Re:How Apollo Astronauts Didn’t Get Lost Going to the Moon
by ncmncm on Sunday June 16, 2019 @02:50PM
(#20197183)
The article doesn't actually answer the question it poses. Yes, you can find angles to stars and horizons, but how does that help?
What it doesn't say is that measuring the angles between stars and horizons gives you a measure that doesn't depend on which way the spacecraft is pointing. Those angles change in predictable ways as the spacecraft moves. It also doesn't say that what matters is not what what the angles are, and where the spacecraft is, but how they change over the course of a series of readings, telling which direction the spacecraft is going, and how fast.
It really would not have taken more column inches to say what I said, especially if they struck reminding us over and over that the stars' apparent motion is negligible.
What it doesn't say is that measuring the angles between stars and horizons gives you a measure that doesn't depend on which way the spacecraft is pointing. Those angles change in predictable ways as the spacecraft moves. It also doesn't say that what matters is not what what the angles are, and where the spacecraft is, but how they change over the course of a series of readings, telling which direction the spacecraft is going, and how fast.
It really would not have taken more column inches to say what I said, especially if they struck reminding us over and over that the stars' apparent motion is negligible.