NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Hundreds of millions of GPS receivers
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2009 Dec 18, 22:40 -0800
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2009 Dec 18, 22:40 -0800
Well, the moon and stars are pretty reliable, but what about this thing
called a Nautical Almanac that you need to know their GPs? Or the HO
249 tables. All produced by the same technology that makes GPS
receivers work, so if you feel uncertain about GPS you ought to feel
uncertain about celestial.
Kind of reminds me of a human factors study I read about years ago (wish
I could recall it more clearly). Anyway, some totally automated
technology had been implemented and its human users wouldn't trust it.
But when the implementors deliberately removed a quite simple step
("push here to start" or moving data from one program to another) and
asked a the human operator to do it, suddenly the users confidence in
the system skyrocketed because they suddenly felt "involved".
Bruce Hamilton wrote:
> I even think that a GPS has become an important part of celestial
> navigation. I call it my AP indicator. :-)
>
> Since GPS is a single source, I don't take it's data as true until I
> confirm it through something trustworthy like a celestial shot. I'm
> not sure if this GPS technology is always working, but the moon and
> stars are pretty reliable.
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