HoodaThunk?

GPS could begin failing in 2010?

A Christmas 2007 gift my wife gave me was a TomTom One GPS navigation system. It’s a great little unit and has served us extremely well in the time we’ve had it. To be honest, it’s one of those little techie things you get used to having really fast and, so long as you never follow it completely blindly, it substantially removes the issue of getting lost.

One of the things many people using these now-relatively-low-cost devices tend to forget is that the little box on your dashboard is just the receiver and the mapping software. The real magic is done high overhead by a constellation of satellites in geosynchronous orbit. According to a Goverment Account Office (GAO) report, a delayed Air Force procurement and maintenance schedule is putting the system in danger of failure with the likelihood of such failure increasing as of 2010:

Mismanagement and underinvestment by the U.S. Air Force could possibly lead to the failure and blackout of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a federal watchdog agency says.

The risk of failure starts in 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report quoted by PC World.

Debate question: is the GPS something we should have our government provide or is this a chance for private sector investment?

May 19th, 2009 Posted by ricjames | Military, Politics, Science, Technology | no comments