Why Is GPS Free?

From reading the thread, I have a question that maybe HN knows the answer to. I feel like I haven&#x27;t had to do a cold start on new GPS chips in a really long time. Even in terrible sky conditions, I&#x27;ve never had to wait 12 minutes to download the almanac. Do chips just ship from the factory with this data, or is it not needed anymore. (I know about AGPS, but that&#x27;s not involved. This happens on receivers with no possible way of communicating to the outside world other than the serial port I&#x27;m reading navigation messages from.)<p>Even if I do a reset + cold start in u-center or similar, I still don&#x27;t have to wait 12 minutes. I wonder why.

Thought one: wow, the fact that this was asked on a subreddit called &quot;Ask Historians&quot; really makes me feel old.<p>Thought two: I&#x27;ve never considered how bizarre it is that GPS is an enormously expensive satellite constellation launched and maintained by the United States military that we make available for free to the entire world. As a US citizen I take it for granted - but it must be strange for someone to grow up in (for instance) Lebanon and use a GPS device.

Fundamentally because supporting one receiver costs the same as supporting an infinite amount of them, the rest is politics.

Because it&#x27;s one-way and predates the era of DRM. To charge for it (which the EU&#x27;s Galileo system originally planned to do), you need a crypto system, secure modules in receivers, a key distribution and billing system, and customer service. That could end up costing more than providing the service.

I&#x27;d trust the wiki entry [0] over Reddit comments.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Positioning_System" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Positioning_System</a>

It isn’t free. You paid for it. We all paid for it.

GPS is owned by US government and operated by US military [0]. And US military does not charge retail :-)<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Positioning_System" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Positioning_System</a>

History: America puts it up to help target ICBMs, etc. US taxpayers&#x2F;military give it away for free as a gesture of good will which also has political benefits.

Wasn’t SA killed because the algorithms defeating it became widely known and thus there wasn’t really any point to it?

I tho it’s paid for by American general tax. Is it not?

I&#x27;m surprised no one has mentioned that the a reason it&#x27;s free is that people will use it. If people had to pay for it then they might not leave it on, or use it as much, and as a result a lot of the mobile apps that harvest location data would be affected.

I dunno. Why is fire free?