Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

For the growing number of endurance riders using GPS units, here's 
something worth considering.

There's not much we can personally do about it but it may be worth 
knowing.

Mike

From Good Morning Silicon Valley

The GPS says I'm in your driveway, but the car's sinking and all I 
see is cattails: If the Air Force and its contractors don't get 
their act together pretty quickly, in a couple of years your car's 
navigation system may be giving you instructions like "In a mile 
or so, turn right" or "You have reached your destination, more or 
less." The Air Force is responsible for maintaining and 
modernizing the network of satellites that provides GPS service, 
but according to a new Government Accountability Office report, 
technical problems, leadership lapses and contractor woes have 
combined to put things way behind schedule

. "As a result," said the report, "the current IIF satellite 
program has overrun its original cost estimate by about $870 
million and the launch of its first satellite has been delayed to 
November 2009 — almost three years late."

The problem is that the GPS system needs a constellation of at 
least 24 satellites to deliver complete coverage and accurate 
results, and some of the birds now flying have been up there 
almost 20 years. If they start to fail before replacements are up, 
GPS accuracy will start to deteriorate

. As things stand, the report concluded, "it is uncertain whether 
the Air Force will be able to acquire new satellites in time to 
maintain current GPS service without interruption. If not, some 
military operations and some civilian users could be adversely 
affected." According to the GAO, the estimated long-term 
probability of maintaining at least 24 operational satellites 
falls below 95 percent during fiscal year 2010 and remains below 
95 percent until the end of fiscal year 2014, at times falling to 
about 80 percent. The potential effects are broad: interruptions 
and delays in intercontinental air traffic, imprecise locations 
for response to Enhanced-911 calls, dumb and deadly mistakes by 
smart weapons, and, of course, errors across the range of consumer 
uses, from cars to all those clever smartphone apps. You didn't 
already toss those old tattered and misfolded maps from the glove 
compartment, did you?

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