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Study Finds that a GPS Outage Would Cost $1 Billion Per Day

posted by Fnord666 on Monday June 17 2019, @12:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the gig-economy-would-collapse dept.

upstart writes in with a submission, via IRC, for Bytram.

Study finds that a GPS outage would cost $1 billion per day:

Since becoming fully operational in 1995, Global Positioning System technology has become widely adopted in the United States and abroad. The concept of satellite-based navigation has become so essential that other world powers, including China, Russia, the European Union, India, and Japan, have all started building their own regional or global systems.

Now, one of the most comprehensive studies on the subject has assessed the value of this GPS technology to the US economy and examined what effect a 30-day outage would have—whether it's due to a severe space weather event or "nefarious activity by a bad actor." The study was sponsored by the US government's National Institutes of Standards and Technology and performed by a North Carolina-based research organization named RTI International.

[...] In the case of some adverse event leading to a widespread outage, the study estimates that the loss of GPS service would have a $1 billion per-day impact, although the authors acknowledge this is at best a rough estimate. It would likely be higher during the planting season of April and May, when farmers are highly reliant on GPS technology for information about their fields.

[...] "GPS came along at a time of significant evolution in the telecom sector and played a critical role in the digitization of telecom infrastructure and the advent of wireless technology," the study states. "Wireless technology continues to evolve in ways that increase its reliance on highly precise timing, which in turn increases reliance on GPS. Multiple technological trends—from autonomous cars to the internet of things—will be stretching wireless technology to new limits in the coming years."

The study is likely to increase public calls for improved safety and security of the US GPS system, which the Air Force continues to modernize with its new fleet of GPS III satellites. The first of these new satellites, offering positioning and timing information with three times better accuracy and heightened anti-jamming capabilities, launched on a Falcon 9 rocket in December.

That's about $275,000 per minute or $11,500 per second.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday June 17 2019, @08:25PM (1 child)

    by Rupert Pupnick (7277) on Monday June 17 2019, @08:25PM (#856783) Journal

    Dude, that really is serious hobby purposes. In my ham radio days I used to use WWV for setting the shack timepiece. You’ve taken that to a whole new dimension!

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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Friday June 28 2019, @11:21AM

    by VLM (445) on Friday June 28 2019, @11:21AM (#860900)

    In "the old days" that setup would have cost $1000 back when I was poor, so now that I'm not, and I just checked ebay and GPSDO kits are available from $90, its kinda hard to resist. Distribution amps seem to run about $100.

    There's no point in owning a nice spectrum analyzer with tracking filter if there's nothing connected to the 10 Mhz input... ditto my frequency counter, DDS RF/function generator, etc.