I’m going to go an record as guessing that a “cycle” is going to be more akin to a day than anything else.
“Cycle”, to me, sounds like completing a repeating process back to its starting point. So in astronomical terms, that would be something like an orbit or a planetary rotation rather than a subdivision of a day. A planetary orbit- a.k.a. a day- or even just a lunar orbit- roughly a month, in our system- seems waaaay too long. What earth-centric (assumption, yes) interstellar organization would take a ship out of regular duty for (essentially) 2.25 years to possibly ressurrect a crewman, even one as exemplay as Isaac seemed to be?
OTOH, if a “cycle” is a day (one of Kaylon’s planetary rotations), unless it’s exceedingly odd, we’re talking less than months or years. 30 days travel A=>B seems pretty distant, regardless of scale.
And of course, since the Kaylons seem to want The Orville riding point on this mission for some reason, even if they have faster ships, they won’t be using them at full speed...on the way back, at least. So that’s 30 days/cycles back into Union territory.
It will be interesting to see why the officers (at least) were kept alive.
