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From: wdr@faron.UUCP (William D. Ricker)
Newsgroups: net.space
Subject: Re: effect of SDI
Message-ID: <268@faron.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 2-Apr-85 14:32:51 EST
Article-I.D.: faron.268
Posted: Tue Apr  2 14:32:51 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 5-Apr-85 11:04:45 EST
References: <1353@mordor.UUCP>
Reply-To: wdr@faron.UUCP (William D. Ricker)
Organization: The MITRE Coporation, Bedford, MA
Lines: 52
Summary: 

>From: redford%doctor.DEC@decwrl.ARPA  (John Redford)

>Let me provide one example in favor of military involvement and one against,
>and then throw the argument open.
 . . .

>An example against the military is the Navstar or GPS global navigation system.
>This is a satellite system that permits a foot soldier to find his position
>within ten meters anywhere in the world.  The military originally intended it
>for civilian use as well, but when they discovered just how good it would be,
>they changed the system so that only those with passwords could get its full
>accuracy.  From their point of view this action was entirely justified; they
>didn't want enemy soldiers to buy a $200 box from Magnavox and get the same
>benefits that our own people had.  The result, though, is that something that
>could be of enormous benefit to the American public has been denied to them.
 ***** ** ** ******** *******
>Civilian needs gave way before military ones.

John,

At least they're making a lower accuracy available to the public.  That
is revolutionarily open-minded for the military to begin with.
KAL-007 could have benefited from the
civilian-grade NAVSTAR receiver (assuming they weren't there
intentionally...).  I don't think a $200 receiver tied to a $1000
computer which translates Lat-Lon into street addresses qualifies as
"enormous benefit".  Could you explain to me why the American Public
needs military accuracy?

I wouldn't use 10m [your figure] GPS for landing an air-craft if I had
it.  I'm not sure what I'd use that granularity for; it won't tell me
which side of the street I'm on, or which way to the nearest foxhole,
but is much finer grain than I need to know which way is Cambridge, and
which sector of the map I'm on.  (If the map has features smaller than
10m, I'd ***** well better be able to figure out which one I'm on.)

In short, I don't see how limiting civilian use of GPS to lower resolution
(does anyone have figures for both modes they can publish?) has
cut off any potential uses THAT SERIOUSLY AFFECT THE PUBLIC GOOD.
I will agree, hypothetically, that to deny all GPS access would have
been very dog-in-the-manger, but they compromised.

Near as I can tell, we don't even HEAR about the technologies they're
really depriving us of.
-- 

  William Ricker
  wdr@faron.UUCP						(UUCP)
  decvax!genrad!linus!faron!wdr					(UUCP)
 {allegra,ihnp4,utzoo,philabs,uw-beaver}!linus!faron!wdr	(UUCP)

Opinions are my own and not necessarily anyone elses.  Likewise the "facts".