One System, Two Narratives - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 61

1973 Labor Day Conference
At Spring Hill Motel - Baileys Crossroads
Compromise Reached
Air Force to Manage Program Using Navy
Technology, i.e.
Medium Altitude Circular Orbits, Passive
Ranging with Satellite Atomic Clocks
Fig. 4.4. Holmes's presentation on gps origins, slide 13. This reproduction of a transpar-
ency used in a presentation by Capt. David Holmes references a meeting at the Spring
Hill Motel at Bailey's Crossroads in Virginia, where Navy representatives recommended
that the Joint Program Office use the Timation system as the basis for gps. (Courtesy Dian
Moulin)
gps architecture so closely resembled what navseg members had already
agreed upon, crafting the specifications would not have required extensive
effort. “You could do it in half a day,” he said. “It wouldn't take a weekend.” 22
Whichever viewpoint one accepts, it is clear that after the Labor Day 1973
weekend, the gps system proposal reached a formulation with enough perfor-
mance characteristics of the Timation system that Navy opposition ceased.
The media reported on the compromise, and military officials touted it.
The main elements of compromise involved the signal, the onboard atomic
clocks, and the orbital configuration. In a contentious exchange of letters to
the editor of a technical journal in 1985, Parkinson responded, “As Roger Easton
has noted, the Timation orbital configuration was, in fact, the basis for the
Navstar system design.” 23 But after the disagreement, Parkinson began assert-
ing that the orbits gps used were not the same orbits Timation used. Although
the Block i experimental satellites were placed into orbits at a higher angle of
inclination from the equator to facilitate testing and tracking, the Block ii oper-
ational satellites used the ifty-ive-degree inclination specified for Timation.