GPS, GPS System might begin to fail in 2010, Government Accountability Office warns
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted May 19th 2009 9:37PM
posted May 19th 2009 9:37PM
[Via Fox News]
GPS, posted May 19th 2009 9:37PM
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Yes, it was canceled months ago. Get thee to the Stargate Universe trailers!
Global Positioning System System?
GPS also stands for "Global Positioning Satellite" so in the title it would be Global Positioning Satellite System.
I for one would welcome the robot overlords...but unfortunately they won't be able to find us as they rely on GPS.
It's logical that robots will launch new GPS satalites or they won't be able to find themselves.
oh knows!!! agony agonyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nooooooo... NOT THE FAIL WHALE!!!!!
Noooo... *goes back to watching Supernews*
I will never twitter... :)
democrats for the MOTHERFUCKINGLOSS.
GPS isn't going away. If a few satellites go down there may be certain locations that can't get GPS service 24/7. How long those outage windows would be depends on which satellites stop working. Even if it does happen its only temporary until GPSIII satellites are ready.
There's a good chance the GPSII satellites will continue to work until GPSIII is ready.
The GAO changed its name to "Government Accountability Office" a few years back. Sucks about GPS. Somehow, I think they'll figure something out.
Yes, GAO = Government Accountability Office, and the source story got it right.
Come on...the US is not going to let the military be crippled by non functioning satellites. And what happened to the plan to combine US and Europe satellites to get more accurate positioning?
Does my warranty cover this?
that picture is awesome.
The United States just needs to collaborate with the European Union on their new Galileo system. It only makes sense to have a bunch of countries, especially longtime allies, to share something like GPS.
The whole point of Galileo is to have something independent, in case the US decides to restrict access.
Beasides, why would another partner be needed? Funding has been allocated and the ESA has superior satellite launching capability to NASA.
Oh no! It's the evil communists from the Horsehead Nebula. They've already begun killing Zypods!
Hmm... maybe the world is going to end in 2012 because of all the technology failing haha
Maybe the world will end after you read this reply.
GPS is too big to fail.
You mean like Vista?
@ ED,
no mor like your mom.
2010? Then don't worry. Most of us will turn into flesh and taco eating zombies by the swine flu when it hits us big time this autumn. The Aporkalypse is upon us.
Everyone knows robots won't beat zombies to our annihilation.
I personally hope the world ends with with a massive war between ninjas zombies pirates aliens robots and steve jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Fpu10cZ6k
fail wale FTW!
It's clear that they want to tighten Big Brother and further advance into stages of spying to the point they can see us taking dumps while on the toilet...
I knew it. Back to using the steam gauges.
IFR pilots, learn how to navigate--look out the window at checkpoints!
It's all Megatron's fault :-)
Well... It was nice knowing you guys.
Back to the days of map reading then. Not pleasant and not cool , but not the end of the world.
how well organised, glad i can still read a map.
I don't know if someone said it before but, The US military is incredible dependent upon GPS, which is also a military system.
Did the US ever fail to make sure their military was not working properly. If there's will, there's power. And the US has a lot of will.
thats fine.. good riddance to old tech, ill move over to Galileo ;)
I'm with you. It has a lower positioning margin within 1m, compared to GPS's 5.
maybe for consumer use. doesnt military use have it down to 1/16th of an inch?
Uh, I think you meant the Government "Accountability" Office.
So what.You'll hack into Russian which should be operational by then.
ROFL....good thing I still use maps to get around. Never got into the whole GPS thing, don't know why either. I'm part of a generation that grew up with computers and what not (i.e. I had a 486 to play with by the time I was seven), but maps are just more fun. Road trip anyone??
From wikipedia:
Selective availability
GPS includes a (currently disabled) feature called Selective Availability (SA) that adds intentional, time varying errors of up to 100 meters (328 ft) to the publicly available navigation signals. This was intended to deny an enemy the use of civilian GPS receivers for precision weapon guidance.
SA errors are actually pseudorandom, generated by a cryptographic algorithm from a classified seed key available only to authorized users (the US military, its allies and a few other users, mostly government) with a special military GPS receiver. Mere possession of the receiver is insufficient; it still needs the tightly controlled daily key.
Before it was turned off in 2000, typical SA errors were 10 meters (32 ft) horizontally and 30 meters (98 ft) vertically. Because SA affects every GPS receiver in a given area almost equally, a fixed station with an accurately known position can measure the SA error values and transmit them to the local GPS receivers so they may correct their position fixes. This is called Differential GPS or DGPS. DGPS also corrects for several other important sources of GPS errors, particularly ionospheric delay, so it continues to be widely used even though SA has been turned off. The ineffectiveness of SA in the face of widely available DGPS was a common argument for turning off SA, and this was finally done by order of President Clinton in 2000.
Another restriction on GPS, antispoofing, remains on. This encrypts the P-code so that it cannot be mimicked by an enemy transmitter sending false information. Few civilian receivers have ever used the P-code, and the accuracy attainable with the public C/A code is so much better than originally expected (especially with DGPS) that the antispoof policy has relatively little effect on most civilian users. Turning off antispoof would primarily benefit surveyors and some scientists who need extremely precise positions for experiments such as tracking the motion of a tectonic plate.
DGPS services are widely available from both commercial and government sources. The latter include WAAS and the US Coast Guard's network of LF marine navigation beacons. The accuracy of the corrections depends on the distance between the user and the DGPS receiver. As the distance increases, the errors at the two sites will not correlate as well, resulting in less precise differential corrections.
During the 1990-91 Gulf War, the shortage of military GPS units caused many troops and their families to buy readily available civilian units. This significantly impeded the US military's own battlefield use of GPS, so the military made the decision to turn off SA for the duration of the war.
In the 1990s, the FAA started pressuring the military to turn off SA permanently. This would save the FAA millions of dollars every year in maintenance of their own radio navigation systems. The amount of error added was "set to zero"[55] at midnight on May 1, 2000 following an announcement by U.S. President Bill Clinton, allowing users access to the error-free L1 signal. Per the directive, the induced error of SA was changed to add no error to the public signals (C/A code). Clinton's executive order required SA to be set to zero by 2006; it happened in 2000 once the US military developed a new system that provides the ability to deny GPS (and other navigation services) to hostile forces in a specific area of crisis without affecting the rest of the world or its own military systems.[55]
Selective Availability is still a system capability of GPS, and error could, in theory, be reintroduced at any time. In practice, in view of the hazards and costs this would induce for US and foreign shipping, it is unlikely to be reintroduced, and various government agencies, including the FAA,[56] have stated that it is not intended to be reintroduced.
My GPS units only need 4 satellites to maintain a location lock. They usually track eight...or more. Unless some redneck with a space laser starts using the satellites for target practice, we'll be fine.
Let's try to keep a grip, people.
dewon1412 . I appreciate your comments about the GPS system. They are such a great tool for people that need to find there their way.When one can't be watching the map (instead of driving) it is nice to have the voice prompts that go along with so many of them. I sell them on my website www.camerasgpsandmore so i had to get one to try for myself. They are a life saver. Travel is only going to increase and if anything instead of them being left by the wayside they will only get better.
i'm gonna start investing in paper maps
ok so basically this won't impact my nokia 5800 at all then?
i mean, nokia maps couldn't possibly be any worse or less accurate than it already is.
the first few minutes of navigation are always terrible. it takes it a while to actually determine which way im going.
and ya, it totally makes sense to tell me to continue down the blvd for 5 more miles just because i missed the freeway which is now only one light behind me.
so gps failure? bring it on! i wont even notice the difference...
sux for the rest of u tho :P