Comments on: Air Force: No, GPS Will Not Fail

By: JDoors

JDoors — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:23:02 +0000

@J.Stagner: “JDoors – What rock have you been under. …”

My B.S. detector defaults to the “on” position so any innuendo that the system might “fail” must not have registered.

By: Sidney Mathious

Sidney Mathious — Fri, 22 May 2009 07:15:22 +0000

The satellites are old and they will malfunction over time and the Air Force is correct in my opinion to have them replaced before they completely quit working. The thing is how much is the government willing to spend on this to prevent the total colapse of GPS service.

The satellites which is strickly for governmental use will be their first priority, since they are used by all military, and agencies like NASA. Secondarily are satellites which is used by governmental and civilian agencies which make money for the government, and corporations. The question is who will pay for the satellites we use today and pay companies for. Will money from corporations be put into upgrading the system and where did all the money go to which the government got from civilian agencies who pay for usage of the satellites already in space. I know that they knew that someday the units will have to be replaced.

By: memory foam

memory foam — Fri, 22 May 2009 03:42:44 +0000

JDoors is right, though, that the Air Force did not address the question of possible occasional failures and inaccuracies. If this occurs it could actually be worse than the entire system collapsing–at least in the latter case one knows where things stand. Whereas if inaccuracies sprung up on a more random basis one could get wrong info without suspecting it.

I agree though that there’s a good chance the Air Force will end up taking care of the problem.

By: J.Stagner

J.Stagner — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:04:01 +0000

JDoors – What rock have you been under. all the networks have been using “the sky is falling” as headlines and teasers about GPS. Even PC World had an article yesterday about whether or not it was worth buying a new GPS because of the supposed certain failure next year. (The same author wrote an article using the twitter forum for AFSpace with a positive outlook)

Food for thought….

By: JDoors

JDoors — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:33:02 +0000

“No, the GPS will not go down.”

Typical: Answering a question no one asked.

I’ve read the stories in several outlets and never got the impression the system was on the verge of collapse. It was always clear that there was the potential for accuracy to be affected.

Did I miss all the doom-and-gloom reporting?