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This was incredibly informative, thank you.

How automated are the control segment operations? After the zombie apocalypse, if the power grid is still up, will I still be able to use my GPS?



I assume it's quite heavily automated. Certainly, organisations like IGS [1] operate reference networks where most of the base stations run unattended - you buy something like a Leica GR25, connect up the antenna, power and ethernet, and let it get on with things. I don't know whether the upload-to-satellite process is 100% automated - I assume the 50th Space Wing [2] finds something to occupy their time! And naturally base stations need some maintenance [6]

Even if the entire control segment is lost, the designers of GPS are way ahead of you - although I suspect rather than thinking of zombies they were thinking of nuclear war with the USSR.

You can predict orbits in advance - but the results become less accurate the further out you try to predict. According to [3] we can predict 7 days out and get a range error of 10m, and 28 days out with a range error of 100m.

Some of these longer-term predictions are uploaded to the satellites in advance; I've heard 14 days [4] and 60 days [5] quoted.

TLDR: Designed to be accurate enough that your submarine can pop up 14 days later and nuke Moscow. After a few months, all bets are off.

[1] http://www.igs.org/network/netindex.html [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50th_Space_Wing [3] http://www.gdgps.net/products/predicted-orbit.html [4] http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/snap/gps/gps_survey/chap3/333.ht... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_signals#Data_updates [6] http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/pipermail/igsstation/2014/thread.h...


Wow, I didn't know the whole system is so fragile. I wonder if it would be technically possible to have the satellites control themselves by measuring passive fixed points on the earth surface, although I suspect the current system is optimized for cost (weight and ease of upgrade).




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