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."
If not, why should France/ Estonia /Germany/ other EU nation rely on a US system? I can't imagine many heads of armed forces being too happy about relying on a foreign power's system that is out of their control.
There is an issue at the moment that GPS is the de-facto standard for both consumers and business, and there isn't really any competition out there. Should the GPS system fail or be temporarily "upgraded" so that "terrorists" suddenly think they're a mile away from where they really are I don't know of an alternative that The Rest of Us (TM) can use.
You seem to have missed out the part about improving accuracy and reliability.
I couldn't give a monkey about the politics, but anything that improves the signal makes me happy.
I wonder how the US would react if, say, China started blocking GPS from certain places to hold back it's enemies. Tibet for example.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
It'll be nice to have a GPS system which won't be known for routine power-play dicking around.
The US is too unstable to hold the keys to a globally relied on tech...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
One of the slick things that the Europeans did in designing the Galileo system is that they used very nearly the same frequencies as GPS, which makes it very easy for a consumer device to use both systems at the same time and therefor gaining a lot of accuracy. As an aside, it makes it impossible to jam one without jamming the other.
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.
This isn't military, the system is being run by commercial companies. From the military point of view the system can be downgraded in areas of conflict. From the start, the driver for the European system was domestic use.
The main point behind this is the increased accuracy. The US GPS is almost useless in a lot of European cities (winding, narrow streets). In London, I sometimes get 300/400m accuracy on my Garmin (which is not much good for accurate navigation) and, 25% of the time, I get an unuseable signal ("Too weak").
And as for Europe declaring war on the US (with what, a very limited nuclear arsenal compared to the massive US stockpile?), nuclear systems use all sorts of other navigational aids besides GPS. Even 'ordinary' non-cruise missiles use other reasonably accurate methods which have been around long before GPS.
Did he inhale?
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.
If there's one thing you should remember from the comments on this topic, it is that the USA pisses a lot of people off. Instead of telling them that they should not be pissed off, maybe you need to start thinking about why people are so aggravated.
Is this just a pork-barrel project, or something Europe really needs to break the reliance on U.S. space technology?
If you missed everything else in the last few years, how about this one reminder: "freedom fries."
All the other good reasons for it aside, that one act by congress made it very clear to all Europe that they're not dealing with adults.
You grow up. Anybody with the technology to build a missile with enough range, payload and accuracy to hit those targets effectively has the ability to make a nuclear weapon - which makes the issue of accurate targetting moot.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Terrorist instead of using an expensive GPS tracked device, use the old "visual" guidance missile (can't remmember the name), or put themselves in a truck loaded with diesel fuel and chemicals and ram it in the building they want to target. Heck Mc veigh with his truck and bombing did not need GPS. Even better , we are speaking here of people which do not qualm at dying for their cause. So they have de-facto ther best guidance system of the world : themselves. So i do not think terrorist are the key here.
I think the key is that the US military ensure they have an incredible advantage over the opposition, so degradation should be there only in case of military operation. I seriously doubt that a degradation would occurs on US soil just for anti-terrorist purpose.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
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.
Another cool thing about the EU's positioning system is that it can potentially be used to land commercial planes on auto-pilot. This is currently not possible with the GPS system because it's controlled by the US army. With a few year's tech advances behind us, the Galileo system should be way more accurate and predictable, making human pilots almost redundant. Perhaps in the not-too distant future we'll only need one on-boad pilot, with co-pilots assigned via remote control only when needed (i.e. when the plane is not on auto-pilot)
Go EU!
Last time I checked, the USA did not own space. But I suppose my disagreement with the policy of the US makes me a hostile, so my opinion counts for nothing.
Well, they would probably grumble a little, then get to work on a way to figure out a way around it, just as they have been doing for decades.
Rubbish. The US military and government would throw a hissy fit, demanding this and that and threatening sanctions. Just like they've done when countires have threatened other US interests and resources in the past.
Looks can be deceiving. Or CAN they?
By comparison the UK debt is 33% of GDP and the euro countries had deficit targets they had to meet (but often fudged) to join the single currency in the first place.
The next country to suffer reversal of fortunes and crippling problems is likely to be the US: no plans as to how to deal with your deficit, big costs coming up, and no good will around the world.
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
Are you a troll in a bad disguise?
China has more than enough tech to ensure their missiles make their mark. Don't make the mistake of thinking that the US is the only country in the world that has missiles that don't require monkeys to control them.
``Is this just a pork-barrel project, or something Europe really needs to break the reliance on U.S. space technology?''
IIRC, the USA allowed the EU to build this system, provided that it would be easy for the USA to disrupt it. This means that Galileo is independent in the same sense as political parties in former East Germany; do anything you want, as long as it's what I want.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
The best option is multiple systems, that way there is no single entity that can unilaterally, for whatever strategical self-interest, decide to "pull the plug" on another nation's ability to use satelite based location systems.
