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Galileo Sends Its First Signals
VVrath writes "Galileo, the European answer to the US Military-owned GPS has sent it's first signals to ground stations in the UK and Belgium. The first satellite in the Galileo system, Giove-A was launched on December 28th 2005, and is set to be followed by a further 29 satellites by 2010. At a cost of over $4 Billion, is this system really going to offer any major advantages over GPS, or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
... and that's why it's better.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
Had this been put in the proper category, like Hardware or Science, I'd say: Great, maybe I could get 10cm accuracy with this, GPS and GPRS combined.
But since it's politics we're discussing here, I say: how long before France, Germany and the U.K. start argueing over trivial issues. This whole European Union thing is too de-centralized, it's only a matter of time before it's torn apart.
My neighbour has a swimming pool which he says my friends or I can use any time we like (unless there's an emergency), but we're decided to put our money together and build our own swimming pool, which will be slightly better than his. For some reason he accused us of showing off when we told everyone about this, we just thought that it was best to have our own in case we're not always friends.
...it is always a good idea to have redundancy.
Why don't you hate America? ;)
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
Wou mean, as good of a version as the replacement GPS satellites that the US putting up are?
Yes - why on earth is the US doing that? They can just use Galileo after all.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
P.S. If you don't, we'll turn off your GPS signal.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.