20 Conjectural history of stardates (Consequences of the theory)
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This article is from the Stardates in Star Trek FAQ, by Andrew Main zefram@dcs.warwick.ac.uk with numerous contributions by others.
20 Conjectural history of stardates (Consequences of the theory)
Before the Federation was founded, everyone involved in space travel used
their own time system. Terrans used the Gregorian calendar and UTC; Vulcans
used their own calendar. Initially the Federation used the Terran calendar,
just as it used the Terran language and had its headquarters on Earth. This
system proved to be extremely unpopular, especially with the Vulcans, who
liked a calendar to have some logic about it. (Alternating 30-day months with
31 is fine, but sticking a 28 in the middle of that lot is just silly.)
Starfleet bureaucrats quickly devised a compromise system -- which didn't
match anyone's calendar. Midnight on 2162-01-04 (only a few months after the
incorporation of the Federation) was arbitrarily declared to be stardate zero,
and stardates increased at the arbitrary rate of five units per Terran day.
This recognised the importance of Terra to the Federation, but also allowed
anyone to convert stardates to their own calendar by simple mathematical
formulae.
The system having been cobbled together in a rush, the numbers became
unmanageable fairly soon. What would have been stardate 10000 (midnight on
2167-06-27) was made stardate 0000 again. The first group of stardates could
be referred to, when necessary, as zeroth-issue stardates, such as [0]1234,
and the new issue as first-issue stardates, such as [1]1234. This reset to
zero continued to occur every five and a half years, until 2266, when the 19th
issue of stardates started. The Federation now having survived a little over
a century, referral to stardates several issues ago was becoming increasingly
common. That year, Starfleet put together a committee to investigate what
type of stardate system would be more acceptable.
The committee's report, in 2267, recommended that the stardate rate be slowed
to 0.1 units per day. This would make the same number of digits as had been
previously used, and had covered five and a half years, cover two and a half
centuries. It was decided that this system should be field-tested between
stardates [19]7340 and [19]7840 -- 500 units, 5000 days. So from 2270-01-26
to 2283-10-05 this system was used. It proved to be unpopular, because one
always had to specify an extra digit after the decimal point in order to get
the sort of precision one had had with the older stardates. Terrans who had
grown accustomed to the five-per-day rate found it difficult to adjust.
As a result, it was decided in 2280 that at the end of the test period (SD
[19]7840) the new rate should not continue. Instead, a 0.5 units per day rate
would be used, which would solve the main problems of both earlier systems.
Four digits (before the decimal point) would last more than fifty years; it
would rarely be necessary to use extra digits; and the five-per-day rate would
be preserved. (Five of a different digit, but still five.) This system was
used from stardate [19]7840, and was intended to be a permanent change.
With the length of starships' missions continually increasing, it started to
look rather comic for starships to keep in time with the daily cycle of a
planet they would sometimes have no contact with for years at a time. Keeping
to its yearly cycle still had some logic, but keeping to a 24-hour day as well
-- which necessitated the use of leap days -- was just silly. In 2318, over
150 years after the incorporation of the Federation, it was decided that
starships should start to use a rationalised calendar, which would keep the
years the right length but make the day slightly longer.
In keeping with this longer-term view of time, the stardates would be
increased to five digits, and the rate changed to match this new rationalised
year. A rate of 1000 units per mean year would be convenient. This would
make it impossible to instantly work out the time of day from the stardate,
but Terrans tend to prefer the traditional hours, minutes and seconds for
specifying times anyway.
What would have been stardate [20]5006.0 -- midnight on 2323-01-01 -- became
stardate [21]00000. At the same time, all Earth ships switched to the
new-style calendar, and the stardate rate was changed to match it. This
system has remained in use up to the present (SD [21]51000, 2374*01*01).
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