star date conversion

[b]

I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the house
because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In layman's
terms can someone please explain how to convert a common date to a star
date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and this date 50893.5
converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to explain this step by
step please

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the house
because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In layman's
terms can someone please explain how to convert a common date to a star
date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and this date 50893.5
converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to explain this step by
step please

It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.

The easy way to do it is to just use a stardate calculator :

http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php

Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

[Chris Basken]

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the house
because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In layman's
terms can someone please explain how to convert a common date to a
star date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and this date
50893.5 converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to explain
this step by step please

It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Doesn't work for TOS-era dates, of course.

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by Chris Basken

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the
house because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In
layman's terms can someone please explain how to convert a common
date to a star date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and
this date 50893.5 converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to
explain this step by step please

It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Doesn't work for TOS-era dates, of course.

Of course. Nothing does.

[Chris Basken]

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Chris Basken

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the
house because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In
layman's terms can someone please explain how to convert a common
date to a star date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and
this date 50893.5 converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to
explain this step by step please

It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Doesn't work for TOS-era dates, of course.

Of course. Nothing does.

Not without assuming they "recalibrated" them, much like the warp scale.

Cool, my 400th birthday will be stardate 46862.7, right about the time
of "Rightful Heir".

[Russell Stewart]

Post by Chris Basken
Doesn't work for TOS-era dates, of course.

Oh. Ignore my previous post, then. Sorry.

[Chris Basken]

Post by Graham Kennedy
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Something's wrong with this calculator. Put in a date, copy the
resulting stardate to the top calculator. You'll get a slightly
different result.

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by Chris Basken

Post by Graham Kennedy
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Something's wrong with this calculator. Put in a date, copy the
resulting stardate to the top calculator. You'll get a slightly
different result.

It's a rounding error in the script that calculates the
date - it tends to come out 1 second off the "real" value.

[Russell Stewart]

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Except it's completely wrong.

If you give it Stardate 1513.1 (the date of "The Man Trap"), it
converts that to 7/7/2324 -- the year Beverly Crusher is born,
according to the timeline at another part of that site. That
same timeline gives the events of "The Man Trap" as sometime
around 2264.

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by Russell Stewart

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Except it's completely wrong.
If you give it Stardate 1513.1 (the date of "The Man Trap"), it
converts that to 7/7/2324 -- the year Beverly Crusher is born,
according to the timeline at another part of that site. That
same timeline gives the events of "The Man Trap" as sometime
around 2264.

The calculator uses the TNG system, not the TOS one.
Indeed, there IS no workable system for TOS, not
unless you make it incredibly convoluted.

[Joseph Nebus]

Post by Graham Kennedy
The calculator uses the TNG system, not the TOS one.
Indeed, there IS no workable system for TOS, not
unless you make it incredibly convoluted.

Missed `Enterprise' opportunities number 2,038 in the series:
Stardate One, and the head of the committee that invents the system
speaking proudly about how ``star dates are the most precise, most
accurate, most objective and most logical time-keeping system *ever*
developed by three dozen worlds with thousands of years of recorded
history among them. From this day forward the questions of `when is
it?' and `when did something happen?' and `when will something happen?'
will have clear, precise, unambiguous and unmistakable *answers*.''

[Ron Hubbard]

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the house
because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In layman's
terms can someone please explain how to convert a common date to a star
date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and this date 50893.5
converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to explain this step by
step please

It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Ron

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Why not?

If you mean it doesn't cover TOS stardates, then the reason
is simple - there is no consistent system used for the dates
in TOS. They're just mostly random made up numbers.

The 2323 limit is imposed because this equates to Stardate 0
on the TNG scale, and we have no information about what would
happen before that.

[Ron Hubbard]

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Why not?
If you mean it doesn't cover TOS stardates, then the reason
is simple - there is no consistent system used for the dates
in TOS. They're just mostly random made up numbers.
The 2323 limit is imposed because this equates to Stardate 0
on the TNG scale, and we have no information about what would
happen before that.

