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Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

navytimes.com

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Re: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

#2
Three hours of training? Either celestial navigation is much easier than i think it is or this is exactly the sort of compromise mothers should warn their children about. I'd rather sail into a GPS outage with a one in ten chance of having a navigator trained 30 hours on board than with a 100% chance of having one trained three. And it gets better when you consider crews larger than one. Sure, we all know that decision making isn't easy, but that should not be an excuse to get away with a compromise like that.

Re: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

#4
post #2

Three hours of training? Either celestial navigation is much easier than i think it is or this is exactly the sort of compromise mothers should warn their children about. I'd rather sail into a GPS outage with a one in ten chance of having a navigator trained 30 hours on board than with a 100% chance of having one trained three. And it gets better when you consider crews larger than one. Sure, we all know that decisi…

the problem persists because like any skill use it or lose it

Re: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

#5
Even if you don't encounter an enemy attack that disables GPS (which is not difficult), you (meaning anyone concerned with national security) should still be prepared for navigation by alternate methods when you consider how often equipment malfunctions can cause self-jamming of GPS. It's happened to me on systems that I support.

Re: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

#6
post #2

Three hours of training? Either celestial navigation is much easier than i think it is or this is exactly the sort of compromise mothers should warn their children about. I'd rather sail into a GPS outage with a one in ten chance of having a navigator trained 30 hours on board than with a 100% chance of having one trained three. And it gets better when you consider crews larger than one. Sure, we all know that decisi…

Celestial navigation is way easier than you think it is. We have accurate clocks now, and you can just take the measurements and feed it into the computer.

Re: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

#7
post #2

Three hours of training? Either celestial navigation is much easier than i think it is or this is exactly the sort of compromise mothers should warn their children about. I'd rather sail into a GPS outage with a one in ten chance of having a navigator trained 30 hours on board than with a 100% chance of having one trained three. And it gets better when you consider crews larger than one. Sure, we all know that decisi…

Celestial navigation is way easier than you think it is. We have accurate clocks now, and you can just take the measurements and feed it into the computer.

The point of this training today, I would expect, is that computers might not always be there.

Re: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

#8
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Celestial navigation is way easier than you think it is. We have accurate clocks now, and you can just take the measurements and feed it into the computer.

The point of this training today, I would expect, is that computers might not always be there.

We might have computers, but GPS signals can be spoofed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoofing_attack#GPS_Spoofing

Re: Naval Academy reinstates celestial navigation

#10
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Celestial navigation is way easier than you think it is. We have accurate clocks now, and you can just take the measurements and feed it into the computer.

The point of this training today, I would expect, is that computers might not always be there.

If the people on a modern naval ship don't have access to some kind of basic computer, then they have bigger problems than navigation.
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