worthy challenges

[Rob Seaman]

Ed Davies wrote: By "rubber seconds" you, presumably, mean non-SI seconds.  What do you mean by "rubber days"?  I'd guess you mean days which are divided into SI seconds but not necessarily 86 400 of them. Yes.  See for instance: http://www.mail-archive.com/leapsecs@rom.usno.navy.mil/msg00049.html As a parochial note, ones suspects that the "astronomers" are seen by many as reactionaries about leap seconds.  The reality is that we're willing to consider dramatically deeper and broader changes than have been proposed.  The alternative to actually addressing the complete and complex needs of some situation, however, is often to continue to muddle through  in the mean time with an imperfect solution that has been inherited - and not coincidentally, that has been thoroughly tested. How is it possible that the precision timing community is advocating for simply throwing up their hands in disgust and attempting to sweep the whole thing under the rug for 600 years?  A difficult challenge is what engineers live for - the resulting triumph all the greater: "If I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun [...] and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold." Our challenge is to build a system of timekeeping worthy of our children's children. Rob Seaman NOAO