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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?"
Could someone provide a link to an article saying that the US specifically wanted the ability to jam Galileo's signal? Not trolling here, just haven't seen one yet.
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The closest thing I could find was this: http://www.useu.be/Galileo/June1902NATOBellGalile
If the Galileo signal directly overlays the GPS M-code signal, he warned, "jamming one would also jam the other, resulting in a negative impact on NATO's military effectiveness in the area of operations, potentially risking fratricide on friendly forces and civil populations."
So I don't think that NATO/US is asking for the ability to jam the signal, just stating that the frequencys are close enough that interference/jamming on Galileo could negatively affect GPS.
Sorry if this post isn't fully coherent. I have a pretty bad headache right now.
Now the wording of an article already tries to whip up nationalistic frenzy. What happened to this site? Am I the only one who remembers that /. used to be about cool open source technology? Technology that brings us together across all borders rather than drive us apart.
People mention the "jamming issues" -- here's the scoop... GPS transmits signals intended for both cilivian and military use, in distinct frequency ranges. The military one is encrypted and can (theoretically) thus only be used by the US military and its friends. In a war zone, the US military can "jam" the civilian bands while leaving the military signal intact, which from a military perspective is a Good Thing.
The originally proposed Galileo design was such that the frequency range used by Galileo's equivalent to the US civilian signal overlapped the GPS military one. Thus, if the US wanted to jam or block Galileo's civilian signal, it would also have to jam the GPS military one -- which (to the US military) is a Bad Thing.
I don't know if/how this situation was resolved. Anyone?
/* "Specialization is for insects." -Heinlein */
Slashdot should really not post simple minded flame-bait like this:
"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?"
Yeah the system will offer major advantages and they are the following:
It will work when the the US decides to turn off, or disrupt the GPS. The US has never promised that it will always keep the GPS working, and why should they -- we paid for it with our tax money and the US government will always turn it off or disrupt its operation when suitable for American interests.
For example, the civilian GPS has signal has an intentionally added error in order to prevent it from being used for military purposes. Also, the civilian GPS signal gets further disrupted over war zones (such as iraq) to make it especially useless for anyone that is not the US military. Apparently, the military uses another GPS signal which is not useable by other parties.
And thats the reason why Russia already has their own alternative GPS system in place and the Europeans are building their own. It seems pretty reasonable to me.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
Another 'trend' in US property crime statistics is that often unless the victim can prove that the property was intentionally stolen, the police are systematically and fraudulently classifying the thefts instead as 'lost property' to reduce their reported crime rates.
Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!
You don't understand, it's nothing personal. In the first place, Europeans don't hate ordinary American people as such. But it's not ordinary American people who are running the show. Most ordinary American people don't even know or understand what their government are doing, including (especially) most the ones who think they *do* know. The only problem we have with (some) ordinary Americans is their slavish tendency to believe whatever line of bullshit they are fed by the political and corporate establishment on Fox and CNN and disbelieve everybody else.
Secondly, global politics isn't about good and bad, it's about the exercise of military and economic power and control of information, to pursue the interests of the groups you represent.
To cut straight to the chase: I promise you that Washington's invasion of Iraq had nothing at all to do with liberating anyone and everything to do with gaining control of significant oil supplies in order to forestall an imminent and rapid worsening of the ongoing energy crisis.
To the extent that forestalling the effects of "peak oil" will keep everyone in the US comfortable for a couple of years longer than would have been the case without the Iraq invasion, you could say that the US govt's actions were beneficial for the US public. But because it is only a temporary fix, this is a policy that doesn't lead anywhere other than to further wars, both military and economic. It only buys time. But time for what?
If the US government were interested in the long term future of the US economy there would already be two crash programs in effect: one to reduce the nation's debt, and another to reduce dependence on oil, the latter starting with both a significant increase in tax on gas station pump prices right now (with much of the increase being spent on development of renewable energy sources - wind, wave, geothermal, solar, nuclear) and an aggressive program of public education aimed at decreasing domestic fuel consumption. These are the only actions that could make a positive difference.
