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E.U. Agrees To Launch Galileo Satellite Location System
waimate writes "The European Union today decided to go ahead with Galileo, the constellation of 30 satellites which will compete with the U.S. GPS system.
The U.S. abolished selective availability three years ago partly to make GPS more useful for all mankind, but also to dissuade other countries from developing their own navigational satellite system, and thus be dependant on the U.S. for both peaceful and military purposes. Since the demise of the Russian GLONASS system, GPS is the only game in town. Evidently recent events make Europe feel less comfortable about such things, and so they're building their own. Good thing for commercialization of space, or bad thing for world peace?"
A receiver compatible with both systems could provide increased accuracy over either alone. Even though current GPS is accurate enough for my practical demands, I want more for nerd reasons. I remember speculation on using both GLONASS and GPS signals several years ago with the idea of improving both reliability and accuracy.
Galileo has been in the planning for quite a while, and will as far as I can tell be compatible and possibly linked with the US GPS system.
The Galileo homepage, in english.
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The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
Not the army.
Galileo is --in theory-- much more accurate than GPS. You probably don't want your airliner to risk missing the runway by a couple of meters in thick fog. Galileo will give QoS guarantees and greater precision, which will make it a viable solution for critical systems such as air-traffic control. But I have no clue what the current plans are to enforce the policy that it should be a civilian-only system.
The main problem with accuracy is the timing circuitry in the receiver. Most receivers now are accurate to a few nanoseconds, which happens to be the time it takes light (or GPS signals) about 1 foot, so 10-20 ft accuracy is typical (at least in my experience). Other than timing issues, atmospheric heating would cause inaccuracy.
The protocol of the satellites is hardly improvable, except maybe increasing the frequency of transmissions to more than 1 per second.
Catapultam habeo. Nisi omnem pecuniam tuam mihi dabis, ad tuum caput saxum immane mittam.
The /. article claims that the US abolished selective availability three years ago, but that's not the case. They abolished the 'fuzzing' of resolution, so that ordinary joes could get 10-foot accuracy instead of 70, but that's not selective availability.
Selective availability is the capability of 'turning off' GPS in specific geographic regions during times of war or for any other reason. They did it in Afghanistan last year, and they can do it whenever and wherever they want, though it's on an incident by incident basis.
Kevin Fox
"while the U.S. accounted for less than 1% of all arms sales to Iraq."
Haaha hahha hahah hahaah buuahahaha hahhahah. Good one mate. I needed a laugh, of course you have to ignore the massive quantities of nerve and biological agents funneled into Iraq by US sources. And well if you want to talk about providing training and technology to roge states, we can alaways ask who trained and armed Mr. Osama Bin Laden. Was it the French? Hum... nope.
As late as 1998 Mr. Chenney was doing business with Iraq for over $25M via his beloved Haliburton. Quite interesting that one of the guys that claimed Saddam was such a scum bag that needed to be stopped did in fact help that douche bag to rebuilt Iraq infraestructures (well oil producing sturctures anyways... which is what the US was interested in after all). I guess Mr. Cheney just decided to cut the middle man and get the oil directly.
Oh, right... the Frenchies are the evil ones. Because the US has never sold weapons to nobody, rigth? The US is the largest weapons manufacturer in the world, who do you think they sell their tock to the girl scouts?
...unilateral US action (with its lackey GB, Spanish, and Aussie friends holding pom-poms)...
Well, in Europe alone, the US was supported by Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. These are just from the "Gang of Eight" and the "Vilnius Group". There was also some support from other countries as well, I think (Ireland and the Netherlands?). Among European governments, at any rate, there was more of a consensus for the US than against.
And how many of those countries were "with us" because they were forced to be?
I know that for example the carribean countries were given the choice of either voting for the war, not voting, or having all aid cut to them.
Here in a little country called The Netherlands in Western Europe, we house the "international court of Justice". This formally has nothing to do with our country. We just happen provide a place for this institution to "live". This court tries to be fair to dirtbags that order thousands killed in wars.
The United States has "promised" us that they will invade us if "we" ever convict an American of such things.
So, the Europeans should trust their friendly American "friends", who openly refuse to be subjected to the internationally agreed upon "police"? Right.
There are always "differences" between countries. We think that shooting someone for being on your property is outrageous. You think that allowing small quantities of drugs is outrageous.
If at one point in time we (any European country) end up with a difference of opinion that the Americans find important, we'll certainly be refused the right to use the GPS system in a conflict situation.
Also, should anything go wrong with GPS, it's nice to have a backup. I mean how big is the chance that suddenly the Americans end up unable to launch (replacement) satelites for over a year? Only happened twice so far....