NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: automatic celestial navigation
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2008 Jan 09, 15:56 -0500
From: Robert Eno
Date: 2008 Jan 09, 15:56 -0500
Thanks to Dan for that fascinating piece. Like the sextant, I wonder how far this techonology would have gone had satellite GPS not come on to the scene? Not knowing the technical difficulties of the system, it seems to me, notwithstanding cloud cover, that this would be a far superior system to the current GPS system in terms of anti-spoofing and self-sufficiency. As for Greg's question about using it on a boat, I am confident that it would have been successfully tailored to this purpose. Up here in northern Canada we have a saying when faced with a particularly difficult construction or engineering problem: (with no offence intended to my American friends): "Tell the Yanks that the godless commies are about to invade and they will figure out a way to build it/make it work." Anyone who has ever seen the Distant Early Warning sites that were constructed in Arctic during the 1950's would appreciate just how true this is. I am guessing that the size of the astro tracker would have been signficiantly reduced had its development continued. Robert ----- Original Message ----- From: "Greg R."Date: Wednesday, January 9, 2008 3:10 pm Subject: [NavList 4392] Re: automatic celestial navigation > > Wonder if those ANS units have been declassified and are now available > on the surplus market? Although I think the inertial part of it might > be a little pragmatic on a sailboat... ;-) (Though maybe it actually > *could* actually track the various pitching/rolling/etc. movements?). > > -- > GregR > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to NavList@fer3.com To , send email to NavList-@fer3.com -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---