3 ms·
Again, relying purely on GPS and inertial sensors is foolhardy. There's 2 hemispheres we could navigate with: land, and stars. I know the old Minutemen missile
by crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Again, relying purely on GPS and inertial sensors is foolhardy.
There's 2 hemispheres we could navigate with: land, and stars. I know the old Minutemen missile controllers used a CCD and massive lens to do dead reckoning for steering. (Yes, a friend has a said minutemen missile controller board).
But we need to get away from this 'lets rely on a tech that can be hacked'.
- JorgeGT 8y agoDidn't know about the Minuteman, but I know that the SR-71 featured an astroinertial navigation system that indeed used the stars for correcting the inertial data: https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics-nas-14v2-astroinertial-navigation-system https://timeandnavigation.si.edu/multimedia-asset/nortronics...
- Kadin 8y agoICBMs and SLBMs use primarily inertial navigation (with a starting position provided from the launch facility); the stellar navigation systems correct it by adding a mid-course position fix. I do not know for sure, but I would be willing to bet, that the missiles are capable of reaching their target with reasonable accuracy in the absence of the mid-course stellar fix, since in a nuclear war with enough exo-atmospheric detonations, it might not be possible to visualize the fixed stars at the right time (and a requirement to do this would be an obvious vulnerability for a missile defense system, e.g. you could hit the missile with a laser from a space platform at the right moment and spoof the stellar nav system).