Study Finds That a GPS Outage Would Cost $1 Billion Per Day (arstechnica.com) 80
A new comprehensive study on Global Positioning System technology has examined what effect a 30-day outage would have on the U.S. economy -- whether it's due to a severe space weather event or "nefarious activity by a bad actor." If a widespread outage were to occur, the study estimates it would have a $1 billion per-day impact. "It would likely be higher during the planting season of April and May, when farmers are highly reliant on GPS technology for information about their fields," adds Ars Technica. From the report: To assess the effect of an outage, the study looked at several different variables. Among them was "precision timing" that enables a number of wireless services, including the synchronization of traffic between carrier networks, wireless handoff between base stations, and billing management. Moreover, higher levels of precision timing enable higher bandwidth and provide access to more devices. (For example, the implementation of 4G LTE technology would have been impossible without GPS technology). In the case of an outage, there would be relatively minimal impacts over the first two days, but after that time, the wireless network would begin to degrade significantly. After 30 days, the study estimates that functionality would lie somewhere between 0 percent and 60 percent of normal operating levels. Landline phones would be largely unaffected.
Re: Sounds a lot like "climate change" fearmongeri (Score:2, Insightful)
There cannot be such a thing as "science fact". That is an oxymoron. Science is never settled. New observations can come along at any time and destroy even the strongest scientific theories. Anyone who claims that science can be settled or be fact should not be considered to be a scientist, in my opinion.
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There cannot be such a thing as "science fact".
Oh, is that a fact. /sarcasm
Sounds like the Fox News tards need mowing again. (Score:1)
"Some liberal politicians threatened to cut funding for scientists who disagree with the "climate change" hoax." - All 98% of them? Whoa. You would have thought there'd be, ya know, some proof of that? Only a liberal wants proof?
Climatologists are THE MOST CLEVER CONSPIRACY on EARTH, EVER, according to, ya know... the people backing a traitor in plain sight facing not only impeachment but life and death in prison, Federal and State. Both.
Lol. Yeah science is fake. Post your best link and scatter, co
Re: Sounds a lot like "climate change" fearmongeri (Score:2)
The underlying premise of the $1BN/day price tag for a global GPS outage is that any process that currently involves GPS can't occur without GPS. For example, without GPS, taxi/limo drivers would not be able to drive anywhere, farmers that plant crops using ultra-precise GPS equipment would be incapable of planting their crops without GPS, etc.
Nonsense.
Many industries would be impacted, but in many/most cases the challenges could be overcome.
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Who said missile makers were intelligent? Nobody I guess. It's not like this is rocket science.
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Only Intercontinental Ballistic Missles with nuclear payloads have access to highly accurate GPS (not that you need to be very accurate with a 500 Megaton warhead, but who said that missle makers were intelligent?).
This is BS, so perhaps all of your other post is of similar substance? No U.S. nuclear ballistic missile has ever used GPS. The ICBMs all use inertial guidance only, the Trident SLBMs also use a stellar tracker to supplement inertial guidance. This is so no hostile nation can defeat the missiles through attacking the GPS system. Also, the largest missile warhead the U.S. ever deployed was 9 MT, the largest right now is 475 kT.
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They're probably intelligent enough to know that there aren't any 500 megaton warheads. Note that Tsar Bomba (largest nuclear detonation in history) was in the 50 MT range, and massed 27 Mg, which makes it too big for any ICBM.
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"nefarious activity by a bad actor." (Score:3)
As opposed to nefarious activity by, hell, not even a good one, but a median actor.
Like the 7th circle of hell is to plain old regular hell, a bad actor is but a force multiplier on an already nefarious activity.
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Not only is inertial navigation getting very accurate, at very low cost, it is getting there very quickly. There's apps now for smart phones and such that can accurately determine your position by looking at the stars in the sky. If there's a prolonged outage of GPS then I suspect people will be using navigation by the sun and stars real quick.
Oh, people need an accurate clock for such navigation? There's cell phone networks for that, among other things. Expect someone to hack something together that us
Re: Why not dead reckoning? (Score:2)
That won't really help all truckers out there trying to make a delivery of food to a distribution center they never have been to before.
It's pretty common these days that truckers get dispatched different runs to new locations all the time.
