SEXTANT, a "GPS System" for Deep Space

I thought NASA was also going to provide the manned Mars mission with old-fashioned nautical sextant and star-charts...albeit packaged in a smart-phone display package.

That idiot Carl Sagan included charts on Pioneer 1 and 2 with pulsars shown on them to help aliens from space triangulate and locate Earth. Like, 'Here we are. Come destroy us.'

Moron.

Well, interstellar space is very big, those probes are pretty tiny, and from what we know, there is not a lot of traffic out there, so the odds of ETs finding one of them and figuring out what our interstellar graffiti means is extremely remote. And, in any case, they could probably trace the trajectory back to our solar system. We are far more likely to be discovered by the radiation we send out from radio and television broadcasts, although some have postulated that the quality of the programming is likely to keep them away.

However, on the downside, judging from our own species, a superior species might either study us, keep us as pets, or eat us. It would be better to be on the end of a leash than in a zoo, a dissecting table, or on the dinner plate. Life is not so good when you're no longer at the top of the food chain.

Also, Pioneer 10 & 11 (the two with the plaques) have only gotten to the Heliopause⁽¹⁾ so far. Distance-wise, that's like standing on your front porch and hurling a baseball, only for it to stop at the curb, the near side of the curb, not even technically in the street yet.

Notes:

1. The point where the solar wind is balanced out by the pressure of the outside universe. It is considered to be the "outer edge" of the Solar System.

Yes, as of now there's not much question of where they came from! I doubt that any advanced civilizations that can travel among the stars are too worried about us just yet.

Yeah, if there is a Galactic Federation or similar, they're probably waiting for us to grow up a bit more before initiating first contact. It only makes sense, you don't invite immature kids to a fancy dress ball or an important trade meeting.

I wonder if the Tesla that Elon is sending to orbit Mars has this type of guidance system?

Seems pretty clever to me.

When I was in college,.. 35-40 years ago a career ago. To kill time between classes, I would go to the library and read the periodicals. I came across an article where they use light wave as a gryroscope. As I under stood it, with the light wave being a constant, it would basically count the waves as a orientation displacement.

I found this that closely explains it. Using Sagnec Effect. It’s an interesting read.

Even with this it is still limited for long range navigation. There are too many sources of the same information in the galaxy. When I say long range, I mean intergalactic navigation, which at present only exists in sci fi.

Zoom out so far that our galaxy is only a dot, even further and the local group of galaxies is only a dot, etc.

Now look at all those spiral galaxies, each with billions of stars.

Now find Earth in all of that. A new method of FTL communication will need to be developed before that can be achieved. Perhaps entangled particles with receivers placed at the maximum distance that we can travel, adding links as we go further. A relay chain that will take thousands of years to build. There has been plenty of time for a civilization to build such a network.

I think eventually we will not be constrained by the speed of light, but it may be interdimensional travel because the boundary of "bubble" the we exist in defines and limits our technology.

Everything that has or ever will be exists within our bubble (Dimension).

Try to imagine the universe as a checkerboard. The horizontal axis of each square is distance: 300,000km, the vertical axis is time with the vertical line maximum is the speed of light.

Color this square black the others red, alternating like a checkerboard. We can only travel diagonally to similar dimensions obeying the same physics as ours. The others would require time travel.

The black squares only touch on the corners, likewise the red squares.

I am not sure I have expressed this idea very well, and I reserve the right for additions and/or corrections later.

"A mistake is a dragon with a gift in it's mouth.

Slay the dragon, and the gift is yours.

The gift is knowledge."--Chinese proverb

All comments are welcome.

Back in the '80's I wrote a little story about a Cat-Toast Generator. I told everyone in the office, and got a lot of laughs. A girl from the office transferred to Australia and told her friends there. This was before the net was fully developed. Years later, one of her friends from Australia put it on the web and claimed it was original.

I should have copyrighted it when I wrote it, but did not. If I could find the original with a time stamp I would.

No matter, it is not really important anyway. In the little story the cat's feet always pointed to the center of the Earth, even when it was on the moon, or in zero gravity.

If you spun the cat around in zero gravity, it would finally stop with feet pointing toward the Earth. I called this "Spooky Cation at a distance".

I jokingly suggested it's use as a homing device to find Earth from anywhere.

Perhaps a galactic wanderer should always carry a cat with him?