my guess would have been that you follow Jerusalem time, period, unless days are the same length.
The problem with Mars is that the Mars days are almost 24 hours long. According to this table I have here[1], the Mars rotation (i.e. day) is 24 hours, 37 minutes and 23 seconds. So even if you happen to land at a lattitude which would sync up fairly well with Jerusalem time (as far as sun rise/set goes), you'd drift. Given the effects of sunlight on humans, I'd expect that Mars colonists would try to sync their schedules with the sun... and I believe that studies have shown that when people are removed from light and other time-cues, they tend to longer days, rather than shorter ones... so it's at least theoretically possible, from a biological standpoint, for people to adjust to 24.5 hour days.
If the colonists do standardize on the martian day for their day-to-day activities, I think that Jews would pretty much have to keep the time-based mitzvot keep in sync. Adding half an hour to a fast, or Shabbat, isn't a big deal... but starting a fast at 1am (and ending it at 2am the next day) would be. Especially if that didn't happen all the time...
In a way, places like Earth's moon would be easier, since the natural light/dark patterns are so far off from what people can handle -- in those cases, I would expect people to keep 24 hour days.
[1] Reprinted from "The Solar System," Carl Sagan, Scientific American, 9/1975)
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Date: 2004-09-08 10:35 am (UTC)The problem with Mars is that the Mars days are almost 24 hours long. According to this table I have here[1], the Mars rotation (i.e. day) is 24 hours, 37 minutes and 23 seconds. So even if you happen to land at a lattitude which would sync up fairly well with Jerusalem time (as far as sun rise/set goes), you'd drift. Given the effects of sunlight on humans, I'd expect that Mars colonists would try to sync their schedules with the sun... and I believe that studies have shown that when people are removed from light and other time-cues, they tend to longer days, rather than shorter ones... so it's at least theoretically possible, from a biological standpoint, for people to adjust to 24.5 hour days.
If the colonists do standardize on the martian day for their day-to-day activities, I think that Jews would pretty much have to keep the time-based mitzvot keep in sync. Adding half an hour to a fast, or Shabbat, isn't a big deal... but starting a fast at 1am (and ending it at 2am the next day) would be. Especially if that didn't happen all the time...
In a way, places like Earth's moon would be easier, since the natural light/dark patterns are so far off from what people can handle -- in those cases, I would expect people to keep 24 hour days.
[1] Reprinted from "The Solar System," Carl Sagan, Scientific American, 9/1975)