Episode
GPS: The $2 Million a Day Service You Use for Free
- Podcast
- Smile with Daniel
- Published
- Jul 20, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 437
- Processing state
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- https://rss.com/podcasts/smile-with-daniel/3005294
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Summary
Daniel uses GPS every day. He has never paid for it. And he just realized that someone must be paying for all those satellites. Someone is. The US government spends around two million dollars a day maintaining the GPS system. And you use it for free. Every time you ask your phone for directions, check your location, or track a delivery -- you are using a network of about thirty satellites orbiting twenty thousand kilometers above Earth, owned and operated by the US military, and broadcasting continuously without ever charging you a cent. Here is how it actually works. Each GPS satellite broadcasts two pieces of information -- who it is, and exactly what time it is. Your phone picks up signals from several satellites at once. Because each signal takes a slightly different amount of time to reach your phone depending on distance, your phone can calculate exactly where it must be for all those timing differences to make sense. It is geometry, solved in real time. And your phone never sends anything back to the satellites. It only receives. Which is why GPS works even when you have no cell service. As Daniel puts it -- it is basically a radio station. Except it is about thirty satellites and it tells you where you are. GPS was developed in the 1970s for military use -- guiding missiles, navigating ships and troops. Civilians were not originally part of the plan. Then in 1983, a Korean Air passenger plane strayed off course and was shot down over Soviet airspace. All 269 people on board were killed. That tragedy helped convince the US government that civilians should eventually have access to GPS too. President Reagan announced it would be made available for peaceful civilian use once the system was fully operational. But there was a catch. For years, the military deliberat…