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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?"
"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?"
If I remember correctly, Galileo is to have accuracy within centimeters. With current US-GPS the accuracy is much worse. Within a few yards, I believe.
Galileo has a bunch of advantages over GPS, like being designed to work to a higher degree of acuracy and to work inside buildings and in built-up areas. Take a look at this article http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDe tail.jsp?id=61295 for more information.
they will probably just drive around with humvee's broadcasting noise onto the frequencies galileo uses. you can jam the us GPS in a pretty big area using a device that uses less power than a lightbulb.
I remember reading (In PhysicsWorld published by the IoP [www.iop.org] that the political reasoning behind the GPS workalike system was basically that the United States cannot be trusted to provide GPS functionality (as happened on 9/11) in emergencies and during exceptional circumstances. As more and more businesses (and most transport) depend on GPS functionality the European Union has decided to build something more thrustworthy and the improvements are just a side-effect. In the end, both parties will benefit. There was something about jamming eachother's networks but I can't exactly remember it... anyone?
I would think the reason is completely obvious: It's a really bad idea to have your critical infrastructure depend on something external you can't control.
In a data center, do you trust your ISP has full redundancy and will never, ever fail, decide to disconnect you or go bankrupt? Or you you use several ISPs, have an UPS and a standby generator just in case some day something does go wrong?
Bugs are just features that have been fixed.
When the provider is US Government, it may be the only way... Still, there is no reason for Galileo to be incompatible with the existing GPS clients, that's just evil...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
here is the slashdot bit.. heard it on bbc as well about the same time.0 7
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/01/12262
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
According to a newspaper I read (its swedish, sorry folks) http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=597&a=513 113&previousRenderType=2 the systems can work together. They pretty much said that twice the satelites means better coverage.
l ileo/international/cooperation_en.htm
l ileo/international/global_en.htm :
Another clip here: http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/ga
"This includes, quite naturally, co-operation with the two countries now operating satellite navigation systems. Europe is already examining a number of technical issues with the United States related to interoperability and compatibility with the GPS system. The objective is to ensure that everyone will be able to use both GPS and GALILEO signals with a single receiver. Negotiations on co-operation scenarios with the Russian Federation, which has valuable experience in the development and operation of its GLONASS system, are also ongoing."
Also, from http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/energy_transport/ga
"Once again, the GALILEO system will be fully compatible with the existing American GPS system. The objective being pursued by Europe is to reinforce the satellite navigation infrastructure by providing an additional, state-of-the-art system ensuring a more robust, precise and continuous service to users worldwide."
So basicly, they will not compete, more like complement each other.
GPS is blockable by any idiot with a soldering iron, you don't need the permission of the US government just a little knowledge of electronics.
While I agree with the rest of your post, please make a distinction between U.S. citizens and its government, they are not one in the same, and there are a great many (myself included) who strongly disagree with many of the egregious actions taken by our current administration. There's quite a diversity of opinion and often sharp disagreement in this country, please don't lump us all into a single group.
That's all I'm asking. Thanks.
Very insightful cut-through-the-BS post. And...
Competition does not hurt, the lack of it does.
That sums up the whole issue quite nicely. Thanks.
Galileo offers:
- Higher accuracy for commercial subscribers than offered by GPS.
- Non-military, muli-national control. No one country/entity can turn it off.
- Availability on Arctic and Antarctic waters. While not useful to most, apparently including the US military, it is useful for shipping and search and rescue for many European countries.
- Interoperability/compatibility with GPS. One can back up the other to offer higher availability and/or accuracy.
The only problem I can see is that they use the same frequencies. If some one jams one they are also jamming the other. Given the military capability of the countries funding both systems I can imagine such jamming will be very short lived.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
The USA are lame copycats and Russia owns the Earth. After all, isn't the fact that the USA merely copied Russia, who launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, proof? "Nothing like following the leader", eh? </your-logic>
probable means this...
http://www.phrack.org/phrack/60/p60-0x0d.txt
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Voltaire
This site seems to disagree with the differences in crime rates you stated. I followed some of the supportijng links and it also apears to be acurate. Well i guess interpool only wants you to know about the stats if you are a police angency. This site hereandhere seem to back it up. It is amazing that switzerland apears to have a larger crime rate then the US. This site http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm apears to say that gun ownership has the oposite effect in crime then what is popularly taunted too.
I've heard this misinterpretation about the crime rates in Europe compaired to america before. I'm not sure it is something like the chicken and egg concpet were some one thinks it should be logical to have that outcome so they just spout it or if the EU news agencies under report the crimes unlike in america were it is a guarentied ratings.
A cursory review of the literature leads your statements to be fatally incorrect. Crime rates are in fact lower in the US than in many European countries.
Burglary rates for Scotland, Austria, and England and Wales are reported as higher for the entire period of 1980 through 2000. For England and Wales, this difference is as much as 50% higher crime rate per capita than the US after 1993.
Don't believe me. Check the figures yourself. I should also point out that these figures come from a UK authority, not another "American urban legend".
Galileo, however, also allows for hardware to send data to the sattelites, and this opens up a number of possibilities.
I do love "!" but not as much as I love "..."...
