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I would just like to rant a moment regarding the advances in technology from back in those mostly analog days of early space flight to the technologies we have today.
Consider the evolution of analog inertial navigation systems (INS). The INS is a way of knowing where you are, and where you are going, based only on local sensors. All inertial navigation systems require that you know where you are before you depart a given location. By accurately sensing every directional move and change in speed that you make over a given period of time from the moment you leave that known location, you can draw your route on a map and always know where you, the direction you are traveling, and how fast you are moving.
The challenge of a good INS is having accurate sensors. Back in the day, analog sensors sensed rotation and acceleration with the likes of mechanical gyros and spinning cup accelerometers. The ever present desire to reduce the weight and size of these systems produced mechanical systems designed, machined, and assembled to sometimes mind boggling precision. If you wanted a smaller more accurate gyro, you needed to increase mechanical precision, reduce parasitic forces, and improve the resolution of rotation sensors. There was always a march toward some level of perfection. There were many technologies that benefited from the engineering and development of inertial navigation systems. Everything from better bearing technologies evolving toward air and magnetic bearings to non-contact precision resolvers leading to the likes optical sensors. Increasing precision always meant building this complex mechanical gizmo with greater and greater precision, and constantly advancing the technologies required to do so.
Like the end of the steam locomotive, these complex mechanical and analog based systems have, for the most part, been replaced with modern technologies, but the level of precision and accuracy achieved with those mechanical systems produced nothing short of man made "works of art".
Today, what once required a rack of equipment to collect and process analog INS data is available on a vanishingly small integrated circuit. And that too, is quite amazing, and another human made "work of art". Unfortunately these new systems are works of art at a level most will never see, or even contemplate. You can't open an integrated circuit and "watch it work" as one could the older mechanical systems.
And now we have added GPS to our navigational needs, which, although it too is another great achievement, is made mundane through our everyday and routine use of it.
I guess the point of this mostly off topic post is that although the technologies we have today, as amazing as they are and residing mostly in the digital realm, do not diminish the capabilities achieved in the past within the analog realm.
Although I will be the first to admit that many of these advances were driven by defense related programs, human spaceflight and the exploration of space have also played a very significant role in the evolution of many technologies we take for granted everyday.
It hasn't been all that long ago that Boeing 747 aircraft had provisions for using a sextant as a backup for navigation.
PW
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Topic: Deceptions of NASA (Read 17086 times)
