NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
And even more celestial-in-case-GPS-goes-down silliness
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2016 Jul 18, 17:33 +0000
From: Lu Abel
Date: 2016 Jul 18, 17:33 +0000
A group of US Senators has introduces a bill that will require the Navy to "teach all Navy personnel" celestial navigation "in case GPS goes down."
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/287901-sens-back-celestial-navigation-for-all-navy-personnel
Probably more due to
sensationalist journalism than bill contents, but this article does not
specify whether, for example, medical personnel would be required to know
celestial...
I forwarded this to a fellow US Power Squadrons member who is currently studying our top offshore and celestial navigation course. I didn't realize that he was ex-Navy.
His reply was "The
Quartermasters on our ship were required to take sextant sights
annually to show their skills. None ever got it right and no one
cared. Even then the entire ship would have been useless if we did not
have a means such as SatNav (predecessor to GPS) to verify our SINS
(Ship’s Inertial Navigation System). Once rendered invalid, we could
still get home using SINS or at least point in the right direction using
our WWII Sperry gyrocompass (which all ships carried). I am sure that
today’s inertial platforms can go for longer times between verification
than ours could. Somehow
I do not think that sextant coordinates would be of much use to fire a
missile and if we could not fire missiles, we had no purpose
but to go home."
