Stardates

Yes, the ones from Star Trek™.

The science fiction universe of Star Trek™ introduced a calendar system which was simultaneously futuristic (for the time) and arbitrary. Over the decades since its initial use on screen, especially with the growing popularity of the franchise, the “stardate” has been analyzed and explored and refined into a number of different variants, each trying to reconcile the arbitrariness of the on-screen system into something consistent and usable.

This calendar system implementation is an attempt to combine all these variants into a single system, using the format parameter to select which variant to use. It was originally ported in 2018 from code by Aaron Chong (2015 version), under provisions of the MIT License. My thanks for Aaron’s use of the MIT License on the original code, which allowed me to port it cleanly and legally.

Original source: http://rinsanity.weebly.com/files/theme/stardate_public.js

Calendar Name:

stardate

Supported Input Types:

  • string

  • integer

  • arbitrary-precision floating point number of seconds

Supported Format Strings:

  • main - One of the older, more widely-accepted variants. Alternately called the “issue number style” stardate, it’s a combined TOS/TNG variant, and the one used by Google Calendar. It was originally devised by Andrew Main in CE 1994, with revisions made through CE 1997. See http://starchive.cs.umanitoba.ca/?stardates/ for the full explanation of this variant.

  • kennedy - In 2006, Richie Kennedy released another combined variant, this one designed to have a single continuous count, more like the Julian Day Count than Main’s issue number system.

  • pugh90s - Steve Pugh devised 2 separate variants, one of them in the 1990s, and the other later on, both focused on the TNG era. They are unique in that, for negative stardates, the fractional part increases in the opposite direction of the expected one. That is, 15129.999999999 would be followed by 15128.000000000 instead of 15129.999999998. The original version used an unadjusted Gregorian year as the basis for the duration of a given range of stardates, meaning that 0.05 units refer to a larger duration of time during a leap year than it would otherwise.

  • pughfixed - The later of Steve Pugh’s systems noted the discrepancy, and opted to adjust the year length value to the actual average length of a Gregorian year, 365.2425 days. This means 0.05 units are always the same duration, but does mean that the Gregorian year doesn’t generally start at the same point in consecutive stardate ranges.

  • schmidt - A joint effort between Andreas Schmidt and Graham Kennedy, this variant only covers TNG-era stardates, and while it can be used proleptically, it ignores the alternate format used prior to TNG. It is also virtually identical to pugh90s, but the fractional component increases normally for negative stardates.

  • guide-equiv - One of five variants proposed by TrekGuide.com, this is the “out-of-universe equivalent” calculation. It isn’t intended to be accurate for any use other than personal entertainment.

  • guide-tng - The second of the five TrekGuide variants, this one is the current scale listed for TNG-era stardates, and is show-accurate (or at least as close to it as feasible with an entirely arbitrary system). Note, however, that it is only accurate for TNG-era dates.

  • guide-tos - The third variant, then, covers the TOS-era stardates. Again, it is only accurate to the TOS era.

  • guide-oldtng - The fourth variant is no longer displayed on the TrekGuide site, and was actually pulled from a previous version of the stardates page. It covers the TNG era only, and uses slightly different numbers in its calculations than the current approach - specifically, it assumes Earth years cover 1000 stardates.

  • guide-oldtos - Representing the very first set of calculations available in archives of the TrekGuide site, the fifth TrekGuide variant assumes that 1000 stardates are one Earth year in the TOS era, and calculates dates based on that assumption. This variant was replaced within seven months of that first archival, after it was noticed that TOS-era stardates don’t fit a 1000-stardate model.

    Note

    This calendar system is not yet actually implemented.

  • aldrich - A proof of concept originally written in C#, this variant results in dates very close to those produced by Pugh’s and Schmidt’s, but uses a more simplified calculation to do it.

  • red-dragon - A system devised by/for the Red Dragon Inn roleplaying forum site, it uses a fixed ratio of roughly two and three quarters stardates per Earth day. It makes no representations about accuracy outside the context of the site itself.

  • sto-hynes - John Hynes, creator of the Digital Time site, offers a calculation for STO1 stardates which appears to be the most accurate variant for those interested in generating those. The system doesn’t represent itself as accurate outside the game, but is intentionally proleptic.

  • sto-academy - Based on an online calculator provided by the STO Academy game help site, it is only accurate for stardates within the game, and does not offer to calculate dates for the rest of the franchise.

  • sto-tom - Another variant intended only to calculate STO stardates, this one was attributed to Major Tom, and hosted as a Wolfram Alpha widget.

  • sto-anthodev - Another STO variant, hosted on GitHub.

Offsets:

  • Must be provided as a string in the format "stardate variant" or "variant stardate".

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Star Trek™ Online