Solar storm and GPS (Global Positioning System)

[DemoTex]

I just talked with a good friend who is an Airbus A-320 captain. He lost both GPS systems a couple of days ago at the peak of the recent solar magnetic storm. He said that most of the GPS-equipped airliners in his airspace over western Colorado and Nevada lost their GPS systems, too. No big deal, really. Just back to the basics (VOR navigation).

However, it shows you what putting all your eggs in one technological basket can do. For example, I found SSB (single-sideband) on the 20 meter ham band very difficult during the solar storm. However, CW (keyed Morse code) punched through very well. Mother Nature vs. human technology ... Mother always wins!

[SmileyBoy]

1. This is why we can't put all our technological resources...

...into one type of system. We're gonna have to develop new processes of transmitting information in GPS, digital or whatever. Otherwise, we're gonna have all our shit fall apart if we get a storm like this again. Like you said, we can't put all our eggs in one basket.

[Maple]

2. oh puleeze

luddites have their own websites.

[SmileyBoy]

3. Uh.... Come again???

I don't think he was talking about anything crazy...

[Maple]

4. Mother wins every time?

And there is another GPS system.

Europe.

[DemoTex]

6. The old Soviet GPS constellation?

Doesn't provide any redundancy in a solar storm (not to mention it's incompatability with western data bus technology, as found on Boeing and Airbus aircraft).

[DemoTex]

5. Nothing Luddite about watching a system go down.

The GPS constellation of satellites is vulnerable to just this type of solar flux. Do you know anything about GPS? Have you ever used GPS in a commercial application (navigation, surveying, etc)? Have you ever tried to use SSB HF in a solar storm. Would you be comfortable on a ship with absolutey no CW (Morse code) capability in the cold dark North Atlantic? For that matter, are you comfortable with the fact that the only radio communications available to airlines on the long tracks (Atlantic and Pacific) is HF SSB? No, I'm wrong. I should have said the only radio communications system that the cheap bastards will buy is HF SSB.

I'm not a Luddite, I'm a realist. Been there, done that, and been scared as hell non-com in the middle of the North Atlantic.