Does anyone use kiloseconds?

[Docsprock]

Ive been using kiloseconds, (kilosec, ksec), for some time now, but noticed nobody around here seems to ever mention it. With meters per second as the universal game velocity standard, the ksec is understandably useful.

Anyone else use it?

[Kyrt Malthorn]

The problem is not many clocks count in thousands of seconds.  And a thousand seconds is too long to accurately keep track in one's head.  It'd be a fine unit of time (a little over 15 min) but...

 

Like metrics if you live in the U.S.....

 

Makes perfect sense but nobody uses it because it's not what people already use.  Vicious cycle is vicious.  Pardon my redundancy.

[Docsprock]

It is 16 minutes 40 seconds. And yes, I believe it is a fine 'sized' unit of time. The convenience factor could be limited like you say, due to timepieces not having that ability.

But its easy to remember. Its nearly the same number of ksec/hour as liters/gallon.

Maybe I'm the only one here who does.

[cantab]

In KSP, it would be useful if the game displayed it, but it doesn't. The game displays seconds, minutes, hours, and either days or 6-hour "days", and either years or Kerbin "years".

[Superfluous J]

Precisenode encourages it, and boy do I sometimes wish it didn't. I'd much prefer to be able to jump forward x days or y hours instead of 10, 100, or 1000 seconds.

Edited June 17, 2016 by 5thHorseman

[ZooNamedGames]

20 minutes ago, Docsprock said:

It is 16 minutes 40 seconds. And yes, I believe it is a fine 'sized' unit of time. The convenience factor could be limited like you say, due to timepieces not having that ability.

But its easy to remember. Its nearly the same number of ksec/hour as liters/gallon.

Maybe I'm the only one here who does.

To be perfectly honest, it would just be better to create a new time system altogether. I despise our 60 second/hour system with a passion as it makes plotting time and percentages of days impossible. It's a pain to find out how long 5500 minutes is, or what 35% of a day is. I'd prefer to make a system that like metric, uses a base of 10s. It would make more sense than this mess of seconds and nonsense. As to how long each unit of this new measurement would be 1% of a day, and like metric, 0.1% of a day would be the first step down, and 10% would be the first step. As to "day", it would be how long it takes the sun to raise to ~90 degrees overhead (middle of the sky) to the same point again (with the sun dropping from that point, falling beneath the horizon and again raising to that same point). So logically 50 of this unit, would be when the sun is directly underneath you (180 degrees from the starting point). 100, would be a complete "day".

Edited June 17, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[Alshain]

1 hour ago, Kyrt Malthorn said:

Like metrics if you live in the U.S.....

So true, the U.S. just can't seem to get with the program.

(Note: I live in the U.S. so that's not an attack on another country, it's disappointment in my own)

 

But yeah, as said, it's not something commonly used so introducing it would likely cause more confusion than it would solve.  It's not even a standard time frame in countries that use SI.  In the past 10 or so years I've worked in the natural gas industry and had to support an international market in gas measurement.  I never once heard of a country that used units other than milliseconds, seconds, minutes, and hours, and so forth.  If it is used, it must be in very specific industries for very specific reasons.

Edited June 17, 2016 by Alshain

[Kyrt Malthorn]

The problem with percents of a day...  is that days are minutely different spans of time, due to axial tilt, current place in its orbit, tiny changes of that orbit, so on and so forth...  in our current system, leap days keep us on track for days lost on our calender for much the same reason, but there's also the leap minute to keep our strict 24hr day on track with the solar day.

Just saying, whatever length of time we arbitrarily pin on a day, is going to have shortcomings.

 

That's not to say I'd be against it.  I'd rather divide a day into thirds or sixths, though - because the 'norm' is to spend a third of the day asleep, a third at work, and the last third flexible.

24 divides nicely by sixes or by fours or threes or twos.  If you're wanting to find 50 percent of a day, odds are in everyday life you're more interested in half you're waking time.  Which if you're working in percents of a day you end up with fractions/decimals.

So, personally, I like our hours.  I could stand to count in hundredths of hours though (centihours?).

