NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Cel nav in space
From: Bill B
Date: 2005 Jan 4, 15:30 -0500
From: Bill B
Date: 2005 Jan 4, 15:30 -0500
> Of course, there's nothing much to this navigation really. It's more or less > "point and shoot". ;-> Easy for you to say. Hockey great, Wayne Gretzky said something to the effect of, "It's not so important to know where the puck is, but rather knowing where the puck will be." If I take out my magic rifle with a constant projectile speed of 1000 ft/sec, put the perceived Moon in my crosshairs (and adjust for refraction and the fact that it takes over a second for light from the Moon to reach my eye, and make a few other corrections supplied by a physics friend) and fire; by the time (13+ days) my projectile reaches where the moon was it will be long gone. So the trick is do time/distance calculations and fire 13+ days at the spot I calculate the Moon will be when my projectile reaches that spot. Point and shoot at a star 100 light years away? That has to be the great circle route.Where I perceive it to be is where it was 100 light years ago. So I need to determine where it is now and where it will be in the time it takes the projectile to bridge the gap. At least at the 100-light-year distance it should be swirling around in the galactic center of the Milky Way, a break as I see it. It seems more complex if the craft is traveling to another galaxy also orbiting its galactic center. All I know for sure is that I'm calling shotgun now--you drive ;-) Bill