Slashdot Mirror
EU Presses Ahead With Galileo GPS System
philkerr writes "The BBC is reporting that European transport ministers have agreed to the 2008 deployment of the European controlled GPS system. Costing 2.1 billion euros and creating 150,000 jobs. Is this just a pork-barrel project, or something Europe really needs to break the reliance on U.S. space technology? This was discussed on Slashdot in June when the U.S. and EU reached an agreement on its deployment."
I am one of those who is actually working on the EGNOS ground segment (something like the USA's WAAS). The current system test bed is designed to create a position-delta to feed with the GPS signal to make positioning more exact. Once all Galileo satellites are up, we do not rely on GPS data anymore, but we can fallback if it is possible. One thing to note, Galileo has indoor positioning.
:-)
(Yes, Galileo will be a really independent system, comprising of many different parts, under civil guidance for civil uses.)
One the political side, from a developers point of view, we really want to get this thing up as fast as possible because everyone I know who is developing is really really fed up with the way the US government tries to control our scientific and especially space-research specific endeavours. Since we have developed a system that is clearly superior to anything the USA have (never mind the 20 years of operation of GPS, you could have progressed too...) we really really hate it, when we get told to stop to work on it by a foreign government. To make things clear, no we don't hate Americans. We hate the way the American government is treating us, and the more they want to sabotage our projects the better our projects will be.
One of the most controversial aspects of this proposal is China's involvement. Although the EU maintains that Galileo is only for civilian use, it appears that China disagrees.
Russia and China each have a 20% stake in the Galileo project, having invested 200 million euros. India has also pledged 300 million euros.
Apparently the EU has promised India that Galileo would not be denied to them in the event of anything less than "global war", making its use available during more limited military conflicts. It is hard to imagine that China has negotiated anything less.
This had led to speculation that the USA would simply shoot it down to prevent its use by hostile military powers.
The EU Referendum blog has been covering this assiduously.
The amusing questions won't be asked. But I do wonder if this announcement has anything to do with the unnamed, massive, something-to-do-with-space, spending bill that even pocket Republicans don't want to support.
I forget what 8 was for.
Actually we need this system because we need to build a great army for Europ.
We discovered during the Iraq "big mess" that even if we are against the US there are not a lot a things we can do to prevent the US from doing what it wants. A great army will help us acheiving just that.
Some people said that the Iraq war almost killed Europ with countries like Poland, Spain and UK not agreeing with the others. This is in fact very wrong since in these countries the people were massively against the war. For this decision, the Spain governement has been overthrown during the last elections and most think that the UK government will pay in the near future too.
So we have pretty much the same vision, next year we are going to vote for a new constitution and then we'll need an army. Galileo is one step in this process.
Of course it will also have a huge impact on our economics. This will create jobs but will also allow us to sell a new kind of services, mostly in the transportation market which is about to grow enormously with the e-commerce getting bigger and bigger.
I believe the US made a mistake in not improving greatly the GPS during the 20 years of operation. Positionning is about to become a huge market and Europ has a clear advance thanks to Galileo where the US could have been so far ahead already...
Iraq: war to save the U
Seeing that the USA spends $5Billion per month on the occupation of Iraq, I think we have very little grounds to call this a "pork barrel" project. These satellites will be undeniably useful to everyone in the world. Compared to other things that $2.1B buys you, this is a great deal.
Missles, missles, missles, MISSILES, always missles.
This isn't directed at you or even your post. It's just a scream. Bush and Reagan, the neocons, always obsessed with missle attacks, because they never think for even a few seconds. There's so much money in building a missles "shield", and so much inbred fear of missles in U.S. citizens, that we can't think properly.
WHY a missle to deliver a nuclear bomb? Use a cruise missle instead. OR, a commuter aircraft for an airburst. Or put it on a freight train. Or a container on a cargo freighter. Or just move it around in a U-Haul. Or just have a couple dozen in subbasements of the consular offices of the [fill in feared country of your choice here], ready to detonate at any time. There could be a nuke in the Russian embassy in Washington DC, disguised as a samovar.
I don't imagine missles hitting us; I never did, even in the terrorized commie-hystera of Reagan's era. NO COUNTRY IS GOING TO FIRE A MISSLE AT THE U.S.. Get over this insanity. No one is going to insure their nation's immediate suicide! Russia isn't going to kill itself. CHINA IS NOT GOING TO FIRE A MISSLE AT THE U.S. They are doing just fine, have no impulse to eliminate their civilization by frying Los Angeles. NO, THEY ARE NOT MADMEN, EVEN IF THEY ARE COMMUNISTS. They never were!
We have lived in a continuous state of hysteria since the forties. We've sapped our GDP by funding this imaginary war for decades. A lot of people are richer for it, of course.
The only real danger of a nuclear attack has been from extra-national agencies such as Al Qaeda; but they, no matter how fearful we are of them, aren't that interested in causing the nuclear annihilation of Islamic nations, which Bush and the U.S. would certainly cause if such an attack was launched. There's no strategic reason for such an attack. 9-11 was about provoking us into doing something stupid, which we of course did, as predicted. But a nuke? Why?
There should be a name for this syndrome. A belief that everyone else in the world is suicidally insane and incomprehensible.