i do not believe the government will let this fail due to the fact that if it does fail they will not be able to use it either and they need it for war and other information. If they ever did happen to let this go i think our government the U.S. government is pry the stupidest in the world

I wouldn't notice any change right away; if it caused an increase in the costs of goods and services, eventually I'd feel it, but I still rely on good old reliable paper maps that show which routes are seasonal and which are year-round, and maps don't ever run out of battery power, so I can find my away around any time.

If it failed, the delivery truck will actually look for my address, rather that what his machine is telling him.

Not to sound like a conspiracy nut here but, I imagine the government has written code to give themselves a higher priority than the "normal" citizens.

Current *GPS* that comes with your mobile phones isn't satelite based - is it? It is done by trianglulation from local towers.

The places on earth where the US armed forces need constant, reliable gps service aren't in competition with service over most of the United States. No conspiracy there.

It's amazing to me that so many people freak out when technology begins to "fail." I understand there may not have been as many roads back in the day, but I'm sure civilization would continue just fine without citizens having a GPS just like it did in the old days.

@Shortcake, Yes, and civilization would continue just fine without citizens having TV, computers, microwaves, cars, and cell phones. That doesn't mean people wouldn't care if they went away.

We should have been preparing for this ten years ago. I would hope that our government doesn't let our GPS system but with the way the Obama administration is making highly unessesary cut backs my gamins gonna be useless in a year.

I'm a pilot and well... if GPS fails... then we wont beable to do a GPS RNAV approach... which by the way unless you are using WAAS is not a precision approach. ILS is precision and in my opinion more fun.

I can't imagine it'd cost more to maintain the GPS system than it would to replace all the JDAM smart bombs in the USAF arsenal (not to mention the plethora of other weapons and tactics that rely on GPS).

This ranks pretty low on my "s*** to worry about" list.

TearEmUp, GPS works through the satellites continually broadcasting signals. The part most people call 'a GPS' is just a receiver and has no communication with the satellites (just reception). Being radio signals anyone can receive there isn't any way to give the military (or anyone else) priority.

There is a way for the military to encrypt part of the signal (or even completely encrypt the signal, I believe) the signal so that civilian units are less accurate called 'applied error' but that isn't really a matter of giving anyone higher priority.

As far as 'oh no, the system is going to fail!' the system is designed so that you can calculate your position with only 4 satellites. There are 31 active satellites in orbit right now so you will typically have between 8 and 10 overhead. There are also 2 old satellites in orbit that are past their lifetimes and so are turned off but which could be reactivated if it really became necessary.

I suspect the delay for the launch of the two new satellites is because the original scheduling of the launch is something akin to the 'check engine' light in a car that goes on at preset intervals. It's scheduled maintenance that should get done but if the car is running absolutely fine and finances are tight at the moment there no real harm in putting it off for a bit.

Once again, labrat is quite right. What I don't get is that as far as I know, the companies that are making a fortune off selling GPS equipment paid absolutely nothing for the satellites. Why doesn't the US government demand they kick in a portion of their proceeds to maintain the system? It wouldn't take much at all on each device sold for the government to have more than enough to maintain and improve the system. Really, how many people would mind if they were told there was a $1 or $2 surcharge when they bought the device to go towards the satellites?

The problem with the idea of having the companies that make GPS receivers pay the government is that there would be no way to make companies operating outside of America pay. Given the ability of individuals to use the internet to place orders to different countries such a fee would only hurt the ability for American companies to compete.

you do it on the american maps, which america does control or you encode the signal and make them buy the decoder, it wouldnt be hard to do if they wanted to

Adding extra encryptions would just increase the overhead and inefficiency of the system not to mention probably delay the reaction time. Despite going that route would most likely result in GPS "piracy" which would result in "needed" constant upgrades to the system to thwart the circumventions that will arise, resulting in ever increasing costs for using GPS.

The companies that make GPS receivers do pay the govt. It's called the corporate tax. BTW, you paid that tax when you bought your GPS device.

Both the Chinese and the Russians have GPS jamming weapons systems. That is why DOD is developing a whole new GPS system. If all the GPS devices fail you'll know the Taiwanese war has begun.

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