Abstract
Mariners have made their way using the stars for thousands of years, navigating the expanse of Earth’s oceans and seas without GPS or compasses. Navigating among the stars would be orders of magnitude more challenging, and although many a work of science fiction depicts spacefaring humans and aliens, navigation is a subject that is typically glossed over. It is a conceit, a “gimme”. Writers count on the audience assuming that, if a race can travel interstellar distances, they will also have mastered the details of how to do it. In a universe where stars move relative to one another as they orbit galactic centers, and as galaxies move ever farther apart with the expansion of the Universe, navigation is not a simple task.
We just put Isaac Newton in the driver’s seat.
Jim Lovell (Tom Hanks), Apollo 13
He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.
Leonardo da Vinci
If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.
Carl Sagan, planetary scientist and author, Pale Blue Dot
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Notes
- 1.
Our Earth, that is.
- 2.
Which means that in the Doctor Who episode “Terminus” (1983), the space station Terminus was not at the “center of the known Universe”. Alternately, Terminus was at the “center of the known Universe,” because every point is the “center of the known Universe.” The inhabitants suffered from a leprosy-like disease, so as with another famous Terminus, you would not want these people “fixing you a plate,” either.
- 3.
The constellations we see today are the same ones that the first human beings saw thousands of years ago, albeit with a few minor distortions. Although the stars move very rapidly relative to one another, since they are so far apart, the angular motion—how much they move across the sky—is tiny. It’s not a perfect assumption, but the movement is noticeable only over many thousands of human lifetimes; for navigational purposes, the stars are fixed and motionless.
- 4.
Several of the writers on Battlestar Galactica, including executive producer Ronald D. Moore, had previous experience in the Trek universe. That these two reference frames are similar should not be surprising. In fact, in the pilot episode of Galactica, locations relative to the ship were 123 mark 45 as in Star Trek, but “mark” became “carom” in the series. The values of the numbers in Galactica were also often greater than 360, implying the Colonials did not use the same measure of a degree as we use today.
- 5.
Whatever a sea goat is. This pattern of stars has been represented as some type of surf and turf gene splice experiment dating back thousands of years to the middle bronze age.
- 6.
With the light pollution of today’s metropolises, it gets increasingly difficult to see even those original patterns for all but the brightest constellations.
- 7.
In both the U.K. and Ireland, these stars are sometimes known as the Plough.
- 8.
A star’s apparent brightness is determined by competing factors. Hotter, bluer, stars are inherently brighter than others, but distance plays an important role. For example, Rigel (β Orionis) is a bright blue star in Orion, while Sirius (α Canis Majoris), aka the dog star, is a bright blue star in adjoining Canis Major (the big dog). Intrinsically, Sirius is 25 times brighter than Sol, and is the brightest star in the night sky, but that is partly because it is only 8.6 light years away. Rigel is approximately 120,000 times brighter than Sol, but is 860 light years away (give or take 80 LY). Rigel appears fainter, but is actually over 4,700 times brighter than Sirius.
- 9.
Meaning it is very nearly circular, see Chap. 8.
- 10.
The only non-animal is Libra the scales.
- 11.
Shudder.
- 12.
KRG is, like, you know, a Scorpio, while SAC is totally a [REDACTED].
- 13.
Another well-known asterism.
- 14.
Ophiuchus literally means “serpent bearer”, but the actual name of the character holding a snake is Aesculapius, who was the Greek god of medicine. Snakes have long been associated with medicine: they are part of the Caduceus, and charlatans would sell “heal-all” potions known as “snake oil”. When physicians take the Hippocratic Oath—at least the original Greek version—they begin with: “I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius the surgeon, likewise Hygeia and Panacea, and call all the gods and goddesses to witness, that I will observe and keep this underwritten oath, to the utmost of my power and judgment.” In neither the ancient nor modern version do they swear to “First do no harm.” Like Aesculapius, that is a myth.
- 15.
The actual definition is slightly more complicated, but this definition is easily close enough.
- 16.
A simple way scientists remember this number is that there are approximately π × 107 s in one year.
- 17.
Sometimes the period is given the symbol P for “period” of an orbit as opposed to T, which is the “time… of one period of an orbit.”
- 18.
Meaning that the last time the Solar System was in its present position in its orbit around the center of the Galaxy, the Age of Amphibians was ending, and the dinosaurs were just starting out.
- 19.
Of course, it would take some doing to define or calculate exactly what that means.
- 20.
Realistically, this is something that would be determined well in advance of launching a mission or commencing a journey.
- 21.
The value of p would be a very tiny angle, measured in arcseconds. There are 360 degrees in a circle, 60 arcminutes in each degree, and 60 arcseconds in each arcminute. So one arcsecond is 1/3600th of a degree.
- 22.
For now. Eventually, the precession of Earth’s axis means it will point to different stars over the course of many thousands of years.
- 23.
Yup, the (initially uncredited) novelization came out before the movie, based on an early version of the script.
- 24.
In the B.D. (Before Disney) epoch.
- 25.
Although we’ll be referring to GPS throughout this chapter to stand in for all satellite navigation, it is actually a specific system controlled by the U.S. government. Russia has a similar system called Glonass, China has BeiDou, and the European Union is currently deploying its own system called Galileo.
- 26.
As well as the positions of all other GPS satellites.
- 27.
Note for apocalypse preppers: the information that GPS satellites broadcast to receivers relies on precise “almanacs” being uploaded at frequent intervals from the ground. If the U.S. government collapses, GPS navigation will start to become unreliable in a few weeks, even if the satellites themselves are still putting out a strong signal. So hang on to your compasses.
- 28.
Not unlike the premiere episode of Star Trek: Voyager.
- 29.
One of the cool aspects of Battlestar Galactica was all the small things that the production team explained without fanfare—if you didn’t catch many of these points, your enjoyment of the series would be unchanged—but if you caught them, they were fun reveals. One big stealth reveal concerns Pythia. In season two, the audience learns that President Roslin is following the Prophecies of Pythia from their ancient religious texts. In season three, the audience learns that Pythia’s prophecies are less prophetic, and more of a travelogue of her trip to Earth. If she was on the trip to Earth, what does this mean? It means that in season one, when Six tells Baltar, “We know your religious texts better than you do,” she could add, “…because we wrote them.” If Pythia was on the original trip to Earth, she was a Cylon.
- 30.
At least we (the authors) watch shows like this.
- 31.
Ignoring the fact that most of the money spent on a space mission is spent on salaries, not hardware, so the money is feeding people. Ignoring also that satellites also help us grow more and better crops and, yes, feed people. We could go on and on, the counters to this argument are lengthy, and this has never been a particularly valid—and certainly nothing but a hand-to-mouth—complaint.
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Grazier, K.R., Cass, S. (2017). Getting from There to Here: Navigation in Space. In: Hollyweird Science: The Next Generation. Science and Fiction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54215-7_9
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