Well, for *that* purpose, yeah; but for something more pragmatic like
day to day usage, no. Back in the day before the numbers rolled over, I
used the fake stardate system 9904.18 (April 4, 1999) for my journals,
but somehow 0504.18 doesn't seem quite right. So if the calculator
worked for 21st century dates I would be happy.

Ron

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Why not?
If you mean it doesn't cover TOS stardates, then the reason
is simple - there is no consistent system used for the dates
in TOS. They're just mostly random made up numbers.
The 2323 limit is imposed because this equates to Stardate 0
on the TNG scale, and we have no information about what would
happen before that.

Well, for *that* purpose, yeah; but for something more pragmatic like
day to day usage, no. Back in the day before the numbers rolled over, I
used the fake stardate system 9904.18 (April 4, 1999) for my journals,
but somehow 0504.18 doesn't seem quite right. So if the calculator
worked for 21st century dates I would be happy.

Unfortunately there's no way to do any more than wildly
guess what stardates would be in the present day.

[CaptJosh]

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Why not?
If you mean it doesn't cover TOS stardates, then the reason
is simple - there is no consistent system used for the dates
in TOS. They're just mostly random made up numbers.
The 2323 limit is imposed because this equates to Stardate 0
on the TNG scale, and we have no information about what would
happen before that.

Well, for *that* purpose, yeah; but for something more pragmatic like
day to day usage, no. Back in the day before the numbers rolled over, I
used the fake stardate system 9904.18 (April 4, 1999) for my journals,
but somehow 0504.18 doesn't seem quite right. So if the calculator
worked for 21st century dates I would be happy.

Unfortunately there's no way to do any more than wildly
guess what stardates would be in the present day.

Not necessarily. There's an interesting formula floating about that I've
run into and like. You take the millenium you're in, 2 for us, century
of said millenium, in our case the 1st, and then the year of that
century, 05. then you take the number of days in the year that have
passed including the current day and divide by 999.9, rounding to the
nearest tenth. So for today, April 20th, 2005, you get a long form of
210500.1, or 10500.1 to use the shorter form, as we know which milleniem
we're in.

A nice neat stardate formula, that even gets us startdates in the 40000
range assuming at that point they're still using short form. The only
possible issue, if you want to make something of it, is that IIRC,
Voyager had stardates into the 50000s toward the end of the series.

--------
CaptJosh

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by CaptJosh

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Why not?
If you mean it doesn't cover TOS stardates, then the reason
is simple - there is no consistent system used for the dates
in TOS. They're just mostly random made up numbers.
The 2323 limit is imposed because this equates to Stardate 0
on the TNG scale, and we have no information about what would
happen before that.

Well, for *that* purpose, yeah; but for something more pragmatic like
day to day usage, no. Back in the day before the numbers rolled over, I
used the fake stardate system 9904.18 (April 4, 1999) for my journals,
but somehow 0504.18 doesn't seem quite right. So if the calculator
worked for 21st century dates I would be happy.

Unfortunately there's no way to do any more than wildly
guess what stardates would be in the present day.

Not necessarily. There's an interesting formula floating about that I've
run into and like. You take the millenium you're in, 2 for us, century
of said millenium, in our case the 1st, and then the year of that
century, 05. then you take the number of days in the year that have
passed including the current day and divide by 999.9, rounding to the
nearest tenth. So for today, April 20th, 2005, you get a long form of
210500.1, or 10500.1 to use the shorter form, as we know which milleniem
we're in.

Which is all very nice, but people just made it up. It has
absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek except that it uses
the same "Stardate" name.

Post by CaptJosh
A nice neat stardate formula, that even gets us startdates in the 40000
range assuming at that point they're still using short form. The only
possible issue, if you want to make something of it, is that IIRC,
Voyager had stardates into the 50000s toward the end of the series.

