 22:31:43 GMT -4
Just make all the months 30 days long and use the last 5 days (6 in a leap year) as holidays not considered part of any month. We could either space them out throughout the year or have them all at once at the end/beginning. 12 months of 30 days. Each month has 3 weeks of 10 days. The remaining 5 days are used as special days, 1 for the Winter and summer soltices, and 1 for the spring and autumn equinoxs. The 5th day is added to summer for a secondary holiday. This is pretty much the same as the calendar used briefly in France after the revolution. |
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Post by Apollo Gnomon on Jan 17, 2011 21:38:25 GMT -4
Interesting thought experiment. I'd like to know how much thrust it would take to change the earth's orbit.
Anyone wanna model the Earth as a ship in Orbiter?
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Post by StoneRoad on Jan 18, 2011 14:30:42 GMT -4
On that basis I think I would much rather have the sixth "holiday" in the middle of the better mid-summer weather, if that is all right with the southern hemisphere inhabitants.
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