After Epoch Astronauticum

The AEA (After Epoch Astronauticum) calendar (also known as the EA or Era Astronauticum calendar) is a simple, non-religious calendar based on a historic event. The event in question is the first (known :>) landing of an inhabitant of the Earth on the surface of another planetary body, namely the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Although you could tell time by the AEA calendar in years months, etc. it is convention to specify AEA dates in seconds, or more specifically Megaseconds (1 Megasecond (Msec) = 1 million seconds) (one of the reasons for this being that the calender was thought of with future space missions and colonies in mind where Earth based time units wouldn't be too usefull), thus if you see an AEA date without a unit on it you can assume it to be in Msec. They are also generally specified to three digits after the decimal point like so: 970.392 this gives you not only the date but the time of day as well. As odd as that may sound these dates are actually suprisingly conveniant to use. The trick being that each digit in the date represents a reasonabally useful period of time. (see approximations below.)

Note that times before the AEA epoch are denoted as negative numbers. (for example the start of the Christian (common Era) calender (1 A.D.) is -62168.500 AEA)

Another thing to note is that for various technical reasons (ease of converting to Common Era calendar, as well as inaccuracy of records concerning Apollo 11, and indecision regarding which event in the mission is "the" date (Eagle touchdown or Armstrong disembarking 6-3/4 hrs later)) the Epoch for the AEA calendar is actually defined as Midnight (00:00:00), Greenwich Mean Time on New Years day of the first Common Era year following the moon landing. thus 0.000 AEA is 00:00:00 GMT, Jan 1970 rather than some time between 12:15:00 and 19:00:00 GMT, Jul 20 1969

Approximations

AEA date/times are measured in megaseconds, and can be broken into conveniant parts fairly easily thusly:

970.398 Msec AEA
^^^ ^^^
||| |||_________ Time of "day"
||| |___________ Day of "week" 
|||_____________ Week of "year"
||______________  "Year"

here are the conversions (FYI: Megasecond (Msec) = 1 Million sec, Kilosecond (ksec) = 1000 sec = 0.001 Msec, and the symbol ~= is short for "Approximately equals")

Timeline:

2911 AEA: Next approach of Halley's Comet. (2061 A.D.)
970.403 AEA: I finished this page :> (yes it took 16 Ksec!! <grumble>I hate tables</grumble> )
946.700 AEA: Jan 1 2000 C.E. y2k bug gets drunk at party, fails to show.
513 AEA: Most recent approach of Halley's Comet. (1986 A.D.)
0.000 AEA: Jan 1970, 00:00:00 GMT (Epoch)
-13.845 AEA: Apollo 11 splashdown
-14.156 AEA: N. Armstrong exits LEM, makes "One small step..." speach, steps onto lunar surface
-14.183 AEA: Apollo 11 LEM "Eagle" lands on moon.
-62168.500 AEA: 1 A.D. (aka 1 C.E.) start of common era calendar.

Who uses it?


This Page created on 970.387Msec AEA, last updated on 970.387Msec AEA

Created By: The Dragon De Monsyne -ddm