Re: Astonishing feats of celestial navigation
Aye, agreed: it really is amazing when you start to think about the challenges involved:
Imagine you have a really stiff neck, backbone, legs and, obviously, upper lip. Now imagine you are pushed on the soles of your feet upwards with an acceleration that makes your eyes water. Imagine trying to simply stay upright in response to tiny sideways forces. OK you've now made it off planet.
Let's step up the acceleration for a while (there's no wind resistance up here and gravity is less of a problem as a negative acceleration backwards). How the hell do you determine your velocity here anyway, when do you stop being pushed? You've still go to keep yourself pointing in the right direction and not start tumbling and you have to report back and respond to orders from far away.
There are no Goog maps or TomTom here. Actually there are no roads, you've not got enough power to stay conscious for most of the journey and your alarm clock has to be really good to wake you up at the right time. Also there are no Hobnobs for millions of miles.
Astonishing? Not enough expletives!