NavList:

No I agree, not the definitive paper at all: now that there is much more information available as well as the Haines/Allen paper of 1968.

This for example:

NAVIGATOR PERFORMANCE STUDIES FOR SPACE NAVIGATION
USING THE NASA CV-990 RESEARCH AIRCRAFT
By Richard A. Acken and Donald W. Smith
Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, Calif.
April 1968

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19680011654_1968011654.pdf

It seems NASA sent their astronauts up in an aeroplane to test them using the Space sextant to evaluate performance (just like Gary LaPook did recently):

The relevant section reads:

---------
COPY:
Manually operated hand-held sextants are being studied a t Ames Research
Center to determine whether they are sufficiently accurate for midcourse
navigation phases of manned space f l i g h t . Studies carried out on the ground have been extended by using the NASA CV-990 aircraft to provide sighting conditions closely simulating those in spacecraft and to investigate further the
measurement error due to lunar irradiance.
The results of approximately 1200 measurements made during nine flights confirm results of simulator and groundbased studies which indicate that, with a hand-held sextant, an astronaut can be expected to make navigational measurements with errors having a standard deviation of approximately +/- 10 arc seconds.
A value for moon irradiance effect of approximately 25 arc seconds was established for the conditions of the experiment using a hand-held sextant.
ENDS.
-------------

Douglas Denny.
Chichester. England.
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