It had been requested that I explain a little more about metric time as it is used in Homebodies. Here is the system I worked out when I started writing the story. I double checked my math just now-giving me a bit of a headache-and it still seems correct to me. I am sure if it is incorrect, someone will let me know and I can adjust. I welcome such critique, however, if you don't really understand math, time, and how I arrived at these figures, please do not bother writing me. I am probably correct, not you.
In any case, this is the standard system of time the spaceborn utilize-Universal Time-and all their habitats and ships follow it, no matter where they are or what system of timekeeping is used on the planets within a system (each planet where colonists live would necessarily have their own system based on the planet in question's rotation speed and orbit).
I realize there would be relativistic differences in Universal Time when ships are traveling at high speed between circuit points. At the speed the ships travel, however, the difference would be slight, certainly no more than a minute or two per trip, and it would only be a matter of recalibrating the ship's clocks once they arrived at their destination.
And, no, I did not do the math on the relativistic changes of time in my spacecraft. They travel at a maximum velocity of one tenth of a percent of lightspeed. My understanding is that this is not enough to cause any serious issues with time dilation. Anyone who even knows how to do the calculations on this is probably not going to be enjoying my work anyway.
So, without further ado… here it is:
Metric Time:
1 second remains standard base measure of time. A Metric second and a traditional second are the same.
100 metric seconds = 1 metric minute. 100 minutes = 1 metric hour. 10 metric hours = 1 day.
There are 86,400 seconds in a standard Earth day. There are 100,000 seconds in a metric day, making a metric day approximately 3.8 Earth hours longer.
A metric year is 300 days. A metric week is 10 days. A metric cycle is 100 days.
When all is added up, a standard Earth year is 365 days and a standard metric year is 347.2 Earth days.
31,536,000 seconds per Earth year.
30,000,000 seconds per metric year