Word: gps
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Hikers do it. Ambulance drivers do it. Even fighter pilots do it. Around the world, millions of people use the global positioning system, or GPS, to know where they are and where they're headed. The satellite-based navigation system has become an indispensable tool for everyone from cell-phone manufacturers to oil drillers, which explains why a government report on GPS released this month prompted a tide of concern. The Government Accountability Office warned of "significant challenges" to maintaining the system at full strength beginning as soon as next year, due to technical problems and delays...
...submarines. More than 10 satellites were eventually launched, though ground units had to wait up to several hours to pick up a signal. Meanwhile, engineers Ivan Getting and Bradford Parkinson began leading a Defense Department project to provide continuous navigation information, leading to the development of GPS (formally known as NAVSTAR GPS) in 1973. The military launched the first GPS satellite in 1978 and completed the system in 1995. GPS uses a "constellation" of 24 satellites orbiting 12,000 miles high, each circling the globe every 12 hours. The 2,000-lb satellites broadcast radio signals to Earth with information...
...GPS plays a major role in American military combat, guiding missiles and bombs to their destinations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. President Reagan opened the fledgling navigational system to nonmilitary uses in 1983 after Soviet fighter jets shot down Korean Air flight 007, a passenger jet that had accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace, killing all 269 on board...
Civilian demand for GPS products surged in 2000, when the military ended its practice of intentionally fuzzing the satellite's signals for security purposes. Overnight, navigation devices became 10 times more accurate and swiftly became standard equipment in a slew of industries, from commercial fishing to freight-hauling. Consumers have also rushed in as the size and price of GPS receivers have dropped; they're growing increasingly common in phones, wristwatches and even dog collars. Adventure seekers use GPS for a game called geocaching, a kind of satellite-based treasure hunt that currently boasts more than 800,000 active "caches...
...existence of a GPS system that keeps track of people's locations gets into the tricky moral issue of lying. Pre-GPS, people would tell lies about why they were late all of the time. There may not have been much harm in it, especially since it was hard to verify whether someone's claim was true. (See a story on GPS...