The result would be empty shelves in the supermarkets and eventually lack of food and other necessities. The world is too dependent on GPS these days - and also on internet access.
Also realize that cloud services is another risk ro take into account even if they aren't di
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Good luck finding maps when the GPS system goes down.
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That won't really help all truckers out there trying to make a delivery of food to a distribution center they never have been to before.
Sure it will. The truck drivers won't be doing the dead reckoning, the navigation devices would. The accuracy of the dead reckoning doesn't need to be all that precise either, if the navigation gets out of line too much then the trucker just needs to update the location with a known address or crossroad. Considering that a truck will be following known roads this kind of navigation shouldn't be all too difficult given the experience programmers have had in creating navigation apps.
A common cell phone can
Way too low (Score:3)
Uber and Lyft would both be effectively offline, causing delays for travelers, and costing hundreds of millions. Uber alone does $50B/year in bookings.
Same thing for Amazon local deliveries, restaurant deliveries, and just about every service that involves getting something from A to B without a truck that is painted in the company livery.
FedEx, UPS, and would make a killing, but they would be severely hampered as well since they do less traditional routes and rely heavily on GPS now.
If the researchers had done their homework and asked the US military (who GPS was built for), theyâ(TM)d find out someone already calculated their military operating inefficiencies for GPS downtime, and it has to be significantly large enough that the costs of building and maintaining the system is dirt cheap in comparison.
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Why would Uber and Lyft be affected? You can type addresses for the rider, and the driver could register in a zone (automatically updated by dropoffs). I mean, it would require an app update, but that could be done quickly. And that's ignoring that cell tower triangulation would work well over 95% of the coverage area and be silently handled by existing cellphone tech..
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I mean, it would require an app update
So do you have any solutions that would require re-engineering the app? Because if not then you just answered your own question.
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I don't understand your question. The app would need to have the ability of drivers to say where they were, instead of get of from GPS. That sounds pretty easy to me. They park somewhere and send the address.
Re: Way too low (Score:2)
The core of the service requires it. Passengers report their destination via GPS. Drivers report their destination via GPS. Directions are given to the driver and tracked via GPS for billing.
You think it will be less than a day of downtime to completely retool the app and retrain all the passengers and drivers? Not to mention drivers learning how to get to any random address without GPS tracking.
The lost revenue for Uber and Lyft because they canâ(TM)t sell reliable rides will be hundreds of millions o
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Travel and tracking? That's just the tip of the iceberg. We had a GPS antenna get damaged recently without us realising. A few weeks later our 2 way radio system went down due to synchronisation issues between baseradios.
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This is why so many competing systems are appearing - the EU's Galileo, Russia's Glonas, China's Baidu.
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Right. You can use a geartooth sensor or a radar to measure speed for your population planter monitor. A gps-based speed sensor is optional. Though, population numbers are also sort of optional. And even monitoring seed drop is optional, if you don't mind the risk of not planting a row or two.
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Re: Factories need... (Score:2)
The farms can still plant, they just won't know the location of every plant down to the nearest few inches.
Somehow farmers grew food before GPS, why can't the simply turn off GPS control and just plant the crops?
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simply turn off GPS control and...
use the force [ytimg.com]
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When my TomTom died I had to use the Force to navigate to the local Best Buy for a new one. My car ended up going into the Best Buy and the store exploded, killing everyone inside. I won't do that again.
Unaffected? (Score:3)
Landline phones would be largely unaffected.
That's nice. You planning on driving to your parents' house in case you need to call, I don't know, someone else's parents?
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I'm the oldest person I know who plays Pokemon Go. My sister plays too, but she's only 57.
Landline phones would be largely unaffected (Score:2)
As would the lead type industry.
Oh please (Score:4, Insightful)
Just stop looking down at your phones and stop listening to Siri and just use your eyes.
99 percent of what you do each day is pretty much the same. You could even just use the "last route" function if you're that clueless.
WWV/WWVH? (Score:2)
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WWV and WWVH start with atomic clock accuracy but Doppler shift from the ionosphere bounce and multipath limit accuracy to less than quartz crystal oscillator levels.
Think (Score:2)
Oh no! the GPS is out! (Score:1)
Just kidding [ytimg.com]
Only for half the population (Score:2)
Women will just ask for directions.
Men will just drive around aimlessly.