this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
594 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
87680 readers
3072 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Navigation with a suitcase sized device that doesn't rely on hundreds of thousands of satellites? Honestly this sounds great.
You think there are hundreds of thousands of GPS satellites in orbit?
Not even thousands
Not even hundreds
Try 31
You're literally off by a factor of 3225
Hundred of thousands of satellites? Are you on mushrooms or something?
So, for anyone else who became curious after this exchange:
I tried to look up how many there actually are. It's hard to give a single number, since there are many different ways to count them, but vaguely speaking it's in the range of dozens to a few hundred. GPS specifically has had 83 satellites built, of which 31 are currently operational, but most of the others still exist, they're just parked in a higher orbit for retirement. There's also GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, and IRNSS/Navic. QZSS and IRNSS don't have as many satellites, and the rest are kinda roughly similar in number (e.g. GLONASS has had 146 built and 24 currently operational).
So yeah. Nowhere near hundreds of thousands. Even Starlink, which now comprises more than half of the total satellites of any kind in orbit, has only about 10,000.
Of all the acronyms they could have decided on, this was the correct choice.
Why is hyperbole such a foreign concept on this webzone?
Let me guess you think GPS alone can track someone.
It’ll get scuttled by the intelligence community so they can use it in the intelligence community.
Wait until you hear about compasses and maps!
In the middle of the ocean? Wouldn't that require a sextant, night time, and a lot of expertise?
Wait until you hear about inertial navigation!
And an extremely accurate clock (depending on how accurate you want your location to be).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer
All you really need is to see the Jovian eclipses.