NavList:

Yes Frank lobbyists are a tricky subtle lot with too much influence and if I may continue with your metaphor they poach halibut with impunity. Unfortunately this leads to misallocation of resources when it comes to important infrastructure such as GPS.  I do not think the current GPS systems are robust enough to stand alone without  terrestrial back-up. LORAN should have been left in place until a better GPS back-up system is online ( improved signal strength with EMP resistance would be nice ). I do realize sending stuff into space is by the ounce expensive but it does seem that Moore's law is still at work making things smaller, lighter, and more affordable every year. I trust engineers to get it done but not the politicians to properly budget for it.

Greg Rudzinski

From: Frank Reed
Date: 2017 Nov 28, 14:26 -0800

Having lifted the curtain and shown the sleazy lobbyists behind that little commentary piece in the WSJ, let me make clear that there are plenty of interesting issues to discuss here regarding LORAN and eLoran and various issues for GPS, manual navigation, and modern electronic navigation. And just because the "article" was a joke and its authors clowns, that's no strike against the messenger or the issue. In particular, Greg Rudzinski certainly isn't gullible, but also that doesn't change the fact that he got conned in this case. Happens to the best of us, yes?

So should LORAN be resurrected? Was it wrong to kill it off years ago? Or was it reasonable and inevitable?? Isn't there anything better today that can serve as a proper adjunct to GPS? And what about the other GNSS satellite systems?? Do we tremble and chant "Carrington Event" like religious devotees when we contemplate them, too? Is NavList becoming a community of Luddites as time passes? Hell, maybe it's bigger than NavList! Technophobia is rampant... Is the western world about to be left behind by other countries more technologically forward-looking while we covet the past and worship our ancestors??

Setting aside such big-picture issues, how would we resurrect LORAN? What would it cost? Where would it work, and where would it be useless? Also, I've asked in the past about LEO satellite constellations serving as equivalents. A few comments here agreed that it would be incredibly, prohibitively expensive. And yet it already exists at a small fraction of the imagined cost, piggyback on the pre-existing Iridium satellite constellation. It's LORAN in the sky. So why don't we just buy that service? Seriously, why aren't users buying that service? And what of GPS spoofing? Can we defeat that in common handheld receivers like smartphones or would it require expensive new tech?

I have made this into a new thread so that we don't provide any further benefit to the lobbyists who created that WSJ piece. Any further comments under that subject will be automatically moved to this subject, where appropriate.

Frank Reed