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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?"
it not 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency it's 'you cannot prevent us from using this one USA' by the European Space Agency.
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.
or is it merely a politicised 'anything you can do we can do better' by the European Space Agency?"
What the hell is this?? More like anybody with more than 1/2 a fuckin brain realizes its a BAD idea to have the only positioning system run by a country who has made it blatantly obvious they don't care about what any other countries feel.
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.
o GPS.html
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.
Not to mention that it won't be turned off or degraded in times of war, or on the whim of one country's military - quite a necessity for a technology that people and corporations will come to rely on more and more.
Argh.
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?
As it happens, this will also be good for all of us. Galileo promises sub-meter accuracy, faster acquisition, and better penetration through cover.
I'll be pleased as punch to accept this gift from Europe.
Why include such idiocy in the story? One very obvious advantage over GPS that is stated in the fucking article is that the USA reserves the right to switch GPS off. And, with ten seconds over at Wikipedia, you could find out that Galileo has a much better resolution than GPS. So mod entire story as -1, Flamebait - because there's no -5, Fucking Idiot At The Wheel option.
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is how Americans get a bad reputation as arrogant fools. I was agreeing with this poster until the "The United States of America is the greatest country in the history of the world. This Earth belongs to the US, the rest just live here." line.
Yes, the US does do great things. Yes, the US does make some mistakes (as does any country.) But to say that the world belongs to the US is just pure arrogance.
-Mike
A proud citizen of the United States of America
If by "workaround", you mean centimeter-level accuracy, sure. Differential GPS is already being used by many people who require insane levels of accuracy - I've seen it in action, and it's damned impressive. You can also use it while moving, so the idea that GPS isn't good enough for aircraft is kind of stupid. P-code is not the end-all, be-all of accuracy, in any case.
Reading these posts, it's pretty obvious that the last exposure some people had to GPS information was in 1997 or something. Low-res selective availability? That got turned off in like 2000. And "turning off GPS for Europe" sounds kind of stupid, too - are American pilots just going to fly into the dark all the sudden? A little less paranoia, and a little more education, please...
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
...France, Germany and the U.K. start argueing over trivial issues.
Trivial issues, you mean like theEuropean Constitution or farm subsidies, which are a substantial portion of the EU's budget?
The EU has been arguing over very, very substantial issues for a long time. The question is whether or not the Union will survive them. My money used to be on no, and is slowly moving towards yes. This is mainly because I believe integration will slow down; we'll have a European identity, and a great deal of cooperation, but I do not think Europe will ever become a superstate.
Personally, I think that's a good thing.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
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.
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.
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.
It's funny how ignorant you are. Your sources are highly biased and you even succeeded to counter your own assertions.
Switzerland and Finland have most guns per person in Europe. In Switzerland many of the guns people have are military grade. That's because militia personnel are required to keep their guns at home as part of their military obligations. So how do you explain that even though people in Switzerland have powerful guns at their homes, there's still according to your sources a higher crime rate than in US? Weren't the guns supposed to lower the crime rate?
In Finland guns are mostly hunting rifles. Virtually nobody in big cities owns a hand gun. I'm from Finland, and can guarantee you that the low crime rate is not because people in the country side own guns, it's mostly because Finland is a very socialistic country when compared to US or even Switzerland. We take care of our poor, so they don't have to steal from other people to make a living. We also give a decent education to our poor, so they have a chance to get a decent job.
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.