Loran C off the air

[Patrick Strasser]

schrieb bbruhns at erols.com am 2010-08-12 15:58:
> But probably the breakdown of the satellite systems will not be sudden or immediate.

Disaster Management is nothing about systems failing gardualy within 
months or years.
The real problem is sudden fail. And you have to be very carefull about 
the words "disaster" and "probably" accuring in one sentence. When very 
bad things happen suddenly, you may call it a disaster - If it was not 
so bad or not so sudden, you would call it by an other name. The really 
bad thing about it is that nobody knows in advance to prepare.

A disaster for GPS would be a feard solar storm. Sun is getting very 
active these months, and satellite operators hate that. In case of an 
ionic storm, satellites are maybe failing. We saw electric networks 
going out of service due to a ionic storm within minutes. Imagine what 
happens if GPS would stop working _now_. And there is no chance to get 
the system woring again withing minutes. It's rather months to years.

Galileo, Glonass and the others (Chinese, Indian systems) are no backup 
in that scenario, as these are satellite based as well and have the same 
hazards.

Patrick
-- 
Engineers motto: cheap, good, fast: choose any two
Patrick Strasser OE6PSE <oe6pse at wirklich priv at>