Small airplanes flying today already are equipped with sophisticated gear that just a few years ago was available only to airline or military pilots: terrain warning systems, synthetic vision, direct GPS navigation, and more.

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In fact, most of the value-added uses for space today (GPS navigation, communications, direct broadcast TV and Radio, weather, photography and mapping) owe little to the Apollo program.

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Though direct revenues alone would not make Galileo profitable, adding in the indirect economic gains resulting from better navigation of land, sea and air vehicles would produce a benefit-to-cost ratio of as much as 4.6 to 1.

ECONOMIST: Space race | The