I've always wondered - if special and general relativity weren't known, could the GPS engineers have just measured the error and empirically accounted for it? I don't know relativity or GPS or engineering well enough to answer.

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womble2 an hour ago | parent [-]

It's possible, but it seems more likely that the first tests would have shown "weird timing errors we couldnt diagnose" and then the project never got a follow up.

	▲	creata 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		For something so militarily useful? When the Soviet Union was still seen as a threat to the US? When it was already so expensive anyway? I guess it's possible, but it's hard to believe they'd just give up like that.