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Perhaps I am too paranoid, but I've been told to avoid doing any DIY in this field of study. Apparently, or so I'm told, out of the many, many ways to end up o
by areoform 2y ago
Perhaps I am too paranoid, but I've been told to avoid doing any DIY in this field of study.
Apparently, or so I'm told, out of the many, many ways to end up on a list — building a working celestial navigation system can lead to some very inconvenient outcomes. Second, only to ordering large quantities of certain chemicals online.
Is this true?
———
EDIT - from the paper, this is incorrect,
> The introduction of GPS caused the interest in celestial navigation to wither due to its relative inaccuracy. Consequently, celestial navigation is primarily seen only in space-based systems, whose orientation must be known to high levels of precision. Nonetheless, celestial navigation was identified as a desirable alternative to GPS [2], primarily due its robustness against potential jamming. Critically, few GPS-denied alternatives exist that are capable of using passive sensors to estimate global position at night or over the ocean. For this reason, celestial navigation remains an important topic of research.
The US and other militaries never stopped using these systems. They just stopped talking about them as much. Here's a literature search showing some of the slow & steady research on the topic,
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=astro-inertial+navigation&hl=en&as_sdt=7,39&as_ylo=2000&as_yhi=2015 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=astro-inertial+navigati...
Example systems that have been deployed in many (most? all???) American combat aircraft,
https://theaviationist.com/2021/09/10/lets-have-another-look-at-the-b-2s-air-data-ports-and-astroinertial-navigation-system/ https://theaviationist.com/2021/09/10/lets-have-another-look...
https://www.gpsworld.com/honeywell-demonstrates-military-grade-alternative-navigation-tech/ https://www.gpsworld.com/honeywell-demonstrates-military-gra...
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/290940 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/290940
Alright. I'm ready to be on that list, Mr NSA agent.
- wolfram74 2y agoI've also been told learning too much about linux or the nuclear reactions in power plants or bombs puts you on a list. I just assume I'm on several.
- munchler 2y agoLearning too much about Linux puts you on a list? That can't be a thing. Isn't Linux itself entirely a civilian project?
- wolfram74 2y agoThe rationale mentioned was it was under the subheading of people interested in strong encryption, people who care about being unobservable might have something to hide. Maybe it's a good list? People who you might want to ramp up a new Bletchley Park? Probably not.
- Theodores 2y agoWhatever you do, don't broadcast on the airwaves, as in pirate radio. That really does put you on the list. I don't believe they have the people to monitor those that know 'how to use grep' and put them on a list. It stands to no reason, government civil servants are rarely from the top drawer.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- pvg 2y agoYou're definitely on the list of people worried about being on lists now.
- areoform 2y agoBut that's the bestest list!
- RandomBacon 2y agoThe only people not on any lists, are boring people.
- biofox 2y agoYou will likely raise a flag somewhere if you publicise what you are doing, but I highly doubt there would be any issues if you're working on this in private as a hobby. As for chemicals, I can personally vouch that it is a terrible idea to order reagents (or even chemistry equipment) as an individual. I tried to teach myself organic synthesis in the summer before starting my doctoral studies, and ended up with MIB searching my house. Certainly on a list now :(
- the__alchemist 2y agoLLC or nonprofit, with a business address. At least for bio reagants, they won't ship to you otherwise.
- 7thpower 2y agoPlease tell me there is a blog post or something documenting this experience. Sounds like a fun read.
- biofox 2y agoAfraid not. I don't have much of an online presence, so didn't think to write anything.