So yes, China would be a good one. Also Russia, Western Europe, India, Brasil and whoever else can put a satelite up there - the more the merrier.
I wouldn't trust Western Europe with the keys for one single system (and i was born and bred in these parts), just as i wouldn't trust any other single entity.
As for the strategic interest of the US, the best i can say is: though luck - the world is a lot bigger than just Kentuky and americans ain't more or less deserving than anybody else.
PS: Note that the european decision to go ahead (and spend a couple of billions on it) was most certainly influenced by an increased sense in Europe, over the last few years, that the US will throw their muscle around whenever they want, for whatever self-interest reasons, without listening to anybody else. It's like in high school - some people might fear the bully boy, some people might dislike him, some people might wanna be like him, some might even like him, but hardly anybody trusts him.
Dude, the European nuclear arsenal is more than enough to destroy the US several times over. People always seem to estimate how powerful nukes are.
I am trolling
Due to the rollout of WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System), there are a growing number of airports in the country which have GPS approaches. WAAS provides accurate enough GPS signal correction (from ground based stations) to provide full auto-land functionality for so-equipped airliners.
This is a reality _today_, and requires nothing from the Europeans, or waiting until 2008.
As a side note, directed more to the lurkers, what no one seems to consider is that there are many navigational systems which pre-date GPS. ILS and Loran signals, for example, are NOT encrypted, and do NOT have selective availability.
If you're not living on the edge, you're just taking up space!
With USA being driven into the ground, The euro is quickly replacing the dollar as the stable money. With more money flowing to Europe, they will be able to afford large ticket items. This launch will give them a shot in the arm that they need to establish their rockets and truely create a space industry.
Our (US) system has the fault that the DOD can turn it off whenever they see fit. In particualar, one of the problems that we want to go to "free skies". That is the airplanes would be free to decide how and where to travel guided by GPS. Great concept, but one huge flaw. The DOD can turn off GPS whenever they see fit. So imagine the sky filled with planes and then the GPS goes off. Ooops. Europe's system is probably the one to go to.
This bad for us dominence, but great for business, Europe, and the World as a whole.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Well, I'm not a statistician, but for what I have heard the methods of calculation of unemployment in continental EU are different from US and UK.
Among other things, I'm quite certain that detainees are not considered unemployed in the US (which have by far the largest detainee population in the western world), but they are in continental Europe. I heard also that people are considered unemployed as long as they collect welfare in the US, which lasts for some time (3 years maybe?), after which one is not officially counted as "unemployed", but I'm not sure of this one.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
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Why should that piss you off? As a citizen of the US, I absolutely DO NOT want a third party to be able to accurately aim a missile at the White House, the Capitol, or a nuclear power plant. These are military assets, not GPL code for the benefit of mankind (the universal GPS was a side benefit, not the purpose).
Isn't this a bit like what RIAA wants when they are seeking to destroy P2P file sharing?
P2P file sharing has legitimate uses (sharing of non-copyrighted material) and illegal ones (sharing of copyrighted content). The RIAA wants P2P (basically) completely forbidden, because of illegal usage.
Galileo has legitimate uses (to aid navigation of civil planes, etc.) and uses that the US doesn't want to see (potentially guiding enemy missiles).
And now the US wants to indiscriminately block the Galileo signal in a large part of the world, simply because of the potential that it might be abused, but at the same time locking out ALL perfectly legitimate usage.
I see a lot of parallels here - and it's kind of interesting that tons of RIAA bashing slashdotters would now take over the same position that the RIAA does in the case of Galileo...
What pisses me off is the US's statement that they'll locally block the European system in places they don't want potential "enemies" (read, China), having accurate location tracking.
I wonder how the US would react if, say, China started blocking GPS from certain places to hold back it's enemies. Tibet for example.
Interestingly enough, most of what I have heard of the US blocking plans sounds like they want to block the Galileo signal around China.
To me, this looks like primarily commercial interests, so that they can sell GPS better in that market. If it was to eliminate the possibility of someone to attack the US guided through Galileos positioning, they would need to block the Galileo signal IN THE US (e.g. in the TARGET area, not in the SOURCE area!).
I really hope these 'agreements' havnt screwed the system up so its totally useless, as far as im concerned Europe needs the exact same benifits that the US gets in any deals, the only things that really should be agreed on are frequencies/positions so that both systems can work properly and blackspots on key US targets in return for blackspots on European targets. Apart from that, the US have to grow up and accept that theres going to be a better system out there that they don't have the keys to, and if they want any say in it then they'll have to ask nicely. I think this is a good project - Europe doesnt have any problems with the US and we'd like to keep it that way but we have to be independent too, im sure the US can understand that concept.
