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> Do you know the story of the manually-oriented rocket burn on the flight of
> Apollo 13? It was depicted in the movie. That spacecraft had a "sextant" which
> was intended to be used in emergency circumstances. This sextant was really
> intended for orienting the spacecraft, not so much for fixing position. In a
> real emergency, it proved to be useless because the vehicle was surrounded by
> a field of artificial stars --little bits of debris from the explosion-- which
> made it impossible to pick out the real stars. Fortunately, in training
> someone had thought of using the Earth for orientation, so that's what they
> did.

I faintly recalled that, but only am aware of the movie version and even
then memory is foggy.  Do you know/recall what and how the sextant was to be
used and what positional information could be extracted?

Thanks

Bill

   

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