NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: David Pike
Date: 2014 Dec 24, 15:50 -0800
So who does use Great Circle Calculations apart from University Courses?
Sam has a point. Who does use great circle calculations? As far as I know, because of the constantly changing angles and flight planning restrictions. Most people fly or sail an approximation made up of a series of rhumb lines between meridians. Will computer operated autopilots and air and vessel traffic services (area navigation) allow future machines to follow exact great circles? What about ICBM programmers? I suspect they use something more complicated than a spherical earth. Do GNSS planners use them? Is someone flying grid in Polar Regions with a free running gyro flying a great circle? That’s a bit beyond my brain power at 23.36 LMT on Christmas Eve. Answers Please to Father Christmas, Santa’s Grotto, Reindeerland. Dave
It does seem that no one is really doing this sort of stuff (Great Circle route calculations) anyway.
