Clarification about the term "GPS Shutdown"

Oops, I retract my prior blub, blub comments -- didn't notice
the "E".

 

Where do you live? Where I work, people in wheelchairs are
assigned a couple or three people whose defined duty is to evacuate
the person in the wheelchair, leaving the wheelchair behind.

 

Until there's a much larger installed base, I doubt that
failure of auto navigation will be all that big an issue. 95% of the
male population still refuses to stop to ask for directions.

Plaintive question from my mother-in-law -- Bill, if we're
going home from Monterey to San Francisco, what's the ocean doing on
my side of the car?

 

Which, according to the document in question, the US
government intends to shut down as well (given the capability, which
they will try to acquire) -- it's that short phrase containing the
word "similar" or "other".

 

As long as he stays at the same latitude and departs from the right
point, it's easy enough to do. Mariners have been doing it for
centuries. The continents of Europe and the Americas are hard to miss
if you sail due east or west on the Atlantic. But changing longitude is
a different matter, unless you have a good clock.

 

It just gets darker, especially with all that overcast hiding the
moonlight.

All I see is clouds.

 

But you don't know it's noon until it changes direction, and that can
take hours.

 

I use a simple GPS to drive around open countryside by car, at night, in
an overcast. It consistently works extremely well, and the problem of
meeting obstacles is not so great as you suppose. Even when I come
across a river, I just follow the shore until I find a bridge. The
greater the overall distance, the smaller the necessary detours tend to
become. And in many cases a GPS has showed me a more direct route to my
destination than I would have determined from a map.

 

Some pilots are ruled by reason rather than emotion--especially those
who manage to survive in a crisis.

If terrorists are a subset of civilians, then how can stopping GPS have
a significant crippling effect on terrorists without having the same
effect on all other civilians?

I'll believe my eyes.

I agree.

 

Wet trees should not be too much of a problem. And neither a map nor a
compass will tell you where you are.

 

This is based on procedures for the U.S.

So they can all die together. As long as everyone else has been
evacuated, no problem. But killing half the passengers just to get a
wheelchair-bound person out of the plane is completely irrational, and
that's why it isn't done.

 

At worst, to the source of the tramsmission.

 

Often != always, nor even frequently.

Read up on how pre-flight fuel loads are calculated.

 

We _ in particular, you_, don't know exactly how GPS would be
"turned off. So you're just pulling total catastrophe scenarios out of
your butt, with zero knowledgr of how it would be turned off and
precious little knowledgre of other relevant issues. Like how often a
map and compass fail, relative to how often GPS units fail.

Note that not remembering how a GPS unit works led one person
to call in an air strike on his own position -- not likely with map
and compass.

Note also that GPS units are capable of frequent anomalous
readings, like a person bicycling east in Scotland having his unit
suddenly showing hom heading west at 50K feet and 400mph over the
south Pacific.

 

And they should be aware that the US will do whatever is
required to make sure they can disable Galileo at the same time as
GPS. Please re-read the directive where it includes other, similar
systems.

 

Ask the homeless in the US. Or anyone who voted for Kerry.

 

They are each "primary" as conditions dictate.Your feet may be
primary in moving you toward an unseen object; within visual range,
your eyes become primary; within reach, to pick it up, your hand
becomes primary.

 

And how can we have primary elections in many states?

 

How likely is it this compared to all engines quitting at the
same time? In any case, the discussion here is about the primacy of
GPS, which would likely stop working at the same time as the rest of
your doomsday scenario. It would likely take a total loss of
electrical power, which likely entails loss of usefulness of all
control surfaces.

 

As has been stated, you decrease the density. Just out of
curiosity, what exact length of full, worldwide shutdown of GPS are
you assuming for your crackpot scenarios? One hour, day, month,
decade? If you want all of the above, you'd be better off planning how
you'll survive the catastrophe in your own house on the ground.