Regner Trampedach wrote:
No, no, no, no!!! A million years, you have to be joking. The error margin would be so large with the look-up tables being only based upon the last 200 years of accurate (assuming the first century was so) observations that predicting the moon then would be unrealistic. Further, you previously ridiculed my look-up tables idea, but now without apology you've embraced it as being a sound notion. How come? Not a word on an existing mathematical model of the moons orbit either, which you claimed is elementary and has been completed to astonishing accuracy.That would definitely be the (computationally) cheapest way of doing it. Especially considering the little computer power available at that time, and the short span of time - i.e., a fairly modest list of parameters would be adequate to determine the Moon's position with the required precision, over the lifespan of a mission. Again, due to the short lifespan of the missions, extrapolations from observations at the beginning of each mission would probably be adequate. That doesn't mean that we can't calculate, from fundamental laws of physics, what will happen to the Moon in, say, a month or a million years. Steven.
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