Quote:
geoschmo said:
You need at least two known points with bearings to them. That would give you two possible locations for earth.
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This part wasn't quite right. I was thinking about plotting locations in two dimensions, like on the surface of a planet. Traveling through space in 3 dimensions two known points and bearings would allow you to plot a circle perpendicular to a line connecting the two points and bisecting the line. It would be way more then two locations, but it would cut down tremendously on the number of systems you had to check as it would be way less then all points in the galaxy.
Three points should give you all you need though to reduce that to two possible points. And if you had twelve points, it should be easy to narrow it down to one location. A trained navigator or pilot should be able to do it almost without a computer.