NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2011 Sep 10, 23:30 -0700
Geoffrey Kolbe,
I agree with everything you said. Simple as that!
I have a question for you specifically. Your "Long-Term Almanac 2000-2050" would be impacted by this change in leap seconds. How would your users be affected? Would you need to publish some sort of addendum?
For celestial navigation, I think the biggest concern is education, both in specific instructions for dealing with any change, specifically preserving the utility of textbooks and navigation manuals already published, and also more generally: do we need a "Don't Panic" sticker on future almanacs? I worry that there is a "Pluto moment" in our future where cynicism and "The Internet Rumor Mill" (also known more succinctly as "The Internet") will generate endless confused accounts claiming that the IAU has ruined celestial navigation --just the way they ruined the "planet" Pluto! ;) The risk here is quite small. But the message can get away from us...
-FER
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