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GPS vs. Galileo; Where Are They Headed?
ben_ writes "This keynote speech from the recent European Navigation Conference talks about the history between the US military's GPS and the proposed EU Galileo system, as well as where they're both going. Interested in how you know where you are and what's going to happen to those satellites?"
I'd say they'll be going in circles around the planet.
"This quote is a product of the Frobozz Magic Quote Company."
The correct links for the US-administered GPS satellite constellation, known as NAVSTAR:
NAVSTAR GPS Joint Program Office - responsible for operational maintenance of NAVSTAR GPS equipment, services, and infrastructure
Interagency GPS Executive Board - executive management of NAVSTAR GPS
GPS fact sheet - US Air Force facts about NAVSTAR GPS
US Naval Observatory NAVSTAR GPS home page
Further information:
FAS GPS background info
Global Security GPS background info
As long as GPS is the only game in town, the US has a stranglehold on the superpower market. The US can regulate the GPS satellites and could cut off anyone else at any time. Seeing as GPS has revolutionized warfare, this means the US gets an automatic bonus in any war.
Until the EU has an alternative, it's military (should it form one) will be at a severe disadvantage in a theoretical conflict, and potential power in a theoretical conflict is a major bargaining chip. (It's a chip that's not talked about, but people pay attention to it on their own.)
Most of the time competition is good: software, hardware, cola. Sometimes monopolies are more acceptable: stringing up electric transmission cables, streets to my (your) house, large constellations of bright satellites that interfere with astronomic studies and general enjoyment of the night sky. Sure, GPS is very handy but more than one system seems a little redundant.
Problem: Hmmm, Ive got 100 kilometers to my destination and 15 gallons of gas. I am driving an Hummer H2, that gets 9 miles a gallon, can I make it? Solution: It doesn't matter, the H2 can't drive around the corner before needing a refuel.
Does anyone know what this refers to?
irb(main):001:0>
Makes me wonder if China is working on its own global positioning system (see previous slashdot story/thread)
For more information look at the Article featured on Slashdot about 6 months ago.
:)
Galileo System To Include Jamming Capability
+++ MELON MELON MELON +++ Out of Cheese Error +++ redo from start +++
Whatchu talkin' about? They never found the new world intentionally to begin with - they got lost, remember? :)
Will the ESA Galileo satellite navigation system be sufficiently different that you'll need all-new receivers to pick up Galileo navigation information?
That could get VERY expensive as manufacturers of satellite navigation receivers will have to accommodate both systems for airplanes, automobiles, trucks, boats, etc.
would be too dangerous to the rest of the population.
Yup, broadcasting through hundreds of feet of rock would probably end up cooking everything on the surface
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Mind you, a did see a documentry about the spielologists retained by the city of Naples to try and map it's enourmous network of caves and tunnels. These people keep turning up unexpectedly in peoples basements!
And if you thought that was boring you obviously havn't read my Journal ;-)
Here is a technical comparison. They seem more alike than different to me.
I know of a few very high-powered geologists who cross-check GPS with GLONASS. Having a third system would seem to only help.
I agree, there are a lot of reasons to want GPS to work better. I was thinking of GPS this morning and how it would be nice to give your kid a GPS watch or bookbag or something or a GPS unit in your car so that if they are ever lost/kidnapped/stolen, etc. I/police could locate them.
I understand that there would need to be some sort of receiver but it seems like this would be an issue of cost, not feasibility.
You would want these devices to be working 100% of the time, right? What if your kid has gotten stuck somewhere, is being held in someone's basement, is lost in the mall, or your car is parked in a deck/garage or is driving through tunnels.
And before the YRO posters get all riled up, the devices could be designed with some kind of passkey to protect privacy.
Let's go Hurricanes!!! 2006 Stanley Cup Champions!!!
Forget it, man. You can't get EM radiation through solid rock from orbit. At least not without a lot of power, and then you're frying everything on the surfac. Wishing for an underground-capable GPS is like wishing for a lighthouse you can see through the hull of your boat. It's asking too much.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
So long as the US and the EU are on good terms, we should be able to access both systems with the correct receiver. I can see a great benefit to a receiver that can read position from both systems and cross-check on the fly, reducing your PDOP and increasing your resolution of position far more quickly than before. Imagine having upwards of 10 satellites providing you with position data! I'd be in heaven!
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
This is also about global redundancy. The world increasingly depends upon navigational technologies like this. It's a little dangerous that there's only _one_ point of failure (whether technical, economic, political, etc).
Go to any Army unit on the ground.
Look at how many commerical GPS units there are, and how many military ones.
The ratio will be at least 3:1. The military GPS units, in a word, suck. They are about as big as a small boombox and fail for various reasons every 5 minutes. Ask any soldier who's had to use one in a combat environment. They will tell you that anyone who actually cares about finding out where they are will buy a Garmin.
That's why the US stopped degrading the signal and won't do it again. Even in a war zone, most of the commercial GPSes in use are those ofUS soldiers.
"He's more machine now than man, twisted and evil."