I am talking about massive investment here, not the peanuts that is currently being spent or even considered. It is just not happening though. Instead the actions that *have* been taken, in toto, contribute to one goal only - to prevent the public at large, for as long as possible, from cottoning on to what will happen when either one of the following two scenarions hits:
(1) the growing disparity between global demand and global supply of oil pushes the price up (slowly at first, then over 5-10 years up to the $200-$400 a barrel range);
(2) one or more of the world's larger economies decides to divest their national reserves of hundreds of billions of dollars, in favour of something more stable and less inflationary - massively devaluing the dollar overnight and precipitating a complete collapse of the US banking system within days.
Both of these scenarios are on our doorstep right now. The Iraq adventure was intended to address both. But it will not solve either problem for long.
While the US very probably intended an expanded military presence in the Middle East to make OPEC think twice about redenominating oil sales in Euros (coming as it did right after Saddam Hussein did the very same thing), it hasn't made much difference to Iran who intend to open their own petrochemicals trading exchange on March 26, just ten weeks away. They are expected to offer at least some contracts denominated in Euros, and possibly all. Russia has also been making noises about moving their own oil and gas sales onto the Euro. And China already unpegged their currency from the dollar last summer.
I raise the question of what the US government thought they were buying time for, with their current economic, energy and foreign policies. Now the longer they manage to prolong the current situation the worse it will get for the unknowing public at large when these crises do finally emerge. As far as the economy is concerned it will be like falling off a cliff ed
WTF?
"Each other, for starters. You Europeans were a goddamn bloody bunch, with major wars going back every decade for as long as history has been recorded. This ended when the US came along and cut your balls off by crushing the Axis powers and parking our military all across Europe."
1: In 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland (Sept. 1st), America was working out how it was going to manage a relationship with a Nazi controlled Europe as it only expected Britain to hold out for 3 weeks after the "inevitable" defeat of the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Hitler's biggest mistake, if anything, was to turn and attack the Soviet Union (22nd June 1941) splitting his forces across another front on top of the Western and North African wars that were already in progress. If Britain had fallen in 1939, Europe would have been fucked anyway so the phrase "This ended when the US came along and cut your balls off by crushing the Axis powers and parking our military all across Europe" which negates the contributions of all the other allied powers is an insult to the millions of non-Americans who died in that war as well as being an expression of an obscene level of arrogance.
Your tone also suggest America's involvement was a totally selfless act despite the fact that America entered the war wholesale after it had been attacked by Japan and Germany had made a declaration of War against it. You also neglect to mention the arrangements from which America benefited, i.e. technology transfers including Radar, the jet engine, the cavity magnetron, Azdic, etc. and, post-war, faster than sound technology (developed by Miles Aircraft Corp and used by Bell to build the X-1, sideways looking terrain following all weather radar (developed for the BAC TSR 2 Nuclear strike aircraft - used in the cruise missile) and more that I can't be arsed to list. On top of this, America gained access to a global span of British territory for military use as part of Lease Lend as well being in a position to isolate itself from Communist Russia by transferring any fighting with the USSR away from Alaska which would be a bitch because no-one wants to fight a war at -40 in an environment where everything that moves leaves a trail that can be spotted from the air and into region that could form a handy missile launching platform close to the intended target.
"This made engaging the US a prerequisite to starting any European war, and defeating the US military was too high a bar for anyone to really consider trying."
Er, Nope.
The world's leaders understanding that there were enough thermonuclear warheads on both sides to blow the entire planet up stopped another war from starting.
"As a consequence, most of Europe has allowed its military to degrade into near-uselessness."
The ex-Axis forces were deliberately prevented from having an army large enough to cause any trouble while what was left of allied Europe had been so bombed to shit that it was bankrupt and couldn't have supported the kind of Army needed to fight a war. One country is notable as having actually come out of WW2 richer than when it went in primarily through selling arms to it's allies under the guise of Lease Lend opening up potential lines of argument as to whether it was an alliance or a business arrangement.
"Muslims are usually looking for wars"
What the fuck are you on? That is just the sort of statement made from a position of such supreme ignorance that it borders on being not worth answering.
Muslims and Christians have existing next door to each other for several thousand years. In fact, when the christian crusaders commissioned to fight a "holy" war in the middle east arrived, the cities they found under Muslim control contained mixed populations of Christian, Muslim and Jews and the laws enacted within the cities prevented anyone from attacking a holy building of any denomination. The rulers of the Muslim lands also endorsed the crusaders activities as a holy war and offered them food and shelter within the hous
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.