> You have to seek to find. Even if they are on the wrong track it's better to seek than not.
I guess this sentiment, which is seen throughout this thread, is my main objection to the whole thing. This is spiritualism, pure and simple. Science, no matter about what, is good, because it's science. We know this because of our history, and we embrace it like a totem.
What I wish is that we had a scientific mindset about our science, about determining what science is most useful, etc., but all I can see here are variations on the assumption that, if it's an expensive science project, it must be useful somewhere down the line.
The rational perspective is to look at history and realize that every attempt to predict long-term technological progress has gone laughably wrong. Lacking reason to believe we are now much better predictors, we should simply not allow our research efforts to be directed much by where we think they will lead.
Take the example of Vannevar Bush's memex, one of the most impressive attempts at technological prognostication. If you, during the 1930's and 40's, seriously believed in the potential of his ideas, would you have advocated for research into microfilm, or semiconductors? Or would you have dismissed the memex as science fiction too far out of reach to be used as a reasonable goal, when in reality it was less than half a century away? The man who best saw the value of the invention got all the implementation details wrong.
The basic underlying assumption is that more knowledge is inherently more valuable than less knowledge, even if you don't have a specific application in mind for that knowledge.
How many people could have forseen GPS recievers as a consequence of General Relativity?
How is the GSP receiver a consequence of GR (honest question)? I know internal clocks of the satellites have to compensate for time dilation, but to be honest I don't see why that couldn't have been 'fixed' with an empirical solution devoid of theoretical basis. After the first launch, of course.
I think the empirical solution would not be as straight-forward as you proclaim. Namely, because lacking any clear understanding of the science any number of theories might crop up that attempt to explain the perceived anomaly thus hindering efforts at finding a workable solution. Some of the emergent theories might actually lead to declaring outright that the concept is flawed and unsolvable.
On the other hand, having a clear conceptual framework allows these people to pin-point what areas might be causing problems. It allows for effort to be focused and justifies certain fixes. Especially in costly scenarios such as this one, where there might not have been a second launch given the failure of the first.
However, my limited knowledge of the problem precludes me from understanding if a simple 24 hour re-sync would address the underlying problem.
From what I do understand the accuracy/precision of the GPS system would be affected. I'm also inclined to believe that even with a regular re-synch, the overall usefulness of the system would be affected. As I don't believe the re-synch itself would be exempt from the underlying problem.
What I do know is that given our better conceptual framework we're able to leverage very precise location information; this leads to a more useful and productive GPS system than we would have otherwise.
Apologies - it's actually SR that's key to the whole idea (though GR corrections are also very important to the accuracy). Without the observed SoL being independent of the relative motion of the user and the satellites, the entire concept is pretty unworkable.
I guess this sentiment, which is seen throughout this thread, is my main objection to the whole thing. This is spiritualism, pure and simple. Science, no matter about what, is good, because it's science. We know this because of our history, and we embrace it like a totem.
What I wish is that we had a scientific mindset about our science, about determining what science is most useful, etc., but all I can see here are variations on the assumption that, if it's an expensive science project, it must be useful somewhere down the line.