Just like China wanting to be independent technologically, the EU also does not want to be dependant on the USA.
Read the FAQ where it says one of the objectives is just that:
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Umm. This is like one of the most inane posts I have ever read. GPS is a passively transmitted system from space. Giving your kid a GPS receiver will do nothing except let the kid know exactly where he is being kidnapped.
Now, maybe if you equipped your son with a set of orbiting satellites and got a receiver to pick up the signals you would be in business.
--Kevin
A huge international consortium will build this thing? I think it's great that this article appears the same day that the Chinese are pulling the plug on compliance to international standards. I know, I know, they can always comply with any given sub-system, but this highlites the disadvantage of a huge conglomeration of countries. Have fun, send a few billion my way for research, but don't expect anything to get built.
GPS is already an open standard. It is also a one-way system that cannot be restricted in any way except by satellite coverage. As much as everyone would like to believe that the US is evil incarnate, it is not. We have bad presidents (hint: his name starts with a 'G' and ends in 'eorge W. Bush') from time to time and a lot of uneducated, easily manipulated people (middle America), but they are not inherently evil. The nation is still a republic (well, the 2000 election excluded) and I hope the rest of the world realizes this.
Control over GPS is not a power grab by the US. It is not a strategic tool for way that we will eventually lock our enemies out of. It is simply a service the military created for its self and is now sharing with everyone. The only reason the US controls GPS is because we invented it, we rely on it more than anyone else, and we want to make sure it keeps working and improving as time goes on. THAT'S IT! NO EVIL! NONE! Not in this story at least. As for Europe's new system, it looks as if they want to create a system that cooperates with GPS to expand coverage but does not depend on it. More power to them, though I'm curious about some of the features they're adding...
Other than a healthy reference page for the interested, there's not much new information in Last's article.
Politicus
But alas there is this remark:
Alas, this cultural difference has been with us at least since the days of Thomas Jefferson and those earlier terrorists, the Barbary Pirates. European nations paid off the pirates rather than fight. Under Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. had a policy, "Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute." It seems someone has posted more about that history at:Barbary Pirates
Then as now, Europe thinks being nice to nasty folk is a better than getting tough, sending out the frigates, and making them behave. Hence their policy of leaning toward the Arabs. In contrast, the U.S. supports feisty little Israel, perhaps the only nation in history to fight four major wars in one lifetime with foes that outnumber them twenty to one and win every one. We back a democracy and a winner. They (particularly the French), back repressive dictatorships and losers.
In that context, it helps to remember what Churchill warned in 1939 after the Munich Agreement, "Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war."
In the end, every people gets the government they deserve. If the Europeans have so little sense of 'honor,' that they cannot defend their free and democratic societies from an ideology driven by hatred and revenge, then perhaps they deserve to drop into history's dustbin, always knowing precisely where they are thanks to a Galileo that will never be turned off to fight terrorism. And in their obsession with not fighting a few brush wars, they may lose a far greater and more critical cultural war. Europe may become Eurabia. In a generation, European women may only leave their homes clad in a sack from head to toe.
Am I the only one to catch the madness of all this? For perhaps two decades we've been told that there was a 'religious right' or 'fundamentalism' spanning from Jew and Christian to Arab that is a threat to free and democratic societies. But when push comes to shove, when religiously sanctioned terrorism and repression must be fought, it is the secular left who apologizes for religious repression and who wants little or nothing done to open up brutally repressive Arab societies. The left of western democracies is defending Saddam with all the zeal they once had for cruel Stalin.
All this brings to mind the Chinese proverb about the curse of living in "interesting times."
Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
Maybe someone can explain this to me, cause none of my physics teachers ever could.
In modern physics, there is no "absolute" frame of reference, correct? There's no notion of something that is TRUELY stationary against which all other motion is measured, it's all relative to each other.
So say you had a hypothetical universe containing only two bodies - lets say a large moon with no atmosphere, and a spaceship. The moon is spinning, and the spaceship is in geostationary orbit around it.
What's to say that the spaceship is actually in geostationary orbit and not just STATIONARY if there is nothing else to measure their motion against? These two things are all that exist in this hypothetical universe and they are stationary relative to each other, so why aren't they 'absolutely' stationary, causing the spaceship just to fall? How do you know the moon is really even spinning?
The way I usually phrased this to physics professors was that if the spaceship, floating in space for all it knows, comes flying past the moon at near light speed, why do we assume the spaceship is moving at near lightspeed and therefore clocks on it run slower, rather than the moon is hurtling through space at near lightspeed past a stationary ship?
I can't seem to reconcile this in my mind without some notion of an absolute frame of reference, even if we can't measure what it is. I suppose we could tell what is closer to that frame of reference by seeing if, for example, the spaceship falls from it's "geostationary" orbit because the moon wasn't actually spinning, etc; or seeing which clocks dialate which way when two objects move relative to each other at high velocities...
Can someone clear this up for me?
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
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if the US gets a say in galileo (ie when and where its turned off and its accuracy during war etc etc) does europe get the same say in the US system?
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