[ZooNamedGames]

23 minutes ago, Kyrt Malthorn said:

The problem with percents of a day...  is that days are minutely different spans of time, due to axial tilt, current place in its orbit, tiny changes of that orbit, so on and so forth...

Well it would be based on the length of a select day, and it won't change. It's more like the value of meter/liter/etc. It doesn't change since again, it's for measurement and mathematics. In fact the sun is irrelevant, it's simply a basis for the measurement. 100 units can not always equal a full day because as you said the length of days changes, since as I said, it's meant to be the basis of a measurement.

[Grenartia]

13 hours ago, Docsprock said:

Ive been using kiloseconds, (kilosec, ksec), for some time now, but noticed nobody around here seems to ever mention it. With meters per second as the universal game velocity standard, the ksec is understandably useful.

Anyone else use it?

I honestly don't see an advantage to kiloseconds. It just doesn't seem like there's that many occasions when it would come in handy.

 

[JoeNapalm]

 

Because I'm more precise than you, I measure everything in picoseconds.

(Okay, it's actually just a normal digital watch with a whole punch of extra zeros put on with a sharpie.)

 

-Jn-

[Cairol]

Kiloseconds is something you don't encounter in "normal" life. So for most people it's hard to imagine what 16 kiloseconds are in units you usually are used to.
Like hours or days. So I see no point in using kiloseconds, when the next bigger unit is minutes, hours, days, ect.
It's also really something special with seconds. It's not like Bytes where "Kilobyte" actually does make sense, because it's commonly used and easily transferable in the next bigger unit,
without bending your head.

Even with meters, megameters and gigameters it's weird for me.
RemoteTech uses mega- and gigameters for it's antenna ranges.
I always need to think hard to imagine what 12 gigameters are in kilometers, as this is the common unit you measure distances in the world and be able to understand what that means.
If you have ridiculously large distances to state, using "300 light seconds" or "5 light minutes" instead would make more sense than "90 gigameters".
Because I have no immediate reference in my head what "90 gigameters" are. But "1 light second" is roughly the distance from earth to moon.
8 light minutes is roughly the distance to the sun. And 100.000 light years is the diameter of our galaxy.
So I have a reference there that I can imagine and relate to immediately.

Edited June 17, 2016 by Cairol

[Kerbart]

14 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

To be perfectly honest, it would just be better to create a new time system altogether. I despise our 60 second/hour system with a passion as it makes plotting time and percentages of days impossible. It's a pain to find out how long 5500 minutes is, or what 35% of a day is. I'd prefer to make a system that like metric, uses a base of 10s. It would make more sense than this mess of seconds and nonsense. As to how long each unit of this new measurement would be 1% of a day, and like metric, 0.1% of a day would be the first step down, and 10% would be the first step. As to "day", it would be how long it takes the sun to raise to ~90 degrees overhead (middle of the sky) to the same point again (with the sun dropping from that point, falling beneath the horizon and again raising to that same point). So logically 50 of this unit, would be when the sun is directly underneath you (180 degrees from the starting point). 100, would be a complete "day".

First of all, spreadsheets (most notoriously Excel, but to the best of my knowledge introduced by Lotus 123) use this system already where time is expressed as a fraction of a day. It surely is a pleasure to calculate with, so you're onto something.

However, you're kinda torpedoing your case by referring to another arbitrary measurement system, that of angles. Ninety degrees? Surely thou art jesting, mylord? If we're sticking to rational units here, that would then be ¼τ radians (or ½π radians for those who have not seen the light yet).

[Superfluous J]

6 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

First of all, spreadsheets (most notoriously Excel, but to the best of my knowledge introduced by Lotus 123) use this system already where time is expressed as a fraction of a day. It surely is a pleasure to calculate with, so you're onto something.

However, you're kinda torpedoing your case by referring to another arbitrary measurement system, that of angles. Ninety degrees? Surely thou art jesting, mylord? If we're sticking to rational units here, that would then be ¼τ radians (or ½π radians for those who have not seen the light yet).

My circles use gigaradians.

[Violent Jeb]

Yeah, kiloseconds aren't common because its not usually important to measure time in that way. Not only that, but our clocks have long adopted the 60second, 60 minute mantra, which means that 3600 seconds to an hour or 3.6 ksecs is just impractical to work with.

