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The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

theaviationgeekclub.com

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Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#231

Semi-related tangent: During the early 1990's I developed a star chart and ephemeris for the (momentarily) fashionable Windows Mobile platform called "Pocket Stars" that calculated one's geographical position from three or more sextant observations, mainly as backup for offshore sailors should their GPS system fail. For reasons I still can't fathom, a contractor for the Israeli military purchased many copies, apparen…

For reasons I still can't fathom, a contractor for the Israeli military purchased many copies, apparently so their tanks and troops could remain oriented after all other electronic systems failed. Possibly in case of EMP attack?

For an app? Running on an electronic device?

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#232
Off tangent here but I thought I'd mention that yesterday a replica of a traditional Polynesian ocean-going canoe, the Hokulea, sailed into San Francisco, navigated with non-instrument methods including star observations. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/hokulea-polynesi...

The Hokulea's maiden voyage was in 1975 and since then it has made global voyages to demonstrate and preserve ancient Polynesian wayfinding methods.

Here's a video where a local news channel covered an earlier voyage of the Hokulea (2014) and summarized how the ancient sailors would have used the stars as reference points: https://youtu.be/dla3RoQo37M

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#233
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For reasons I still can't fathom, a contractor for the Israeli military purchased many copies, apparently so their tanks and troops could remain oriented after all other electronic systems failed. Possibly in case of EMP attack?

For an app? Running on an electronic device?

If you keep that device off and shielded it should survive the attack. Then you switch it on. Power should come from the tank, plus the internal battery for how long it lasts. If the tank can't power on after that attack it's useless anyway.

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder, however, whether it could track stars from the ground during the day. Might well only have worked at night.

The first paragraph of page 40 says: "Stars are normally tracked before takeoff, both at night and during the day (...)".

Now that's a money quote. The following sentence, which says that "If star tracking has not commenced before takeoff, it should start at an altitude where cloud cover and sky brightness conditions have improved.", leads one to believe that it was possible for the sky to be too bright to track stars from the ground sometimes (since it basically says exactly that), but it now seems clear ground tracking during the day was possible. Maybe it depended on the latitude, time of day, and position of the Sun relative to the stars (low latitude in the middle of the day without sufficiently bright stars far enough away from the Sun = sky too bright, higher latitude early or late in the day with sufficiently bright stars far enough away from the Sun = track from the ground, any other combination = results may vary). Actually, I just saw that the bottom of page 42 describes how to handle situations where the sky was too bright for specific stars.

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#235

Semi-related tangent: During the early 1990's I developed a star chart and ephemeris for the (momentarily) fashionable Windows Mobile platform called "Pocket Stars" that calculated one's geographical position from three or more sextant observations, mainly as backup for offshore sailors should their GPS system fail. For reasons I still can't fathom, a contractor for the Israeli military purchased many copies, apparen…

There was an article from several years ago where the US Coast Guard was teaching US Navy personnel how to do celestial navigation, since this was lost institutional knowledge in the USN but retained in the USCG. The purpose was for navigation in GPS denied areas.

https://slate.com/technology/2015/10/u-s-naval-academy-reins...

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#236
post #101

I'm going to replay this from memory without googling it, just to keep the late 20th century air of some people swapping unverifiable facts in a pub: There was an old friend of my mother's, now deceased, who was a retired engineer. He claimed to be the guy who invented the 2-part tuna can, and was known for handing out end chunks of titanium castings left over from some business he ran. At any rate, he had a couple o…

Star trackers have been around for quite a while, so I'm not surprised! Even the Voyager probes had the ability to orient themselves relative to the Sun, Earth, and the star Canopus.

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#237

Semi-related tangent: During the early 1990's I developed a star chart and ephemeris for the (momentarily) fashionable Windows Mobile platform called "Pocket Stars" that calculated one's geographical position from three or more sextant observations, mainly as backup for offshore sailors should their GPS system fail. For reasons I still can't fathom, a contractor for the Israeli military purchased many copies, apparen…

For reasons I still can't fathom, a contractor for the Israeli military purchased many copies, apparently so their tanks and troops could remain oriented after all other electronic systems failed. Possibly in case of EMP attack?

EMPs are a fantasy. Absolutely and unreservedly a complete fantasy. ZERO have ever been tested, and there’s literally a better use for a nuclear warhead. Not only is it a a completely hypothetical attack, it would look identical to a normal nuclear ICBM attack, and absolutely would result in a traditional retaliatory attack. Why would anyone trade an EMP for all their cities? Literally doesn’t make sense. No one in the nuclear arms control world takes it seriously. It’s a boogeyman for defense contractors and grifters, but I repeat myself.

All that said, GPS denial is a very real thing, and has been repeatedly demonstrated in an operational context. It’s relatively trivial to do. You just need a regular ground based antenna, and not a particular strong transmitter because satellite signals are weak. Just broadcast a different timing signal and voilà! You now tricked someone into thinking they’re 50 miles away from where they really are.

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-overrated-threat-from-e...

https://www.c4isrnet.com/opinion/2022/07/22/why-isnt-russia-...

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#238
post #232

Off tangent here but I thought I'd mention that yesterday a replica of a traditional Polynesian ocean-going canoe, the Hokulea, sailed into San Francisco, navigated with non-instrument methods including star observations. https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/hokulea-polynesi... The Hokulea's maiden voyage was in 1975 and since then it has made global voyages to demonstrate and preserve ancient Polynesian wayfi…

That's incredible. I was just speaking with colleagues about the best conditions for surfing waves. The best waves here in California originate in storms on the opposite side of the Pacific. The waves travel thousands of miles over the course of days without appreciably dissipating.

Re: The SR-71 Blackbird Astro-Nav System worked by tracking the stars

#239
post #101

I'm going to replay this from memory without googling it, just to keep the late 20th century air of some people swapping unverifiable facts in a pub: There was an old friend of my mother's, now deceased, who was a retired engineer. He claimed to be the guy who invented the 2-part tuna can, and was known for handing out end chunks of titanium castings left over from some business he ran. At any rate, he had a couple o…

I interned at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory 20+ years ago. One of the guys was telling me at lunch about his work that day. He had to run some simulations to tell the Navy if their Trident guidance system needed to be sent back for re-manufacturing after a forklift operator dropped it. My understanding is that the handling crate had some kind of integral rough handling detector. (I presume calibrated weights on thin wires, in 3 axes, so you can bracket the peak accelerations by looking at which wires broke and which didn't.)

I was told that once above most of the atmosphere, the MIRV bus guidance unit pops the lens off and takes a snapshot of the stars. The MIRV bus is rotating at that point, so the telescope scans a good section of the sky, but it takes a snapshot at a very specific time and is only interested in a rather small patch of sky. It compares what it sees with a stored copy of what it should see, and uses that to re-calibrate the inertial measurement unit.

The way it was described to me was that one rotation checked the star field, the IMU was re-calibrated, the very next rotation was used to double-check the IMU calibration, and right after that, the MIRV bus started popping off the individual warheads. It seems strange to me that they would use such a short observation window to re-calibrate the IMU, rather than having a long period of continuous re-calibration. It's also highly possible that the guy explaining it to me was giving intentional misinformation to avoid accidentally disclosing TS/SCI to a non-cleared intern.

The nitty-gritty of guidance is fascinating. It's unfortunate that the main use cases for ultra-accurate guidance are in weapons.

There was a pendulous integrating gyroscopic accelerometer from the Apollo IMU sitting in a glass case in the lab... a shame given how few people were allowed into the lab.

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