Fascinating. The heliocentric view made me wonder: how are we going to cope, culturally, with Mars colonists when they are stuck on the other side of the sun for two weeks every two years?<p>The <i>Red Mars</i> books deal with the bonus half hour every night neatly, as a social phenomenon — Martian days are 24.5 hours long — but I don’t recall the solar occlusion coming up.