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Comment by ortusdux | Hacker News Reader

I've been wondering how precise Starlink could get with positioning if they put some effort into it. Maybe add some dedicated hardware to the much larger 2.0 batch of satellites. If they felt they could surpass what is available via GPS, I could see them integrating Starlink uplinks into Teslas to aid their self-driving efforts. Adding always on data would be a bonus.

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More precision would require an atomic (hydrogen or cesium) clock on each satellite, and periodic adjustments for relativistic effects, just like regular GPS and other GNSS systems.

An intermediate improvement might be a small/lightweight rubidium clock synced to GPS to improve stability for when GPS is unavailable to the satellite.

Yes! This could be so exciting. Given that starlink satellites are much more numerous and much closer than GPS satellites, I wonder what the lower bounds are for possible accuracy. Imagine a globally available positioning system with 1cm accuracy and 30 updates per second... (compared to 1 time per second for GPS) This could be a revolution for VR, robotics, logistics and so many other fields.

And for cruise missiles.

(Maybe you should read why GPS is not more accurate: it's not a technical limitation, it's done on purpose.

Also try to read up on Chesterton's Fence.)

This changed over 20 years ago, GPS no longer has artificial limitations for accuracy.

You can't get commercial GPS receivers licenced unless you restrict the altitude and speed they operate at, but a dedicated self-built receiver technically doesn't need to have these restrictions. There are SDR+software projects that do this, which could technically be used for ICBM guidance with no restrictions.

The restrictions are for high speed and high altitude, not accuracy. You can use the GPS module at full accuracy if you aren't really high or going really fast. Model (high-powered) rocketry trackers occasionally run into this, but usually not an issue since you need the location data to find where it lands, and it's going pretty slow under chute.

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