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GPS privatization in 3…
You know what’s a great backup? The ability to read a map or use a compass. This is set up to get Starlink or another billionaire to own GPS.
Subscription based navigation? Want to use your car’s navigation system, there’s a fee for that? Want to fly a drone, that’ll be 9.99/month. Hopefully there will be a carve out for emergency systems.
This will also allow Tesla to up their traffic game. If everyone is using the Starlink GPS for navigation they’ll have all the data.
Ding ding ding. This is just a talking point so they’ll be able to pivot into “we should give Musk a trillion dollar contract to run GPS on his Starlink satellites.” Hammer the “GPS is unreliable” point long enough that the conservative voters have time to start believing it. Then pivot into handing more money to Musk. It’s a typical advertising strategy; Create a problem so you can sell the solution.
They’re already are multiple alternatives to GPS. GPS is the American navigation system, but there’s also GNSS which is mostly used in Europe and Scandinavia. There are other systems for other parts of the world, even the North and South pole now.
Everyone just uses GPS universally though.
there’s also GNSS which is mostly used in Europe and Scandinavia
GNSS is the generic term that covers all satellite navigation systems (GPS included).
Galileo is the EU/ESA system you’re thinking of.
GLONASS (Russian) and BeiDou (Chinese) are the other two major constellations with global coverage. The only other full system I know of is NavIC, which is Indian and has only regional coverage.
Most devices actually connect to all of them. I’ve just checked my phone, and it’s connected to all of GPS, Galileo, GLONASS and BeiDou. People just say “GPS” because it’s catchier than “GNSS”.
I kinda like the British word “satnav”.
Is constellation the actual term for a set of satellites now?
Why not just stop being reliant on cars… you know… put down more rail… use… trains…
Lemme guess, Starlink will magically be suggested.
Yeah. It’s grift. They want a privatized solution.
Or GLONASS
Pretty much every GPS-capable device made in the last decade uses all systems available: GPS (USA), GLONASS (Russia), and Galileo (EU).
For those who are unfamiliar with it:
GLONASS (ГЛОНАСС, IPA: [ɡɫɐˈnas]; Russian: Глобальная навигационная спутниковая система, romanized: Global’naya Navigatsionnaya Sputnikovaya Sistema, lit. ‘Global Navigation Satellite System’) is a Russian satellite navigation system operating as part of a radionavigation-satellite service.
Isn’t GPS a US project?
We can’t rely on the Global(ist) Positioning System!
We’re too dependent on a technology that we spent tens of billions of dollars researching and perfecting over decades of research!
Possibly the dumbest statement I’ve heard this week.
It’s not as dumb as you make it out. The issue isn’t that GPS is really, really good at what it does; it’s that it’s also incredibly vulnerable to disruption and spoofing. And due to the particulars of how GPS works, we can’t entirely fix that. We can do some things to ameliorate it, but a lot of those aren’t suitable for smaller things that use GPS today.
The other thing is that GPS largely replaced a tremendous number of other navigation aides and techniques, including other radio-navigation systems like LORAN-C.
It’s also just a generally bad idea to be too dependent on a single system. If GPS reception fails for one reason or another, it would be good idea to have a backup.
It’s also just a generally bad idea to be too dependent on a single system.
You’re saying this in the world where SMS is considered good for 2FA, and PSTN identifier is considered as good as your citizen’s ID, and people’s lives depend on systems incorporating NodeJS and Kubernetes. Yeah, by the way, Docker everywhere, and all the POSIX standardization and source-compatibility to allow different systems adhering to standards … have lost to Linux just becoming another main target.
But yes! It’s a bad idea. Also it’s typical now for these systems to start lying in warzones where their owners don’t want one of the sides to have satellite navigation. They then give shift maps or whatever to the side they want to win.
Nah the idea is sound. As someone else said, GPS is incredibly fragile. Also very terrestrial…it doesn’t work once you leave the atmosphere.
This will probably be another SpaceX grift, but there are alternative technologies that are more resilient to attack. From military/defense perspective (the original reason for GPS), that’s pretty important.
GPS is incredibly fragile.
No, not really. The GPS signal isn’t designed to penetrate concrete, no. But that doesn’t make it fragile.
Also very terrestrial…it doesn’t work once you leave the atmosphere.
