With GPS systems and other geographical technology being as sophisticated as it now is, do lighthouses still serve an integral purpose? Are they more now just in case the captain/crew lapses on the monitoring of navigation systems? Obviously lighthouses are more immediate and I guess tangible, but do they still fulfil a purpose beyond mitigating basic human error?
In: 5120
In addition to redundancy and emergency use, it is good to keep the old skills alive. The US Navy is bringing back manual navigation (sextants, “mo board’s” and other non technology reliant tools).
In 2007 us Navy ships started relying on computer aided navigation and plotting, but over the years s have had a number of navigation errors. There are many reasons, but one of them is the fact that the technology brings inattention. (If you are required to “shoot a fix” every 5 min on landmarks and fixed points like lighthouses your attention is on the navigation). Some other reasons are cyber attacks and redundancy In case the computer aided methods fail. It is always good to have a manual backup, a fact that the younger generations never learned..
Here is an article on the navy teaching sextant use again.
https://www.stripes.com/news/break-out-the-sextant-navy-teaching-celestial-navigation-again-1.391219
In addition to redundancy and emergency use, it is good to keep the old skills alive. The US Navy is bringing back manual navigation (sextants, “mo board’s” and other non technology reliant tools).
In 2007 us Navy ships started relying on computer aided navigation and plotting, but over the years s have had a number of navigation errors. There are many reasons, but one of them is the fact that the technology brings inattention. (If you are required to “shoot a fix” every 5 min on landmarks and fixed points like lighthouses your attention is on the navigation). Some other reasons are cyber attacks and redundancy In case the computer aided methods fail. It is always good to have a manual backup, a fact that the younger generations never learned..
Here is an article on the navy teaching sextant use again.
https://www.stripes.com/news/break-out-the-sextant-navy-teaching-celestial-navigation-again-1.391219
One solid solar storm and kiss that GPS goodbye. It seems good to have backup when lives and (dangerous) cargo are at stake.
What do you do when your fancy technology fails? You want backup. So many people rely so heavily on their GPS, phones, computers, etc. that they have no idea how to read physical maps, use a card catalog at a library, do math long hand, cook food etc. These are the same people who would be absolutely helpless in a catastrophic event because they couldn’t feed or shelter themselves much less fight off the zombies.
What do you do when your fancy technology fails? You want backup. So many people rely so heavily on their GPS, phones, computers, etc. that they have no idea how to read physical maps, use a card catalog at a library, do math long hand, cook food etc. These are the same people who would be absolutely helpless in a catastrophic event because they couldn’t feed or shelter themselves much less fight off the zombies.
One solid solar storm and kiss that GPS goodbye. It seems good to have backup when lives and (dangerous) cargo are at stake.
You can have a failure of electronics on a boat.
GPS can possibly be jammed in time of war.
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