[LEAPSECS] What timekeeping system should the Terra Nova settlers use?

[Clive D.W. Feather]

> The length of a Martian solar day is currently about 88775.24409 s (per Wikipedia), yielding an average minute length for a UTC equivalent of 61.6494751 s.  On Paleoterra you'll want an average minute length somewhere between 58.0 s and 59.4 s.  So on Mars you'll want about 65% of minutes to be 62 seconds long and the rest 61 seconds long. There'll have to be alternation of minutes within each day, which could be mostly according to a regular pattern,


That's one way to do it, certainly.

Another way is to have TAI hours and minutes and seconds, with each day
ending with a partial hour. Digital time displays would have no problem
with this, calculators can be used if you actually need to work out how
long an interval stretching over midnight was, and analogue clocks and
watches become intriguing gadgets (noting it's no more difficult than my
radio-controlled clock that moves its hands around to correct the time, or
my wristwatch whose analogue stopwatch winds back when I reset it or
forwards when I end a pause).

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