The blog you point to seems to choose the figures that back its theory up. From the same papers it cites as source[1], you can read:
e venth.html
Homicides / 100.000 inhabitants 1999
US: 4.55
France: 1.63
Germany: 1.22
Italy: 1.4
Switzerland: 1.25
[1]http://www.unodc.org/unodc/crime_cicp_survey_s
That's a joke, guys. "Why do you hate America?" is the archetypal ignorant talking-point-fixated Republican response to the slightest criticism of US foreign policy, so that's what I posted. There's an excellent Tom Tomorrow cartoon on the same theme.
Jeez, I somehow got the idea people here were smarter than that.
Guess not.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Roughly 90% of the worlds inventions in use today were invented by the British and Europeans in Victorian times, with the majority of those inventions being British, yet, you don't hear them go on-and-on-and-on about it. Everything since then has been improvement. Slow, painstaking, improvement.
America invents the oh-so-obvious one-click payment system, and they boast and swagger about it as if the global economy depended on it. This is a razor thin step away from nationalistic propaganda of the worst kind. If anyone else invents anything, it's a threat to be sneered at or trade-sanctioned.
America richly deserves its pariah status among civilised people.
Well... how about checking some official and non-propaganda sites? I was really wondering (as a european feeling possibly overly safe at home?) wether these statistics might actually be true. Go check for yourself:
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/glance/hmrt.htm which is from the US department of justice and claims the murder rate in the us for 2002 is 6.1 cases per 100.000.
A little more difficult to understand might be the official german site (as its in german...), but easy enough: the word "mord" means "murder", and the number of cases for 2002 in the table is cited as 873. As we have 80 Million people in Germany that amounts to a rate of 1.1 per 100.000. So the US has nearly 6 times the murder rate of that in germany. Here is the link to the official german statistics (the BKA is the german version of the FBI): http://www.bka.de/pks/pks2002/p_3_01.pdf
Btw. the table on the top of the page includes the number of attempted homicides in red, the number of sucessul ones in blue. Without so many guns available, obviously (and luckily) most murder attempts are doomed to fail.
Phew. So I can still feel safe here ;-)
It is important to note that Giove-A is NOT the 'first satellite in the system', it is only a TEST satellite, for TESTING purposes. As the system stands, no useful navigation can be made with just one satellite (as you need multiple signals to correct errors).
The original intentions of ESA was to make Giove-A a testing satellite providing signals back to ground stations throughout the life of it's 2 year mission. This particular satellite will not be part of the fully functional Galileo system.
On another note, we need a moderation system for articles: -1, Flamebait; -2, Wrong Section; -3, Submitter-knows-fuck-all-about-the-subject.
Don't be ridiculous. It would be the height of folly to base our infrastructure and security on the "promises" of the US. Perhaps in past it would be conceivable that we rely upon GPS, but in the Bush era, such actions are reckless.
The Iraq fiasco has shown Europe that the US cannot be trusted, nor relied upon. Therefore we must build our own network of satellites.
It's like the Cold War all over again.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
But seriously, the GPS satellites have their antennas pointing downwards and they are in middle earth orbit which is the next step above LEO. Just remeber that you don't have interefence from the atmosphere when you do your calculations and you should be fine.
Happy LEO flight!
/greger
As it happens, this will also be good for all of us. Galileo promises [bbc.co.uk] sub-meter accuracy, faster acquisition, and better penetration through cover.
Yeah, if you're willing to pay a subscription fee. If not, then you get about 5 m accuracy, which is comparable to GPS.
If you can read this sig, you're too close.
You are correct, I did not really counter your argument, I merely responded to the contents of your links. Please let me explain my train of thought to you, so you might see, why I did that:
When following your links (I take the first one as an example), first there are the number of total crimes and I could not imagine how you would count that and what kind of crimes such a broad statistic would include. Everything from speeding to murder? Obviously, that might depend heavily on local laws. And as another poster pointed out, maybe some types of crimes are more likely to be reported in one society than in another. But thats a whole different story and I only wanted to point out, why I retreated from comparing total crime numbers to murderers.
Your first link immediately goes on to quote homicides, and there I had one easily comparable crime, which would be defined equally in probably all societies. So I easily compared those.
Also, especially the gunowners link refers most prominently to homicides. So mostly the contents of those links made me post my answer...
And, by the way: I definitely prefer a society where things were stolen from me 5 times and I were killed 0 times, to one where I only lose 1 item to theft while being killed in the process... but that kind of argument is quite inflammatory, so I should immediately apologize for it :-)
Professor Werner Enderle from QUT has done extensive modelling and simulation on galileo performance for LEO missions. Have a look at http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/wang/jgps/v2n2/v2n2For umB.pdf
Well, in fact you can't compare crime rates between countries with different laws and different "crimes"... A crime in USA may not be a crime in Spain (e.g. downloading copyrigthed music over the Internet for personal, non-lucrative use is legal in Spain and not in USA (not sure if it's a crime but it's not legal)), as well as a crime in Spain may not be a crime in USA (owning a gun).
So, if you want to compare apples with apples, you should compare equal crimes. Murder is a good choice, rape or sexual aggression would be ok, too.
English is not my native language. Corrections are not only welcome but encouraged. Thanks.
-Walenzack.
Who invented packet switching, the premise upon which IP builds?
You think ARPANet was somehow the *only* packet-switched computer network in the 70s/80s? Ever heard of Cyclades? You think the internet was the only widely deployed computer information network? Ever hear of 'Minitel'?
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.