Navigation with a suitcase sized device that doesn't rely on hundreds of thousands of satellites? Honestly this sounds great.
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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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?
Why is hyperbole such a foreign concept on this webzone?
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.
GLONASS
Of all the acronyms they could have decided on, this was the correct choice.
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).
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Using quantum sensors, the company achieved ten times the accuracy of conventional satellite-based navigation systems, while maintaining the one nautical mile positioning accuracy.
Don't we use GPS accurate to within centimeters for construction?
I've played with GPS from several different directions. There are a lot of GPS receivers on the hobby electronics market that will offer that level of precision, but not accurately. The aviation wide area augmentation system significantly increases accuracy to the point it can be used for precision instrument approaches.
Yes and no. They often use GPS assisted by beacons. Those beacons are often set up using both high quality GPS but also surveying tools, and you might have seen markers in the ground on cities which was placed using very well calibrated tools so it has a well known very precise precision. Those beacons are easier to track for other machinery because they are so much closer so the radio signal is much clearer and angular precision is much better
High-end dual-frequency receivers ($$$) can do this, yes. But the earth's magnetic field is not controlled by any government or military entities. This is pretty big
Gravitational field. There's no way you could achieve this with the magnetic field.
I see what you mean. Yeah that's pretty cool then. And I guess it might be impossible to jam quantum GPS.
Username checks out.
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The trouble with Quantum Navigation is you might end up where you were trying to go, but at a random point in the past where you have to change history to put right something that once went wrong.
As long as you keep it below 88 miles per hour you'll be fine.
Great, now I know my velocity but I don't know where I am.
You might end up exactly where you want to be, and not want to be at the same time.
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Perfect for autonomous military robots.
I mean GPS was developed for precision munitions. They opened up to the public in 1996ish.
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“Quantum sensors can sense the tiniest of changes in the gravity or magnetic field and use a previously prepared map of these properties to determine their location. Since a quantum sensor does not need to receive or send a signal to an external device, it cannot be hacked or be spoofed by a fake incoming signal either. “ Very cool!
It's going to be missiles again isn't it?
It always is.
Don't these fields fluctuate in some currently not understood way?
*Cant be Non-magnetically hacked
You don't need to hack the quantum sensor. You'll hack the regular computer around the sensor.
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Here is the paper
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2608.25563
And here is the easier to read press release from Q-CTRL with less errors and ad block black screens.
Quantum nav... awww man, for a second I thought The Orville was back!
You poked a wound I didn't know i had.
The only significant word here is "quantum". This stuff is too expensive to be useful for anyone other than the military right now. Gravity maps are controlled information as well. Used for ballistic submarine missiles. The maps created by the military will never be made public. (It would look like a highway of where every vessel is or will be)The accuracy of satellite measurements is 3km, with physical topographic (sea/land) resolution at 1.2km. The long-term plan is to have these sensors traverse areas, record data, and then share it with a database. Even those maps are realistically only 300m~ in resolution. Compare that to GPS, which has a nominal resolution of 3m with 15 satellites, or about a foot, with a correction from ground relays. (I remember using a handheld device that would tell you how many you were connected to, and it stopped working once you were near a tree.) Gravimeters have been used by submarines since the 1980s.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.gpstest
You can see all the satellites in view from your phone
Too expensive, too big, and too military were all arguments for computers, radio (/radar), and GPS to never have widespread adoption.
It's a cool experiment/technology. Why so down?
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