Image: Shutterstock
What’s New: A 9 minute podcast from NPR’s Planet Money team.
Why It’s Important: It focuses on the economic impact of losing GPS which is a rare perspective, and how China and Russia have backup systems. Both important messages.
What Else to Know:
- The government study showing a $1B/day loss to the economy if GPS were not available is mentioned. As we often point out, that number is FAR TOO SMALL. Deceivingly so.
- The reporter says the foundation advocates for eLoran. Since the day we were founded we have advocated for the government to find and implement one or more solutions for a complement and backup for GPS. We been tech agnostic. eLoran has been mentioned a lot by the government and the advisory board over the last ten years, though. And we have supported the government taking action and all the recommendations the advisory board has made on any topic. So the reporter’s error is still an error, but understandable.
- We contacted the reporter, thanked him for a great podcast, and gently mentioned the two above items.
- RNTF President Dana A. Goward is featured on the podcast.
Could you live without GPS? It’s OK, the economy can’t, either
A recent survey found that nearly half of all Americans say they could not live without GPS in their car. The American economy couldn’t live without GPS, either! Clocks on Wall Street, commercial fishermen, and of course, your Lyft driver, all rely on satellite navigation services.
An outage in those services, however, would cripple the U.S. economy. A study found that an outage could cost at least $1 billion a day … and we don’t have a backup.
Today on the show, we explain who owns GPS and why we don’t have a Plan B if it fails.