For instance, a jet is travelling at 500 m/s. This converts to 500 km/ks. So if I look at a clock, how on kerbin am I supposed to know how far my ship can travel in what space of time? 500 km in like.. 16.67 minutes?

The round clock with 60 minutes makes for real easy fractional estimates (1/2/4/6/10/12), which is somewhat intuitive when you account for radian and degree measurements.

For instance, a jet is travelling at 500 m/s, this converts to 1800 km/h, 900km per half hour, 450 km per quarter hour.

And in this regard, most everybody can imagine the timescale I've referenced.

TL:DR, we would have to re-do all the clocks to talk in ks more often. Its a convention. As a final note just use whatever notation/scale you are comfortable with and get the best results, its your game after all.

 

[T-Bouw]

As the second is the base unit for time, and as I like standardization, I like the thought of this.
Second, kilosecond, megasecond, etc.

Much the same way that I think people should refer to a million euro's: 1 megaeuro.

Though people are a fickle species and will call stuff: the way it sounds more nice to them and/or the more they hear it being said.

Edited June 17, 2016 by T-Bouw

[ZooNamedGames]

50 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

First of all, spreadsheets (most notoriously Excel, but to the best of my knowledge introduced by Lotus 123) use this system already where time is expressed as a fraction of a day. It surely is a pleasure to calculate with, so you're onto something.

However, you're kinda torpedoing your case by referring to another arbitrary measurement system, that of angles. Ninety degrees? Surely thou art jesting, mylord? If we're sticking to rational units here, that would then be ¼τ radians (or ½π radians for those who have not seen the light yet).

The angles for day is solely is basis for the initial conception and a common reference point, sort of like a pneumatic device for memory.

[Red Iron Crown]

16 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Precisenode encourages it, and boy do I sometimes wish it didn't. I'd much prefer to be able to jump forward x days or y hours instead of 10, 100, or 1000 seconds.

This. Being able to see transfer window times in seconds since epoch becomes fairly important when using PreciseNode.

35 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

The angles for day is solely is basis for the initial conception and a common reference point, sort of like a pneumatic device for memory.

Pretty sure you mean "mnemonic", no?

[JoeNapalm]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

 

Pretty sure you mean "mnemonic", no?

Nah, it's a steampunk thing. You wouldn't understand.

 

-Jn-

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Pretty sure you mean "mnemonic", no?

Indeed!

[Superfluous J]

2 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Pretty sure you mean "mnemonic", no?

There has to be some easy way to remember this...

[Docsprock]

I found myself mentally using it for estimating travel times.

e.g. I need to drive this rover 50 km that way and I have to leave for work in 40 minutes. How fast do I need to average to make that happen? Well, if I average 25 m/s, 50 km is 2 ksec, or about 33.5 minutes.

A fast flight from KSC to KSC2 and back is just under 2 ksec.

 

 

So far, it looks like only I actually use it.

[Grenartia]

6 hours ago, Kerbart said:

First of all, spreadsheets (most notoriously Excel, but to the best of my knowledge introduced by Lotus 123) use this system already where time is expressed as a fraction of a day. It surely is a pleasure to calculate with, so you're onto something.

However, you're kinda torpedoing your case by referring to another arbitrary measurement system, that of angles. Ninety degrees? Surely thou art jesting, mylord? If we're sticking to rational units here, that would then be ¼τ radians (or ½π radians for those who have not seen the light yet).

inb4 "How can an irrational unit of measure be rational?"

[Triop]

Nope, Kilometergrams are my thing.

[numerobis]

ks would be pretty useful compared to days/years. Days and years are Kerbin-centered quantities, they're largely irrelevant anywhere else.

I remember trying to argue with someone at work that there's no particular reason to have 24h in a day, we could use a different definition of the hour, minute and second and make everything work out. For some reason he was buying none of it: he could understand changing either the number of minutes in an hour or the number of hours in a day, but not both -- and if you only change one, it doesn't work because now your day isn't a full day (we never even got to talking about seconds). It was really interesting to see the very sharp limit to his imagination.