Considering it was never meant to…that’s really not that goddamn weird. It’s a global positioning satellite system. So clearly for it to work you have to be on the fuckin’ globe…
Having functional GPS in a tunnel would be very nice…as someone who drives through Boston and fucking hates tunnels.
But that’s not what I meant by fragile. I meant it can be disrupted/jammed fairly trivially.
There’s no reason why some sort of augmentation system couldn’t improve the navigation situation with the big dig. Stick some low power beacons that provide GPS-like signal in the tunnel based on their predetermined location and we’ll have GPS accounting for special relativity, general relativity and continental drift.
Having functional GPS in a tunnel would be very nice
In a tunnel
a tunnel
tunnel
I fear for the world. You afraid that you’re gonna make a wrong turn? Inside of a tunnel? A fuckin’ tunnel my guy?
You have clearly never driven on 93 through Boston where the person you replied to said they are from (aka the Big Dig). It is basically an entire highway that is underneath the city. There are many on and off ramps, lanes suddenly become exit only, complex multi-lane exits that branch…it’s intimidating. As somebody that has lived in the Boston area for 15 years now, I still mess things up.
Global Positioning System, I sleep
Universal Positioning System, real shitThere was an article today about how they just used GPS on the moon.
it doesn’t work once you leave the atmosphere.
Fun fact: just this past week an experiment on a lunar lander confirmed that GPS signals can be detected from the surface of the moon. I don’t know if those signals can give any kind of location precision, but it is an interesting finding.
Reject modernity, return to sextant.
Dont need a sextant if you dont leave your house
GPS depends on a friendly spectrum. I suspect the FCC is preparing for a war where GPS will be jammed, faked, or destroyed.
How’s the FCC going to prepare for anything when it’s being gutted?
That would be wise.
How do we call these assholes and tell them to get their heads out of Muskovitch’s ass?
In comes starlink to the rescue. But in typical Musk fashion it won’t doesn’t do what’s advertised and cost a shit ton more
It’s literally him convincing someone to sell their house that they own outright to rent from him because it’s somehow much better (for him of course). It’s so fucking stupid.
Remember that time he claimed Teslas windows were shatterproof and indestructable. Then he throws a baseball and the window instantly shatters?
Was a ball bearing. Same guy threw a baseball a couple years ago and it didn’t break.
And was the second time that window had the ball bearing thrown at it. They’d tested it backstage but didn’t replace that window for the on stage demo, so it was already weakened.
Yeah I’m gunna be frank on this one… it’s GOOD that it broke. If you’re in a car fire (which these seem to do often), you want to be able to break out a fucking window to get out.
Any civilian that wants a window that strong is too stupid to properly risk evaluate the features of a car.
Its like the video showing firefighters struggling a lot to break the window of the Tesla pickup. That’s not a praiseworthy thing. You want the windows to break easily enough you can get out in an emergency, or someone can break in to get you out.
What if we built a system of beacon transmitters that sent out pulses and then used recievers that would compare arrival times of those pulses to make a measurement, thus establishing positional location?
We could call it the Long Range something or other. I’m open to suggestions. Need a catchy name!
You are so close to VOR!
They’re describing LORAN.
Oh, so that’s what that saucer is for.
Whatever happened to radio ranging?
That shit was super coolio.
Wonder if they want to track all phones with a different system.
Don’t need GPS to track phones. You triangulate the receivers.
Too often, the vertical location (Z-axis) information that 911 call centers receive is not easily usable
So…use the barometer in tandem with GPS? This is shit I can easily track from my personal Homassistant server.
Also, you know how to make GPS more reliable, secure, and redundant? You launch more GPS satellites.
Also, you know how to make GPS more reliable, secure, and redundant? You launch more GPS satellites.
But where will we find room for more Starlink satellites if we do that? Elon said he needs another contract, and when the boss says jump…!
/s
Starlink is LEO, GPS is not.
And I’m sure that’s a distinction politicians really care about. /s
Your answer is rational. US politicians are not, since they have an agenda to hand off their money and power to Trump and Elon.
One can use both and anything else frankly, isn’t it enough to triangulate the signal between 3 satellites (or 2 with an interval and knowing their trajectories relative to each other) and match the spot on the geoid’s (stored model, position precalculated by time) surface?
