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I wonder if the increasing number of computers in orbit will mean even more strange relativistic timekeeping stuff will become a concern for normal developers - will we have to add leap seconds to individual machines?

Back of the envelope says ~100 years in low earth orbit will cause a difference of 1 second



Most of those probably don't/won't have clocks that are accurate enough to measure 1 second every hundred years; typical quartz oscillators drift about one second every few weeks.


For GPS at least it is accounted for 38 microseconds per day, they have atomic clocks accurate to like 0.4 milliseconds over 100 years. The frequencies they measure at are different from earth and are constantly synchronised.




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