[LEAPSECS] prep for WRC 23

[Michael Deckers]

    On 2023-12-22 22:35, Seaman, Robert Lewis - (rseaman) wrote:
> E pur si muove

    Natura non facit saltus -- why should UTC?

> UTC may no longer serve as a kind of solar time (after 2026 or 2035, or somebody said 2040 the other day), but civil time will continue to have engineering requirements tracing to both solar and atomic time scales.


    As far as required by local civil time scales, continuous UTC can 
stand for solar
    time (UT1 up to 15 min) for several centuries.

    Current positioning applications on the surface of the Earth cannot 
be performed
    without knowledge of UT1 up several milliseconds. These applications 
work in
    wrist watches today and they do not need nor exploit the leap 
seconds of UTC.

    What type of engineering requirements can be satisfied with the 
current UTC with
    leap seconds that fail when UTC becomes continuous? The Russians 
have required
    more time for updates in satellite software, they have not said that it
    cannot be done.

    Michael Deckers.