@kenshirriff @dnaunton this is fascinating. I also congratulate you on one of the clearest summaries of celestial navigation I have read.
Ages ago I read Francis Chichester’s account of his solo float plane flight from New Zealand to Australia in the 1930s, when he pioneered aerial celestial nav. He went into some detail and was undoubtably a kind of genius, but completely incomprehensible! The man was not a writer. Or much of a mechanic… and that almost killed him.