Nongyroscopic inertial reference

The space stabilizing capability of a servo controlled nonrotating inertial mass is analyzed and its drift rate performance compared with a high precision gyroscope. The results indicate that the nongyroscopic inertial reference and guidance system exceeds the performance of gyroscopic systems by several orders of magnitude. It is shown that a servo system materially contributes to the drift accuracy in the nongyroscopic system but not in the gyroscopic system. The navigation errors of the discussed scheme are directly proportional to the accelerometer errors and, therefore, are inherently smaller than in an equivalent gyroscopic system.