“Ron Hatch, the man who holds most of the patents on GPS, says that relativity is a bunch of bullshit and worse, that GPS works entirely on Newtonian physics and that, were you to try to make it work on Einsteinian physics, it would not work. “
That is not exactly what he said.
Directly to the point, he DOES NOT say that it works entirely on Newtonian physics!
Newtonian physics is just an approximation of Relativity. At slow speeds, Einstein’s special relativity equations of motion are approximated by Newton’s equations. You don’t need Einstein’s equations for GPS, but they would make it more accurate. Relativity has been proven mathematically, and empirically, time and time again. Newton can get you to the moon, work on GPS, and is find in our every day life, but it gives the wrong answers at higher speeds. One day we will have a solar system positioning system and it will require relativity to be accurate.
Newtonian physics is just an approximation of Relativity. At slow speeds, Einstein’s special relativity equations of motion are approximated by Newton’s equations. You don’t need Einstein’s equations for GPS, but they would make it more accurate. Relativity has been proven mathematically, and empirically, time and time again. Newton can get you to the moon, work on GPS, and is find in our every day life, but it gives the wrong answers at higher speeds. One day we will have a solar system positioning system and it will require relativity to be accurate.