GPS Navigation May Fail Next Year

[cruiseoveride]

Don't fear, Obama is here.

 

[moonsite]

I don't see any reason to be concerned. We've just launched another GPS satellite a couple of months ago.

 

[Tindytim]

the same year aliens will invade the earth, the world will end, and the Internet will come to a screeching halt

Dammit, Kevin. God fucking dammit.

 

[I800C0LLECT]

Funny, GPS network needs 24 sats to function...don't we have ~31-33 in orbit?

Doesn't sound close to failure to me.

 

[mdillenbeck]

[citation][nom]eddieroolz[/nom]What I'm wondering is, why is the US government paying for GPS that's beneficial to the rest of the world?Correct me if I'm wrong, but rest of the world should pay the US a fee for being allowed to use their GPS.[/citation]
Hmmmm... maybe the US will let their GPS system fall apart so others will put one up in its place (say the EU or China or both). That way they will be paying for it.

 

[belardo]

How can GPS be free? Wait, we paid for it with our money! SOCIALISM!!!

 

[ThePatriot]

It has been a long time policy to make other nations dependent on us technology so that uncle sam has control. Well, other nations are moving away from this. Other GPS systems, non us operating systems for computers, non us chips, non us routers, etc. It is all happening.

 

[Zingam]

Great! US will be forced to pull out troops of Afghanistan and Iraq.

[citation][nom]axekick[/nom]How long do these things last. As far as I knew I was among the very first to use GPS which was in the very early 1990's doing land surveying - Evidently the military or government has other uses for it long before we did??[/citation]

A decade at most I think. You can read about that in Internet.

 

[tenor77]

SA, or selective availability is not in the current generation of satellites. As a result the United States cannot stop anyone from using GPS. It's a low watt radio transmission. Other than turning it off completely how do you think the US can control who uses those radio signals?

Oh yeah they can't.

 

[blackened144]

[citation][nom]cracklint[/nom]they just need a bailout![/citation]
This is the Air Force youre talking about here. Our new president will be destroying their budget and there will be no money to fix the GPS system.

 

[eyemaster]

[citation][nom]gorehound[/nom]i would agree that wherever or whoever wrote this article it is not a fail but a political type article.[/citation]

The article is written that way because they want more funding. That's it. It's no secret.

 

[starryman]

Another way of trying to get more funding. With the monies already spent, we could have 4 times as many satellites.

 

[belardo]

Er... the last prez (you know, the retard) has sucked us dry of $$$, killed 4000+ Americans... so yeah, we're all suffering. But at least he's a reborn christian. yaaaaaaaaaaaaaa shu-up.

Cost of military operations has been going up and up, period. One of the big reasons WE won the "cold war" against Russia is that... Russia went broke.

 

[ossie]

[citation][nom]parrish[/nom]"only 3 satellites are needed to provide an accurate fix"[/citation]
False, 3 visible satellites are needed to get a fix at all. Te be accurate, you'll need at least 4, even 5, or, even better, DGPS.

[citation][nom]hajila[/nom]The GPS satellites are geosynchronous...[/citation]
False, GPS satellite orbit altitude is just over half (22,200km) of that of geosynchronous ones (35,800km).

 

[TwoDigital]

I would guess that as technology evolves in geo-satellite systems that there will be a more 'global' effort to keep the service available. I'm not sure if GSM cell phones will fail if GPS goes down but I *KNOW* the CDMA phones will... I was working at AirTouch (now Verizon) the last time the DoD did a GPS shutdown test in the 1990's and we had all (then) 30 of our US CDMA CBSC switches tank.

It would be of benefit for the other G20 countries to kick some dollars, euros, yen, etc. into the research and deployment effort for this cargo since we are all big consumers of it.