It's amazing how far we've come in a few decades - the article says they started testing the CDMA system on the ground in New Mexico less than 50 years ago. 20 years ago "Garmin" was a noun that meant "fancy mapping/navigation device". Today you have a global map in your pocket, you can buy $10 modules to use the constellation, and 1:24000 scale geospatial data is free for the asking from the USGS.
One of my favorite parts of the Woodford/Nakamura report mentioned in the article is that when they list the ideal requirements a new system should satisfy, they say that receivers should be cheap and portable.
Their threshold for cheap and portable was "Less than 100 pounds, less than $100,000". Definitely shows how far we've come.
> I wonder how we'll be navigating 50 years from now.
Hopefully using OpenStreetMap :D
To think you can download a 48.1 GB PBF-compressed file [1] and get a map of just about every trail and built structure that exists* for free and store it on an SD card the size of a fingernail - it just blows my mind.
* There is better coverage in Western countries unfortunately
Yes, OpenStreetMaps is an excellent resource. But again, at least in the United States, a lot of that information is actually sourced from the USGS which puts a lot of effort into providing accurate geographic information for free. You've been able to get "USGS quad sheets", PDFs, and database files with that information for quite some time.
Maybe that sort of extensive government support has something to do with the better coverage in some Western nations...and in practice, OSM doesn't provide a fundamentally different experience from other mapping/navigation devices/apps.
https://www.usgs.gov/core-science-systems/national-geospatia...
I wonder how we'll be navigating 50 years from now.