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Stefantasy, v. 5, issue 2, June 1949
Page 4
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ly solved by inserting refrigeration coils in the hole, freezing it, and moving the frozen hole. The job was completed all right, but apparently the moving hadn't been so smooth as it might have as the farmer complained that pieces of hole were often pumped up with water. Then there was also the branch of the company which built holes for Chick's Sale's "Specialist"---three holes, four holes, etc. Just a Minute, Please or Brother, Are You Scared of Time? by W. McCalendar Danner SOME MONTHS ago Astounding Science Fiction carried an article on the construction of a calendar for Mars. My first reaction was that this is a good idea---that if any of us ever manage to reach Mars, (and just now it looks as though we are engaged in a race between emigration to some other planet and total extinction,) it would be well to have a calendar. Without one, of course, no one would ever know just what day the first pioneers arrived and their descendants would be uaable to celebrate the occasion yearly. I will have some more to say about this after I have finished overhauling the proposed calendar. To begin, then, the author is careful to say that the Martian year consists of 668.6 Martian days of 24 Martian hours each. He further suggests that there be 16 months, each having six seven-day weeks. To dispose of the odd .6 day he proposes that odd-numbered years have 668 days, eve-numbered years have 669 days and decennial years have 670 days. While this would allow two perpetual calendars to keep up with Mars' trips around the sun for some 10,000 years, (if you remember to add a day to each year whose number is divisible by ten,) it seems to me to be unnecessarily complicated. Further division of the year into spring, summer, autumn and winter with the four months of each season numbered I, II, III and IV does not help any, for even though all four months of any one season begin on the same day, the first day is not the same for any two seasons in a two-year period. I maintain that the calendar can be made much simpler than this. In fact, migration to Mars would be an excellent opportunity to break away completely from the haphazard method by which we measure time. Many of our units can well be dumped overboard on the way to Mars and the rest can be considerably simplified. 4 STEFANTASY
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ly solved by inserting refrigeration coils in the hole, freezing it, and moving the frozen hole. The job was completed all right, but apparently the moving hadn't been so smooth as it might have as the farmer complained that pieces of hole were often pumped up with water. Then there was also the branch of the company which built holes for Chick's Sale's "Specialist"---three holes, four holes, etc. Just a Minute, Please or Brother, Are You Scared of Time? by W. McCalendar Danner SOME MONTHS ago Astounding Science Fiction carried an article on the construction of a calendar for Mars. My first reaction was that this is a good idea---that if any of us ever manage to reach Mars, (and just now it looks as though we are engaged in a race between emigration to some other planet and total extinction,) it would be well to have a calendar. Without one, of course, no one would ever know just what day the first pioneers arrived and their descendants would be uaable to celebrate the occasion yearly. I will have some more to say about this after I have finished overhauling the proposed calendar. To begin, then, the author is careful to say that the Martian year consists of 668.6 Martian days of 24 Martian hours each. He further suggests that there be 16 months, each having six seven-day weeks. To dispose of the odd .6 day he proposes that odd-numbered years have 668 days, eve-numbered years have 669 days and decennial years have 670 days. While this would allow two perpetual calendars to keep up with Mars' trips around the sun for some 10,000 years, (if you remember to add a day to each year whose number is divisible by ten,) it seems to me to be unnecessarily complicated. Further division of the year into spring, summer, autumn and winter with the four months of each season numbered I, II, III and IV does not help any, for even though all four months of any one season begin on the same day, the first day is not the same for any two seasons in a two-year period. I maintain that the calendar can be made much simpler than this. In fact, migration to Mars would be an excellent opportunity to break away completely from the haphazard method by which we measure time. Many of our units can well be dumped overboard on the way to Mars and the rest can be considerably simplified. 4 STEFANTASY
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