Prometheus Mapping System

With the onset of space travel and colony construction in S.E. 0 mankind needed a system by which to navigate, while navigation beacons and line of sight proved useful early on for short range trips a more powerful system was required for interplanetary travel.

Description & Characteristics
The solar system contains a single object which remains stationary in relation to the rest of the system, the Sun, thus it is useless as a point of reference in 3-dimensional travel. The Prometheus Project brought together over 300 years of stellar cartography and mathematics to create an estimated mathematical model of the solar system's movement in relation to the rest of the galaxy. This data was combined with a mathematical model of planetary rotation in the Earth System producing the Prometheus Mapping System, a program capable of working out a position in space based on position of the sun, centre of the galaxy and planets, as a secondary confirmation the Prometheus System will then analyse the position of visible stars and compare the data with a loaded stellar cartography database.

The basic mechanics of the program uses the ecliptic planes of the of planet in the system to create the x,y plane, any movement throughout this plane is solely across two dimensions with a height (z) of 0. Orientation of the x and y axis are determined by the line derived from the Earth system's Sun to the mathematical centre of the galaxy, following the plane formed from the x and z axes one would cut straight through the centre of the Milky Way.Due to the fact that what is perceived to be the centre has actually moved because of the time taken by light to reach Earth the visual centre of the galaxy is used instead. While this means that the system is technically not pointing to the centre of the galaxy in real time from the user's point of view it is accurate enough for navigation within the known solar system. The star map is also programmed to use "visual" coordinates rather than real time for this system, allowing for ease of use when performing rough navigation by hand. With the x and y axis established the z axis is typically formed by bisecting the x,y plane at 90 degrees at the point 0,0,0.

With the origin point established (the centre of the sun, 0,0,0) a Cartesian grid is then established, using Neptune's maximum distance from the sun during its orbit as a maximum boundary for interplanetary navigation, forming a coordinate system reaching 4.543 x 10^9 km on any axis from the sun. Using these distances is not hugely useful for rough navigation, for simplification a scale is used, reducing the grid to 100,000 sections, each 45, 430 km in length.

With a primary coordinate system established, essentially creating cuboidal grid spaces of 45,430 km cubed, each section then has it's own subgrid applied to it for finer navigation, in essence giving all objects in space two sets of coordinates. The second scale consists of one unit equalling 45.43 km, with each subgrid scale spanning 1000 units. Technically speaking the centre of grid (the Sun) is then located at (0,0,0/S0,0,0), the S denoting the subgrid coordinates.