Quote:
Originally Posted by 911_Dude
Fascinating. I noticed that globe nav unit in pictures Ive seen in the past. As a commercial pilot, Ive always thought that was a cool mechanical nav display. But I never knew any of the details. 180 km landing accuracy?- I think the NASA boys (and girls) did better than that. Surely the Cosmo's had ground radar assistance for when to fire the retro for landing. Otherwise they were just kind of flying VFR in space. Cant remember the NASA number for hitting the landing spot, but it was at least an order of magnitude tighter.
Very cool none the less. Thanks!
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Indeed - by contrast, here's the digital ranging system that NASA used to help determine Apollo location:
The digital ranging system that measured the distance to the Apollo spacecraft
The guy's website is like a library for reverse-engineering vintage electronics. Hard core reminds me of my dad.