Posted on 10/23/2013 5:09:58 AM PDT by Rebelbase
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal government is going into uncharted waters, deep-sixing the giant paper nautical charts that it has been printing for mariners for more than 150 years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Tuesday that to save money, the government will stop turning out the traditional brownish, heavy paper maps after mid-April.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Chart ping.
One of the few ACTUAL USEFUL PRODUCTS produced by the government, and they cut it.
Wanna bet USGS topo maps are next?
Do they charge anything for the charts? If they don’t, then maybe they should. If they do, and still lose money, then some private business should step in...
A private entity will start doing it and make money in the process - happens all the time ...
When the lights go out........... Sextant/protractor/compass. Just sayin’.
Yellowpages could save a LOT of money (and trees) if they stopped printing those monstrous sized phone books. Everybody uses their cell phones or computers to look up phone numbers and addresses now. I guess maybe its about the ad revenue that keeps them going...
Stupid! I always have paper charts as a backup.
Save your old charts they are going to be worth a lot of money.
Nowadays, most people instead use the on-demand maps printed by private shops, which are more up-to-date and accurate, Smith said.
Fedgov ought to be embarrassed, but it isn't.
THAT paid for 50 years' worth of dead trees ?
The Yellow Pages had an extortion racket before computers were ubiquitous. The phone company had a monopoly and weilded it to extort unconscionable rates on businesses, where exclusion for many businesses meant failure. A small tile company might have to pay out $6000 for a small one liner printed on newspaper stock. The end of the Yellow Pages ability to extort such payments is a Godsend to businesses, especially small businesses.
This is reasonable.
The feds still do “charting”, just don’t provide the paper. Private enterprise comes into play to use the federales chart data, to provide whatever the public wants to pay for: table apps, paper, books, etc.
Similar is occurring in aviation. I no longer buy the paper charts for flying... an ipad app is all I need, and is “legal” to fulfill chart access regs. An older paper version as backup would suffice in a pinch.
Aviation charts were getting VERY expensive, what with being current you had to purchase a new set every few months (depended on the type of chart... some were every 56 days).
They’re still going to offer print on demand charts and PDF charts.
Even if they are there, all GPS satellites & electronic navigation aids tell you is WHERE you are, not WHAT ELSE is where you are, i.e., reef, shoals, rocks, channels, wrecks, navigation buoys, etc. Charts of some type, either paper or electronic, are essential.
Once the data is collected to make an electronic chart, essentially all that you have to do is hit the PRINT button. It is the collection of the data that is complex and expensive. Printing that data on paper is relatively simple. The cost of that printing & subsequent distribution can be passed directly to the purchaser.
Of course, turning the whole process over to one or more private companies, say Garmin or Jeppesen (for Air Navigation Charts), might be the best thing to do. Or we could buy them from the British Admiralty... or the Chinese.
However, there is one problem left. Once the business of charting is privatized and NOAA shut down, what wll they do with NOAAs SWAT teams and their share of the 1.6 billion rounds of ammo?
Not to mention dead reckoning !
That and the cost of producing the books is rolled into the rate base.
Perhaps as a historical artifact. Underwater topography changes all the time. Tides, currents, storms, and other factors change what the bottom looks like. Therefore, those old charts have limited usefulness. Might be better than nothing if your electronics fail.
How does this save money. They don’t give away these charts for free.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.