
The Political Path to GPS: How war and peace forged the universal map - magda_wang
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-political-path-to-gps
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gandhium
I'd expected to see a mention of Korean Boeing that was shot down by Soviets,
which prompted Reagan to make GPS available for civilians. As in [0]

"President Reagan announced on September 16, 1983, that the Global Positioning
System (GPS) would be made available for civilian use, free of charge, once
completed in order to avert similar navigational errors in the future."

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007)

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maxxxxx
That's a nice example for a reasonable reaction from politics. Good to know!

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walrus01
I don't know how you can mention the history of GPS, politics, and not include
this:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007)

It was one of the biggest reasons why the military-only GPS system eventually
became available for civilian use.

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mrguyorama
Shouldn't it be called "Global" map? Not Universal?

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21
Just imagine if GPS was developed today. There would be widespread blaming of
programmers involved because "they are writing software for targeting missiles
used to kill people".

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mikeash
I’m not sure if those are supposed to be scare quotes or just the regular
kind, but just in case: that was exactly the original purpose of it, and not
just kill people, but kill hundreds of millions of them. I imagine the only
reason it didn’t get protests is because it was relatively obscure.

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nradov
The military side of GPS was more intended for killing retail rather than
wholesale. ICBMs and strategic bombers have always relied more on stellar and
inertial navigation since they knew they couldn't rely on GPS in a WWIII
scenario.

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mikeash
Nuclear weapons were a major use case. Ballistic missiles wouldn’t use GPS in
flight, but they need to know where they were launched from to a high degree
of accuracy. That’s easy for ICBMs in silos, but a major problem otherwise.
GPS greatly improves the accuracy of SLBMs and mobile ICBMs (which we never
actually fielded, but that was the idea).

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nradov
Do you have a citation for that? SLBMs are launched submerged so I don't see
how GPS would work.

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21
At some point the rocket is out of water.

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nradov
The missile accelerates so quickly that once you factor in the lag time for
obtaining an accurate GPS fix without current ephemeris data it would be
effectively useless.

