Global Positioning System Quotes (2 quotes)
In our daily lives, we enjoy the pervasive benefits of long-lived robotic spacecraft that provide high-capacity worldwide telecommunications; reconnaissance of Earth’s solid surface and oceans, with far-reaching cultural and environmental implications; much-improved weather and climatic forecasts; improved knowledge about the terrestrial effects of the Sun’s radiations; a revolutionary new global navigational system for all manner of aircraft and many other uses both civil and military; and the science of Earth itself as a sustainable abode of life.
In 'Is Human Spaceflight Obsolete?', Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 2004).
The acquired [space exploration] technology has immediately been aimed at practical and profitable applications: worldwide communications, global positioning systems for ships and aircraft, and remote sensing to better know our planet and monitor its resources and to trace migrations of whales, fish, and birds. Unfortunately, it is now almost monopolized by the military.
Written for 'Foreword' to Kevin W. Kelley (ed.), The Home Planet (1988), paragraph 5 (unpaginated).
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
