I’m just back from giving a short talk at the Royal Institute of Navigation‘s Land Conference at the National Physical Laboratory.
I learnt plenty from the other speakers and chats during the breaks. One little gem: the Apollo program nearly lost two astronauts, literally. They were roaming the lunar surface and became temporarily unaware where ‘home’ was. Without a map, compass, GPS or any other instrument there were some tense moments before they found their way back successfully. Definitely an opportunity for some natural navigation training in this niche market, as I was not too shy to point out to the assembled!
Something that makes a walk on the moon more challenging than on earth is that the moon has a much smaller radius and therefore has a more dramatically curved surface, the result being you cannot see nearly as far on the moon as you can on…
It was the Royal Institute of Navigation’s Annual General Meeting yesterday and I got to shake hands with Prince Philip as he presented me with my fellowship certificate. I am now allowed to put FRIN at the end of my name, which is very nice and a great honour but not something that will find its way to the end of my emails very often. Hopefully that explains what all the weird acronyms in the title are though.