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Thats not to mention the one that decided not to give climb-power on demand and went into the trees (neatly blamed on the pilot but now back under investigation).
And the other ScareBus that decided it was best to take a nose-dive toward a shopping centre against the pilots best wishes. Luckily the computers in that one relented probably with an "Only kidding" message splashed across the EFIS display.
Oh, and don't forget that the Die-by-wire systems are there to protect you from the pilot doing anything stupid like applying too much rudder deflection and shearing the tail-off.......oh, wait, New-york, 14th Nov 2001.
I'll go with your line of seats tho.
Martin-Baker; getting you out of the sh*t since 1942.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Oh shut up you fucking miepes! (or ar you just fideszes) how many billions in structural funds is 'nothing' in your language? and what about the thousands of Hungarians who are now making use of the four freedoms to live and work in London, to name just the city where I live? Jeez...I like Hungary, I'm glad it's joined the EU, I'm proud of the EU, an organisation which has invested billions of euros in raising Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece from relative poverty into rich, dynamic economies. And now the same will happen to Hungary. It's already happened to Slovenia (which is now richer than Greece), and Hungary's economy has been *booming* since it became clear that the country would join the EU. As have the economies of all the other new member states.
Just think of that: without the EU, can you imagine the same kind of solidarity from the member states on your own? Can you imagine that the UK or Germany or France would have spontaneously decided to invest billions in the development of deprived regions of Ireland or Hungary? No, they only do it because we have this umbrella organisation which imposes certain moral obligations and rights on all its members. It's unique in the history of the world, it is a benefit for everyone living on this continent, and all you can do is whinge about it.
Jacques Barrot didn't mean 'preventing' floods - his first language isn't English, but I'm sure his English is better than your French. He meant dealing with natural disasters. This doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.
So ebredj fol, almoskam.
To be honest I think that the next moon landing in the vicinity should either:
Take down the American flag as a sign that the moon isn't American, or:
Take up flags of all nations and place them alongside the American flag.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Anyone with the competence to build a nuclear or biological weapon isn't going to bother with a missile. They're going to enter the country - probably perfectly legally, with valid, genuine documents, rent a house, build the weapon, and deliver it to the target in a pickup. Terrorists didn't need GPS to take out the World Trade Centre, and they won't need it to take out the White House.
Starwars (and missile defence) are so last century.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Considering that the Russian Federation has just developed a long-range cruise missile capacity, and that China has an advanced aerospace capacity and can make cruise missiles, too, I want their missiles to miss if they're aimed at me. (The purpose of air defense, by the way, is not to shoot down enemy aircraft; it's to make them MISS.)
Tibet, I might point out, is part of China--reluctantly, but part of China, and the Chinese don't have to turn off the GPS to figure out what's there. A good topographic map and a compass will give every Chinese second lieutenant the chance to drive his convoy off the edge of a cliff, just as they do in all armies with new officers.
Nyekulturniy... Proudly confusing readers and editors since 1981!
Tschuldigung, aber wenn wir hier schon Nazi Sprüche machen, kann ich ja wohl auch 'nen Grammatik-Nazi spielen: Es heißt "ein GPS-System"! Systeme ist Plural und das System ist ein Neutrum, nicht weiblich!
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
150,000 jobs? Doing what? Manufacturing? Installation? Sales? Answering the phone?
-- No sig for you!
Simply don't care that the US pisses people off. This seems to be the prefered method. Understanding is deprecated.
Why should we, the US, be forced put other nation's interests above our own? We may be the dominant nation, but that doesn't mean we have to cave in and support every other nation in their bid to do whatever they want. As far as blocking the Galileo system, why should we let our enemies have an advantage? It's war; it's not fair. It's not like we're blocking it for the world, but as said before, there are some targets that we'd rather not have attacked, and this system would make low-cost, very high-precision guidance systems available. Why should we have to risk it?
The USA shouldn't; and nor should Europe be forced to put the USA's interests above its own
Do you really think terrorists or enemy nations need to use GPS or Galileo to attack these buildings? They didn't need it to attack the WTC or the Pentagon. Besides, there are a lot of things I don't like in the world. That doesn't give me the right to tell people that they don't have free will. Europe can put up their Galileo if they want, just like we put up GPS when we wanted. Oh, and third parties have been accurately been able to aim missiles at the white house for the last 35 years.
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.
First, around 3 trillion dollars of the debt is intragovernment. That is, the government borrows from the money that is needed to pay the house insurance at the end of the year to pay the light bill now. All of us that have had to do this know it is a dangerous game. Although many say we can always borrow more money to extend term with creditors, this part of the debt has not been borrowed.
