Sounds like what used to be called
inertial navigation and was used
on the US SSBN (intercontinental
ballistic missile firing submarines)
before the Navy's version of the
later USAF's GPS.
Inertial navigation was good enough to be
quite useful before the Navy's version
of GPS.
The Navy's version of GPS was done, at least
started, at the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL).
They had a receiver on the roof, and it
routinely navigated itself to within
a foot.
I heard about that project because for
a while I was doing applied math
(the fast Fourier transform, power
spectral estimation) and writing software
in the JHU/APL group that did the
orbit determination calculations
for the satellites.
That project was a good example of how
to do the technical side of a very
ambitious project:
(1) Problem. The US Navy very much needed
a means of navigation for the SSBNs.
(2) One or a few physics guys at the
JHU/APL had an idea, of course, in terms
of Doppler shifts from several satellites,
etc., on the back of an envelope.
(3) Not much later, the project was approved.
Biggie Huge Project Point: Not long after
the back of the envelope solution, the
whole project was low risk and high payoff
with, really, only routine, low risk
work remaining.
Lesson 1: The problem sponsors were able
to evaluate the project just on paper.
Lesson 2: After a good evaluation just
on paper, the rest of the project was
low risk and high payoff.
Lesson 3: The Navy did not say: You
do the work, put up the satellites,
show that it all works, and we will
buy receivers for each of the dozen
or so SSBNs.
For Silicon Valley: Want to do great
projects, low risk, high ROI? Part of
what you need to be able to do is to
evaluate projects just on paper.
Of course, what evaluates well just on
paper is mostly just the technical part.
But start with a biggie problem so that
clearly, obviously, no evaluation, no
customer feedback needed, the first good or a
much better solution is a must-have and
not just a nice-to-have and where, due to
the size of the problem
(e.g., number of happy people times
earnings per person), for financial
success all that is left is that first good or
much better solution and that is just
technical and can be evaluated just on paper.
This way of doing projects is much of why the
US has GPS, why the US Navy has it's version of GPS, why
in WWII Patton at the Battle of the Bulge
praised the US proximity fuse (a little
radar set inside an artillery shell that
told the shell when to explode -- great for
exploding near an airplane or over the
heads of troops) from the JHU/APL,
the SR-71, the F-117 (Saddam, sorry
you spent all that money on air defense --
all of it never put even on scratch on
even one F-117).
Ah, Silicon Valley will never do that, not
now!