As the earth is turning, the Saturn V requires that its platform be constantly realigned as it is ever moving away, moving moving moving, moment to moment moving, away from its previously aligned state. They cannot allow the Saturn V bird's own independent system to take over alignment duties until roughly 17 seconds before lift off.
You're so
not an engineer. "Cannot allow" the Saturn V's "independent" system to perform alignment duties?
Where to begin?
First, every INS has to get its initial conditions somehow. Some, such as for aircraft or marine use, can boostrap their initial conditions. Others have to be spoon-fed it for various reasons.
The ones we use on rockets have to be spoon-fed, because they aren't meant to navigate in an Earth environment. For Earth navigation, gimballed INS platforms have to be kept aligned with local horizontal and vertical, so that their accelerometers stay aligned with the cardinal directions of the vehicle's reference frame. That means they have to actively compensate for the vehicle's motion over the spherical Earth, and for the Earth's rotation, by driving their gimbals in teeny steps constantly. This is not the same as gyrocompassing, which can leave the platform unaligned.
Similarly we want a launch vehicle to start its flight with its accelerometers aligned properly to the vehicle axes. But after the vehicle leaves the ground, it's its own animal in inertial space and doesn't need any further relative reference to the ground, such as in terrestrial gyronavigation. It's headed for space.
Yes if we were to align the platform hours before launch, it would have disaligned to a useless position by launch time. And we could conceivably wait to do any alignment until a few seconds before launch. But for mechanical reasons we inch the platform along periodically rather than do a sweeping realignment. It turns out to be more accurate to move the platform in small steps.
Second, this is not a platform drift. There is one kind of alignment required to correct for the bias in gyroscopes, their tendency not to stay exactly perfectly oriented in inertial space. They will drift ever so slightly over time, leading to accumulated errors in dead reckoning.
The operation to align the Saturn V's platform seconds before launch was not because of any inherent flaw or property of inertial navigation, or of the workmanship and accuracy of the Saturn V's IMU, but simply because the rocket was constantly moving.
All rockets are susceptible to this. Hence we give a final platform alignment to a gimballed IMU seconds before launch on any rocket. Except now with strapdown systems, we can simply do it mathematically. But for gimballed systems a final, last-second alignment has always been needed.
No, this does not support your contention that INS platforms always require frequent alignment. This particular source of disalignment requires a last-second update, and we do it in steps as an optimization, not a requirement.
Third, the Schuler effect means that the actual correction to platform orientation is non-trivial for most terrestrial latitudes. To build it into a rocket as an onboard system is pretty silly, considering it's useless the moment the rocket's engine ignites. As something that ceases to be useful the instant the rocket leaves the ground, the Earth-rotation calibration system stays on the ground -- where it can be used incidentally for another rocket. There's no requirement that the alignment system for this particular phenomenon be collocated with the platform. It can be any practical distance away; you just need longer wires.
"Cannot allow" is misleading. It makes it seem like the guidance platform is struggling with some intractable problem, when in fact the task in question has simply been properly offloaded to ground support.
"Independent" suggests that correction for this phenomenon ought to be part of the system itself. In fact, it's useless when the system is operating, and the Saturn V platform needs no further drift compensation. Unlike the long-term navigation systems, the Saturn V's need only work for a couple of hours. Then it is discarded.
Stars would be great, but the ground based missiles cannot "find a star" in the day time [...] under the bright sky, nor can the subs find stars at sea when they are submerged.
Actually a submarine would have to come to periscope depth under your scenario to shoot either stars or satellites. So your system provides no advantage to the submarine. And that's why we use a combination of INS calibration techniques, some of which can operate while submerged and have nothing at all to do with instrumenting the Moon.
As for the missiles themselves, they sight stars at the end of the boost phase when they're near the apex of their half-orbit, in space. Basically by the same method used in the SR-71.
For the uninitiated, an ICBM or SLBM mission consists of three phases, a boost phase accomplished by the first stage(s) of the rocket (hence the legacy name "booster" for any general rocket), a midcourse phase in which a secondary propulsion and guidance system sends each warhead on its programmed trajectory from orbit, and a terminal phase where the warhead enters the atmosphere and explodes over its target.
With old single-warhead missiles, the middle phase was unpowered; the booster was required to insert the warhead into its proper ballistic velocity state. In Polaris and later systems, the midcourse sustainer engine and onboard guidance and control system aimed and detached each warhead reentry vehicle off the bus along a separate ballistic trajectory.
Before doing so, it can use star sighting in orbit to correct any dispersions in its platform, whether they arose from booster dispersion or submarine position errors. This is the part that Donald MacKenzie apparently didn't know about when he wrote his article. Basically this strategy partially decouples missile accuracy from submarine navigational accuracy.
And we use this same procedure today for peaceful commercial launches. The payload deployment stage is able to correct for any accumulated dispersions during the ascent, before sending the mission on to its final trajectory or orbit.
We sight our artificial stars, our satellite emmiters, on the moon...
...which, for any given submarine, has line of sight for only a few hours each day.
...at key libration points
...which are mostly unstable and cannot accommodate a spacecraft.
...and elsewhere in space/in earth orbit as need be...
...which need we've demonstrated will almost
always be, because of the unaddressed shortcomings in your Moon-Lagrange theory, and why this is the only part of your theory that actually makes any sense and upon which we naturally therefore rely.
...and so gain the data within moment's notice to align our ICBM inertial platforms
Nope, that's not how it works. The missile gets its reference "at a moment's notice" from the submarine, whose own reference is always kept within certain tolerances. In modern times, the missile can then correct itself for boost dispersion at a trajectory-optimal time, thus freeing the submarine from the need to maintain a very high tolerance fix at all times.
Frightening isn't it Jack by the hedge?
Yes, because you manufactured your straw man for no other reason than to be frightening. It's a good thing the real Navy doesn't have to do it that way, or understand the problem as poorly as you do.
Yet true, because after all, there really is no other alternative explanation for things.
Um, the very obvious alternative explanation for things is that you don't know what you're talking about, and you're inventing "problems" and ineffectual "solutions" to correspond to your beliefs, not to real life. You still can't reconcile your theory with your own arguments, much less with the facts or with the concerted opinions of qualified experts.
By your own standard: inconsistent and therefore untrue.