Exactly.

[CaptJosh]

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by CaptJosh

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Why not?
If you mean it doesn't cover TOS stardates, then the reason
is simple - there is no consistent system used for the dates
in TOS. They're just mostly random made up numbers.
The 2323 limit is imposed because this equates to Stardate 0
on the TNG scale, and we have no information about what would
happen before that.

Well, for *that* purpose, yeah; but for something more pragmatic like
day to day usage, no. Back in the day before the numbers rolled over, I
used the fake stardate system 9904.18 (April 4, 1999) for my journals,
but somehow 0504.18 doesn't seem quite right. So if the calculator
worked for 21st century dates I would be happy.

Unfortunately there's no way to do any more than wildly
guess what stardates would be in the present day.

Not necessarily. There's an interesting formula floating about that
I've run into and like. You take the millenium you're in, 2 for us,
century of said millenium, in our case the 1st, and then the year of
that century, 05. then you take the number of days in the year that
have passed including the current day and divide by 999.9, rounding to
the nearest tenth. So for today, April 20th, 2005, you get a long form
of 210500.1, or 10500.1 to use the shorter form, as we know which
milleniem we're in.

Which is all very nice, but people just made it up. It has
absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek except that it uses
the same "Stardate" name.

Post by CaptJosh
A nice neat stardate formula, that even gets us startdates in the
40000 range assuming at that point they're still using short form. The
only possible issue, if you want to make something of it, is that
IIRC, Voyager had stardates into the 50000s toward the end of the series.

Exactly.

You nitpick too damn buch. It's a coherent system that has a mathmatical
basis rather than being arbitrary. Be glad it exists at all and quit
bitching that it doesn't perfectly match up with Star Trek "canon".
Canon is what you make of it.

--------
CaptJosh

There are only 10 kinds of people in the world;
those who understand binary and those who don't.

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by CaptJosh

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by CaptJosh

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy

Post by Ron Hubbard

Post by Graham Kennedy
It's 1000 dates per year, so each single date is roughly
8.7 hours.
http://www.ditl.org/hedstardatecalc.php
Will turn any stardate up to 97677000 into a real one, or
any real date from 2323 up to 99,999 AD into a stardate.

Not much good is it?

Why not?
If you mean it doesn't cover TOS stardates, then the reason
is simple - there is no consistent system used for the dates
in TOS. They're just mostly random made up numbers.
The 2323 limit is imposed because this equates to Stardate 0
on the TNG scale, and we have no information about what would
happen before that.

Well, for *that* purpose, yeah; but for something more pragmatic like
day to day usage, no. Back in the day before the numbers rolled over, I
used the fake stardate system 9904.18 (April 4, 1999) for my journals,
but somehow 0504.18 doesn't seem quite right. So if the calculator
worked for 21st century dates I would be happy.

Unfortunately there's no way to do any more than wildly
guess what stardates would be in the present day.

Not necessarily. There's an interesting formula floating about that
I've run into and like. You take the millenium you're in, 2 for us,
century of said millenium, in our case the 1st, and then the year of
that century, 05. then you take the number of days in the year that
have passed including the current day and divide by 999.9, rounding
to the nearest tenth. So for today, April 20th, 2005, you get a long
form of 210500.1, or 10500.1 to use the shorter form, as we know
which milleniem we're in.

Which is all very nice, but people just made it up. It has
absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek except that it uses
the same "Stardate" name.

Post by CaptJosh
A nice neat stardate formula, that even gets us startdates in the
40000 range assuming at that point they're still using short form.
The only possible issue, if you want to make something of it, is that
IIRC, Voyager had stardates into the 50000s toward the end of the series.

Exactly.

You nitpick too damn buch.

I think otherwise.

Post by CaptJosh
It's a coherent system that has a mathmatical
basis rather than being arbitrary. Be glad it exists at all and quit
bitching that it doesn't perfectly match up with Star Trek "canon".
Canon is what you make of it.