- amarcheschi 2y agothere's always a first time :)
- mavamaarten 2y agoI remember watching a video about a dude who was building a mothership-launched glide drone that could land using camera vision. The idea was something like "the highest egg drop" or something like that. He was speaking with academics about his idea, who quickly told him to stop whatever he was doing because that would effectively be a forbidden military device. Guided artillery, basically. Sadly I don't remember who it was, it was a fun story. I thought it was maybe Mark Rober or Joe Barnard but I really can't find it anymore. Edit: found it! It was launched from a weather balloon, and it was both Mark and Joe. https://youtu.be/BYVZh5kqaFg https://youtu.be/BYVZh5kqaFg
- myself248 2y agoYears ago, an acquaintance developed an autonomous flight controller for "real" helicopters. Cyclic-collective-tailrotor types. It would work on a full-size cargo helo just as well as an R/C model. He released it online, because why not? Drones are cool. Some very nice gentlemen showed up and explained that he couldn't do that. He didn't get in any actual trouble that I'm aware of, but they "asked" him to take down the published code, and definitely not fix any of the bugs it had. So, yeah, you're not wrong. There are nuances to the rules, involving things that're openly published online, but I don't understand it in the least. A hacker's guide to ITAR would be an interesting document indeed.
- notahacker 2y ago> A hacker's guide to ITAR would be an interesting document indeed. I suspect producing something called "a hacker's guide to ITAR" really would get you put on a list...
- fullspectrumdev 2y agoKnowing how stupid ITAR enforcement is, the guide would probably fall under ITAR :)
- hnuser123456 2y agoI'm sure there are thousands of datasets of the night sky, and a camera, gyrometer (to get camera angles), clock, and basic image recognition/pattern matching is all you'd need.
- notahacker 2y agoyeah. Celestial navigation is a pretty standard thing to study if you're planning on taking up sailing or learning about satellite positioning. Celestial navigation with drones raises more interesting possibilities, but I don't think defence of key strategic assets against drones relies on the possibility it might be too difficult a problem to solve, and there are commercial solutions in the "drone navigation for GNSS denied environments" space. Don't even think the people that jailbreak consumer drones specifically to remove the geofences that prevent them flying near restricted areas get into trouble, at least not until someone spots them flying at the end of a runway or outside a military base.
- avs733 2y agoCan't find a source at the moment but cool side anecdote to this...working from memory Honeywell was largely the driving force behind developing terrain avoidance systems for commercial aircraft. Those initial systems worked based on comparing the terrain below to the flight profile of an aircraft using a radar altimeter. There was a CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) accident (I want to say AA in Peru?) where the mountains basically got to tall to fast to give the crew sufficient time to react because of that system. That caused Honeyweell to go back and look at ways to improve the system to be predictive rather than reactive - using a terrain database. Honeywell bought/came into posession of a russian world wide terrain altitude database to do the first generation of this. I can only imagine the US had the same thing, or more accurate, but this was far enough ago that US Government wasn't sharing.
- areoform 2y agoYou're right! I actually know about the system you're talking about! The US data was classified and Donald Bateman, the engineer behind this and bought the data post Soviet Union collapse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Donald_Bateman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._Donald_Bateman https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2023/05/don-bateman-engineer-and-lifesaver/ https://www.flightsafetyaustralia.com/2023/05/don-bateman-en...
- avs733 2y agothe amount of random 'stuff' like this that I've accummulated over the years could fill a book that is interesting only to me lol Thanks for the link!
- hnthrow90348765 2y agoI'm told quantum navigation is the new hotness for being on lists these days
- Onavo 2y agoThese days celestial navigation is trivial. See my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42695079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42695079
- clarkmoody 2y agoPlenty of homework assignments in graduate level aerospace engineering courses that are right up the alley of this paper. Star trackers as backup for GNSS would be of great interest to maritime vessels worried about spoofing. So there are plenty of non-military use cases for these algorithms.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 2y agoNot NSA - you'd have someone from US Bureau of Industry and Security tracking you down (no pun) for most likely violating export controls if you were to openly share information on building the technology. Celestial tracking is a dual use technology (See 7A004 or 7A104) - https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/regulations-docs/2339-category-7-navigation-and-avionics-2/file https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/documents/regulations-docs...
- oasisaimlessly 2y agoOpenly publishing information in e.g. a book (or presumably a website) does not count as exporting. Releasing software is a bit more hazy, but has been defended[1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_i...