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Second Galileo Test Satellite Now in Orbit
Simon (S2) writes to mention that Europe's second Galileo navigation satellite reached orbit this past weekend. Galileo is promising to offer several technological advances in comparison to the US-based GPS system but no longer promises to be a guaranteed service. "The Galileo programme now seems certain to go ahead, after a prolonged and painful shift from partly-private financing of the construction to public funds taken from unspent EU farm subsidies. This money would normally have been returned to donor nations, with the UK, Germany and the Netherlands as the biggest three. London MPs have expressed doubt as to whether the UK will receive value for the money it will pay, but have acknowledged that the British government doesn't actually have any choice about Galileo under EU funding rules."
Yes because GPS is owned and controlled by the most dangerous army in the world !
int main() { while(1) fork(); }
By that same token, I wonder if the EU Galileo satellite network will be as generously shared with the general public as the US GPS system is with the world.
:)
Now that I've got the nationalist pride bullshit out of the way, any system that can provide better and more accurate coverage is certainly welcome in my book. They could call the new satellite system "The Flying Turds" and I'd be ok if it let me get better than accurate to 12 feet.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Armies are like guns. They are not dangerous, until you (aim and) pull the trigger.
That being said, as a European, I'm not comfortable with a critical infrastructure like GPS in the hands of the US. The current administration has shown that it is incapable of handling the power and responsibilities that come with being a superpower. Former US presidents warned for the influence of the Military-Industrial complex, but that lesson seems to have been forgotten, resulting in "Bringing peace and democracy to the Middle East".
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
Why is that sad? What's wrong with having multiple separate systems, anyway?
I mean, I'm a chest-thumping nationalistic patriot, but even I can see that the extra system will be a good thing for everyone. On the political side, we won't have to worry about Europeans getting their panties in a bunch over our control of our, very useful, system, because they'll have their own. On the device side, it's always good to have redundancy, even if the US didn't reserve the right to selectively degrade the signal without warning for any reason.
In fact, I think you'll find that the European system and the US system will cooperate more than anything else. Any selective degradation for tactical reasons will most likely be mirrored by the other system; as your descendants, we do have similar interests more often than not. And flight-rated GPS will be much more robust: tests of the selective availability feature can be alternated between systems and locations, so aircraft will always have at least one fully functional signal to rely on.
That said, I think it's kind of odd how they're paying for it: Member countries of the EU should decide whether or not to fund it, "surplus" subsidy money shouldn't just be re purposed as if it doesn't belong to anyone. It belongs to the states that provided it, and ultimately to their citizens.
That's what saddens me: when politics "forces" an expedient solution rather than a righteous one.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
>as "the GPS" is really called Navstar.
/. and the guys that fly it 24/7 - i'm gonna go with the guys in the green jammies. /sarcasm
Hang on a sec...
(/me gets up from my POS government Dell desktop, walks onto GPS Ops floor, asks the SrA at the SVO workstation what is he flying.)
(/me walks back to my POS dell and types this post)
well, not to be difficult with you, jeremyp, but the Senior Airman WHO IS ACTUALLY FLYING THE SATELLITES tells me he calls it "GPS". And since he, and the other folks over there (/me points at wall across from my cubicle) that are flying it already have a name for it, between some goof on
Seriously, though, no one has called it NAVSTAR in i don't know how long. I've been working GPS for almost a decade, and i've not one single time heard anyone use the word "NAVSTAR" at work without meaning it in a joking manner.
oh, and i think that we should, in all seriousness, give a big hand to those cute Euros for their cute little satellites. I'm sure that their pay-for-use, non-reliable system that is being paid for by stealing money from the much smarter European people will have no problems whatsoever, and since it will most likely LOSE more money per week than Concorde lost in its whole lifespan - and we saw their stick-to-it-aveness with Concorde, didn't we? - i bet everyone will be relying on Galileo for easily, 2, maybe 3 months before someone in France or Brussles or wherever they go to fight about things will pull the plug because its not green enough or not communist enough or something....
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.