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STARDATE

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Mark MacIntyre

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Apr 29, 1994, 3:21:30 PM4/29/94
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Hey, can someone tell me how to read stardates? Better yet, can someone
tell me how to converd current dates into stardates - if possible?

Thanks a lot.

Mark MacIntyre
MA_MAC...@fandm.edu


Pam Lilly

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May 5, 1994, 9:11:06 AM5/5/94
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I know that stardates always begin with a 4 (at least on STTNG) and the
second digit is the season - so all stardates this season begin with
47xxx.x. I think the remaining digits are just filler.

Pam

Daniel Lackner

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May 5, 1994, 10:25:49 AM5/5/94
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In article <CpBzA...@austin.ibm.com>, pbl...@vnet.ibm.com (Pam Lilly)
wrote:

I agree that there are many ways to calculate Stardates but does anyone
know how they began? Does the invention of the Warp Drive start the
initial timing sequence, flight to another world, or End of WWIII? I never
have heard a canon response to this question. Does anyone know the CANON
ANSWER? Please, no guesses to the most likely answer.

--
DAN LACKNER
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

'Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Few really ask. On
the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have
already shaped in their own minds - justification, confirmation, forms of
consolation without which they can't go on. To really ask is to open the
door to a whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the
questioner.'
-- Anne Rice

Evan Stein

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May 5, 1994, 3:47:27 PM5/5/94
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There is NO CANON answer to this question. The reason for this is that
no one is ever going to come out on an episode and say,

"Will, the stardate is 47232.1 because ....

OK...

The official Encyclopedia reference is:

Timekeeping system used to provide a standard temporal refernce,
compensating for relativistiv time dilation, warp-speed displacement, and
other peculiarities of interstellar travel.

They then refer you to Appendix D of The chronology, which, if I remember
correctly, it's in westport I'm in cambridge, says that there is no
system that accurately defines both. but that is the place to look....

Evan

--
Evan Stein
email: egs...@husc.harvard.edu
url: http://egstein.student.harvard.edu

Joel Engel

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May 5, 1994, 1:43:52 PM5/5/94
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In article <lacknerd-0...@cemmac21.cem.msu.edu>,

Daniel Lackner <lack...@student.msu.edu> wrote:
>In article <CpBzA...@austin.ibm.com>, pbl...@vnet.ibm.com (Pam Lilly)
>wrote:

> I agree that there are many ways to calculate Stardates but does anyone


>know how they began? Does the invention of the Warp Drive start the
>initial timing sequence, flight to another world, or End of WWIII? I never
>have heard a canon response to this question. Does anyone know the CANON
>ANSWER? Please, no guesses to the most likely answer.


The following is from my "Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man
Behind Star Trek." Page 64: "For the starship captain's log entry
narrations, Roddenberry wanted to devise a futuristic measurement of
time reference. He called (Sam) Peeples (whom Roddenberry had
contacted early on for help in learning about science fiction, a
subject he knew nothing about; it was Peeples who wrote "Where No
Man Has Gone Before," the pilot that sold ST). The two men had a few
drinks while brainstorming, and soon began chuckling over their
imaginative 'stardate' computations. 'We tried to set up a system
that would be unidentified unless you knew how we did it,' Peeples
says.

"They marked off sections on a pictorial depiction of the
known universe and extrapolated how much earth time would elapse when
traveling between given points, taking into account that the
Enterprise's warp engines would be violating Einstein's theory that
nothing could exceed the speed of light. They concluded that the
'time continuum' would therefore vary from place to place, and that
earth time may actually be lost in travel. 'So the stardate on
Earth would be one thing, but the stardate on Alpha Centauri would
be different,' Peeples says. 'We thought this was hilarious,
because everyone would say, "How come this date is before that
date when this show is after that show?" The answer was because
you were in a different sector of the universe.'

--Joel Engel

Brian Barrett

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May 8, 1994, 12:00:44 AM5/8/94
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Evan Stein (egs...@scws3.harvard.edu) wrote:
: There is NO CANON answer to this question. The reason for this is that

: OK...

: Evan

I just typed out the whole section in the chronology on stardates and my
d*mn computer decided to freeze up. Basically, 4 is the first number,
(because it's set in the 24th century), the next digit is the season
number, and the other three progress unevenly from 000 to 999 as the
season progresses. As in the original series, one digit (from 4567 to
4568) is a space of 24 hours (however, that doesn't fit the 365-day
year). Basically, as the chronology says, the stardate system was never
meant to stand up to close scrutiny, and there is no *one* way to convert
present dating techniques into stardates.

--
Brian D. Barrett bbar...@paul.spu.edu

"It's not easy having a good time...even smiling makes my face ache."

-- Frank-n-Furter

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