SPACE PILOTING

Capt. P. V. H. Weems

Peer Reviewed

Abstract: IT IS UNLIKELY that the first astronaut to blast off from the earth will venture an extensive space voyage; rather he will make test flights and try to return to the earth and gradually increase his range in future flights. Experts estimate that man will be on the moon by about 1970. Since that is a relatively short flight of about 207,000 nautical miles and the next stop to the nearest planet will be millions of miles, I think we can safely say that in our time our limit of space navigation will be cislunar. We therefore make the assumption that we will not venture beyond about the range of the moon, and we also assume that the astronaut will be able to do normal mental and physical operations and that he will have sufficient power in his vehicle to have some directional and speed control. With these three important assumptions, we will now discuss a proposed concept for short-range space navigation. We might consider this to be space piloting in that we make principle use of the earth, from which we get direction, position and distance.
Published in: NAVIGATION: Journal of the Institute of Navigation, Volume 7, Number 1
Pages: 63 - 64
Cite this article: Weems, Capt. P. V. H., "SPACE PILOTING", NAVIGATION: Journal of The Institute of Navigation, Vol. 7, No. 1, Spring 1960, pp. 63-64.
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