tryingtofigureoutwhereyouareandwhereyouregoingis.docVIP

Trying to figure out where you are and where youre going is probably one of mans oldest pastimes. Navigation and positioning are crucial to so many activities and yet the process has always been quite cumbersome. Over the years all kinds of technologies have tried to simplify the task but every one has had some disadvantage. Landmarks: Only work in local area. Subject to movement or destruction by environmental factors. Dead Reckoning: Very complicated. Accuracy depends on measurement tools which are usually relatively crude. Errors accumulate quickly. Celestial: Complicated. Only works at night in good weather. Limited precision. OMEGA: Based on relatively few radio direction beacons. Accuracy limited and subject to radio interference. LORAN: Limited coverage (mostly coastal). Accuracy variable, affected by geographic situation. Easy to jam or disturb. SatNav: Based on low-frequency doppler measurements so its sensitive to small movements at receiver. Few satellites so updates are infrequent. Finally, the U.S. Department of Defense decided that the military had to have a super precise form of worldwide positioning. And fortunately they had the kind of money ($12 billion!) it took to build something really good. Why did the Department of Defense develop GPS? In the latter days of the arms race the targeting of ICBMs became such a fine art that they could be expected to land right on an enemys missile silos. Such a direct hit would destroy the silo and any missile in it. The ability to take out your opponents missiles had a profound effect on the balance of power. But you could only expect to hit a silo if you knew exactly where you were launching from. Thats not hard if your missiles are on land, as most of them were in the Soviet Union. But most of the U.S. nuclear arsenal was at sea on subs. To maintain the balance of power the U.S. had to come up with a way to allow those subs to surface and fix their exact position in a matter of minutes anywhere in