Whether it happens to make sense to you or me or not is
beside the point. It's still just something some fan thought
up for his or her amusement, no different from any other piece
of fan fiction.

By all means use it if you want to, but nobody else is obliged
to and we certainly don't get to arbitrarily include it as the
official or canonical explanation of how Stardates work just
because we feel like it.

[Bob Flaminio]

Post by Graham Kennedy
Which is all very nice, but people just made it up. It has
absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek except that it uses
the same "Stardate" name.

What if you took all of the stardates from TOS and TNG, graphed them,
and then fit a curve to the points? From there, I would think you could
pick out a Trek-relevant stardate for most any date. It might not be
pretty, tho'...

[Graham Kennedy]

Post by Bob Flaminio

Post by Graham Kennedy
Which is all very nice, but people just made it up. It has
absolutely nothing to do with Star Trek except that it uses
the same "Stardate" name.

What if you took all of the stardates from TOS and TNG, graphed them,

I did exactly that for TOS...

http://www.ditl.org/hedarticle.php?3

Post by Bob Flaminio
and then fit a curve to the points? From there, I would think you could
pick out a Trek-relevant stardate for most any date. It might not be
pretty, tho'...

Thing is you don't really have anything to graph the
Stardate against. We don't know real world dates for
the episodes, we don't know how far apart they are set
except that they average two weeks - and even that's
a bit of an assumption.

I graphed stardate against episode number to get what
you see here.

[Joseph Nebus]

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the house
because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In layman's
terms can someone please explain how to convert a common date to a star
date?

You can't. There's just no way to do it that fits at all any
reasonable scheme. The star dates are made up to just roughly increase
at a more or less uniform rate between adventures, ideally; the original
show didn't eve live up to that.

Post by b
This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and this date 50893.5
converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to explain this step by
step please

Doesn't work. The only 'stardate' scheme that sort of works is
a 'marketing stardate', whereby you turn, say, 'December 7, 1979' into
'Stardate 7912.7', by making the first two digits the last two of the
year, the second two digits the month, and everything past the radix
point the day. I don't know what the modern kids do now that we've got
'marketing stardates' that begin with zeroes; maybe it's '10502.7' now.

[James Allan Kynes]

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the house
because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In layman's
terms can someone please explain how to convert a common date to a star
date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and this date 50893.5
converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to explain this step by
step please

There's a bit of software kicking about, I think it's called "Stardate
Calculator" (v5.1)

It does a pretty good job of getting dates roughly right. It's not bad at
TOS dates too...

[Timo S Saloniemi]

Post by b
I remember when I was young my mother nearly threw me out of the house
because my math skills were horrific and they still are. In layman's
terms can someone please explain how to convert a common date to a star
date? This date 49027.5 converts to 2372*01*11 and this date 50893.5
converts to 2373*11*23. What is the easiest way to explain this step by
step please

Basically, the first two digits of a TNG-era stardate indicate the year.
"00" would be 2323 AD, for some mysterious reason; "49" thus is 2372 AD.

The last three digits before the decimal point indicate the fraction of
the year: 000 would be at the beginning, 999 at the end of the year.
However, we don't know for sure whether the year begins in January,
Earth time - or even if the year is an Earth year exactly. Some
timepoints suggest that the year begins when a Paramount season begins,
while others indicate that it indeed is midwinter on Earth when the
high 900s roll. The conversions you state are apparently derived by
assuming that the year indeed begins on January 1st.

The number after the decimal point is pretty much random. There's no
good correlation to it matching the fraction of the day, or anything
like that.

The four-digit TOS and TOS movie stardates do not follow any consistent
pattern, except for *generally* being bigger at a later date. However,
one may create partial models to explain some aspects of that particular
mess - a FAQ on the subject is posted here every now and then.

Timo Saloniemi