The rest, exceeding $4 trillion and approaching 5, is held publicly. The figures I have seen indicate that foreign ownership is approaching 50%. Now, I don't know who many of you are in debt, but if you are you know the people who you owe money to own you. It the 70's the citizens of the US own the country. Now Japan does. I am not being chauvinistic, just realistic. If we owe several billion dollars to someone, then we are not going to do a lot to piss that person off. We may act macho in the UN, or shake out fists in Iraq, but that is mostly just our temper tantrums because we cannot have everything we want.
Currently the US appears to be taxing at 15% of GDP and spending at 20%. Our lifestyle depends on other countries lending us money. We are no longer our own man.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
yes, they do.
;)
1st. it's good to be independent (you never know when bush shuts-off the gps for non-us use)
2nd. it's good to have backups (good for the eu and the us)
3rd. it's cool
Privacy is terrorism.
With Gallileo on the other hand, good luck getting the ruling body (by the people, for the people) to agree quick enough for it to make a difference.
And how much did the US listen to international input when deciding to invade Iraq? Cooperation goes both ways, and the US government has demonstrated that it will do whatever it pleases, no matter what the international community says. And it's not just Iraq: the US has recently ignored, violated, and abrogated lots of international treaties.
From the perspective of other nations, the US is looking increasingly untrustworthy and unreliable, and that's why they have to start building their own infrastructure.
If you don't like the way decisions are made in Europe, that's tough: Europeans don't like the way decisions are made in the US either, and there are more of them around (ditto for Indians and Chinese).
Exactly. The US have piled up tons of VX nerve gas, and chemical/atomic weapons (yes, WMD by any definition) and THAT is wasting taxpayers' money, IMHO, not launching another GPS service. Some things have to be done multiple times to learn and incrementally improve the technology. It's good not to have to rely on US technology, but to have everything available locally, because this gives Europe more independence.
And about attacking: honestly, this is thank God the last thing Europeans have in mind. Our American friends are more under attack from the inside: their economy is stumbling, and there is an unprecedented loss of those values that were considered US-American (civil liberties, for instance).
Thankfully Europe is a project about peace and long-term economic strength, not about waging more unnecessary wars. By the way, if you're interested in how GPS is to be seen as a mosaic piece of a larger process of human learning, and how better navigation improves scientific progress and understanding, I recommend the book The Mapmakers (2nd ed).
--
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Many of the posters here seem to think that the US is opposed to the Galileo system because the technology will be "better" than the current GPS system.
I don't believe that. If the US military-industrial complex was worried about superior foreign technology, they would have already bombed Toyota, Honda, Sony, etc. out of existence!
The American military is worried that a system such as Galileo allows much, much simpler creation of missile and other automatically guided weapons systems. The current GPS system supports "selective availability" where the accuracy can be deliberately degraded during times or war or other threats.
The Galileo partners should be worried that when the American military feels threatened, the usual "shoot first, ask questions later" philosophy will prevail, and the Galileo system will be jammed or destroyed to protect American interests. (At that same time, the current GPS system would be deliberately degraded or disabled.) I would bet money on that.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I strongly disagree.
... we care. Then we would slowly come back to the usual level of relationships. Then Taiwan would become something like HongKong and slowly be assimilated.
I think that China will simply wait a few decades and recover Taiwan without a full scale invasion (after all Taiwan is mostly worth its infrastructure that would probably be destroyed in case of an invasion).
But even if PRC invaded Taiwan, I bet that the whole world would just stare. We would be doing some protest at the UN, setting up some export restriction, and have some symbolic fleet patrol Pacific ocean to show that
China economy has become too big for occidental economies for us to risk a war against them, and the reverse is also true.
Whatever happens, I don't believe that Taiwan will forever stay separated from the continent, and more likely both systems will slowly converge enougth to merge. After all both share the revendication to be The China.
Anyway protection of Taiwan is a very specific thing that I can't see any big country entering a "world scale war" for. Taiwanese are mostly on their own, it's Real Politic. Expecting anything else is just sweet dreaming.
Like other countries, we can just keep borrowing to pay the interest, so defaulting is not an issue.
Like... Argentina?
What I don't get is why the EU had to reach an agreement with the US? The EU should just use GWB's strategy and do whatever the hell it wants.
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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.
According to Bin Laden the 9-11 attack was an attack on our economy. He has stated that his intention is to bankrupt the US not to kill every american or even a bunch of them.
That's why he attacked the world trade center.
So far it's been pretty effective. He spent maybe a 100,000 and the US spent 200 billion and virtually all of it was borrowed money. He also caused uncounted amount of economic loss to US industry.
the ripple effects of his attack are not over yet. The current deficit is already causing the dollar to drop and the interest rates to rise.
Expect an attack every five to ten years of similar magnitude until they reach their goal.
evil is as evil does