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A comment on The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan.

Re:The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan by clay_the_ripper on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @05:20PM (#17612940)
I was surprised to learn recently that GPS can be turned off by the government. I guess it makes sense, I just never thought of gps as inherently controlled by the government.
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Re:The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan by astura on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:20PM (#17614402)
GPS was developed by the U.S. Department of Defense for military use, full stop.

GPS was later opened up for non-military use in 1983 but the accuracy for non military users was intentionally and artificially limited until 2000.

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Re:The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan by downrightmike on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @08:19PM (#17614133)
One of the largest reasons that we don't have highspeed wireless internet from satellites is that the spectrum is on the lower end of the US gov's use for old marine gps systems. It may interfere so they block the projects.
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Re:The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan by empthought on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:35PM (#17614459)
100ms or more ping time as we wait for the signal to travel thousands of miles into space and back would also have something to do with it.
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Re:The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan by echo-oddly on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @11:49PM (#17614929)
For reference, round trip time to geostationary orbit is 240 ms. But that is 36 thousand km. Compare that to the ISS which orbits less than 500 km up, so the round trip time is less than 1.25 ms.
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Re:The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan by empthought on Thursday July 26, 2018 @12:23PM (#17618663)
No communications satellites orbit at such low altitude, though.
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Re:The World Economy Runs on GPS. It Needs a Backup Plan by chrisseaton on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @10:28PM (#17614654)
Who do you think ran it and paid for it, though?
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