On 23/08/2011 23:16, Tom Roberts wrote:
On 8/23/11 8/23/11 - 2:19 PM, Martin Brown wrote:
[about the GPS]
It could all have been done by iterative empirically fitted engineering
corrections without any understanding of why

Not a chance. Nobody would have given them several billion dollars on
the mere hope that it could be made to work.

They wouldn't know that it didn't work like classical Galilean dynamics
until after they had put it into orbit. Then there would be a witch hunt
to blame someone for the faulty design followed by some ad hock
engineering fixups empirically fitted to the residuals. Pretty much like
what happened to the Hubble Space Telescope myopia after launch.

The very first GPS satellite had a switch to disable relativity
corrections as demanded by the knuckle dragging electronic engineers who
as far as I can tell *still* for the most part do not understand
relativity at all. This appears to me to be a problem with electronics
engineering teaching rather than with the theory of relativity.

It is amazing that a century after Einstein's breakthrough we still have
so many people around that cannot understand why it is so elegant and
just how precisely it has been validated.

I reckon the Einstein haters should be deprived of GPS services.

Regards,
Martin Brown