Space Measurement

The Federation is composed of many worlds, each with one or more indigenous sophont species. Since each species evolved independently of one another, all use different traditional measurement systems. But because of the widespread interaction and dispersal of knowledge, a standard measurement system had to be devised to eliminate the time-consuming (and often difficult) task of converting units.

Standard Caudometric

The prime candidate for standard measurement was, like many other galactic standards, of Arcairionite origin. The original Arcairion Caudometric system was based on the average tail-length of the Aehr (one caudon, often colloquially shortened to "caud" coincidentally, about one Terran meter, making Caudometric unusually similar to Terran metric. The modern caudon's length remains the same, but is justified as 10¹⁰ times the diameter of a helium atom (called an elex or nanocaudon). The caudon is exponentially increased or decreased by factors of ten, producing a wide and useful range of units to use. Also, thanks to the factors of ten, conversions are fairly easy for most numeric systems and can be done in very little time.

Caudometric Units

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Unit	Abbrev.	Short Name	Terran Equivalent
millicaudon	mk	milli	1 millimeter
centicaudon	ck	cent	1 centimeter
decaudon	dc	deci	1 decimeter
caudon	k	caud	1 meter
dekaudon	dk	deka	1 dekameter
hectaudon	hk	hecta	1 hectometer
kilocaudon	kk	kek	1 kilometer

Interstellar Distances

Space is incomprehensibly huge. Describing interstellar distances in kilocaudons is like describing the circumference of the Earth in centimeters: the effort is exponetially more trouble than it's worth. Even lightcycs become somewhat obsolete when describing, for example, the distance from Earth to Krion. Merely the distance from the Sol system to the Kinnad system is enough for most sophonts to simply shake their head and walk away when they attempt to comprehend it. Cartographers and scientists attempted to make the vastness of spatial distances slightly more bearable by creating a series of distance measurements, based on the old Arcairion FTL measure system, that is somewhat more comprehensible than describing distances in meaningless kilocauds. Interstellar distances are instead measured in units that represent large quantities of kilocaudons (kk) or lightcycs (lc):

Interstellar Distance Units

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Unit	Abbrev.	KK/LC Equivalent
jenc	jc	100,000 kk
kel	kl	1 million kk
herc	hc	100 million kk
exol	xl	1 billion kk
mec	mc	100 billion kk
lightcyc*	lc	6.79278 × 1012 kk
kint	kt	10 lc
warc	wc	100 lc
yarc	yc	1000 lc

*A lightcycle is defined as the distance covered by an unobstructed, nonpulsating beam of coherent light in one standard cycle (approx. 2.068 × 1017 periods of radiation oscillation of the quinpentaprotium atom's ground state).