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"Pathfinders" Take Shape For Galileo, Europe's GPS
oliderid sends along a BBC report on progress toward Europe's home-grown GPS system. The Galileo concept will get an initial test via four "pathfinder" satellites that will be the first in the Galileo constellation. Galileo is intended to be complementary with the US GPS system — when all 30 Galileo birds are flying, a receiver with both GS and Galileo capability should enjoy 1-meter positional accuracy, vs. the several meters available through GPS alone, according to the article. There's a video tour of the facility where the pathfinders are being built. "After all the wrangling, the delays, and the furor over cost, Europe's version of GPS is finally starting to take shape. Due for launch in pairs in late 2010 and early 2011, the 'pathfinders' will form a mini-constellation in the sky. They will transmit the navigation signals that demonstrate the European system can become a reality."
How are they getting funding? As recently as yesterday I was reading about how it was pretty much an orphaned project because no one wanted to buy what was already available for free (albeit less reliably). I skimmed TFA and found nothing on the matter. No matter how they funded it (unless they sold some babies or something), I'm glad they are moving forward on this. I see this as being really good for Europe, and the space industry in general.
What I think is really cool about GPS is that without Einstein's theory of general relativity, it wouldn't work. For example, the atomic clocks aboard the satellites run faster because they're higher up in the Earth's gravitational field, and when you're higher in a gravitational field, time flows more quickly. If they didn't compensate for this effect (and a bunch of others), the system wouldn't work at all. Of course you can still find kooks on the internet who think that relativity is all wrong, and have mathematical proofs to that effect. I wonder if those people refrain from using GPS?
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GPS is so standard now, and it is bugfree. It's hard to imagine anyone switching.
Yeah, "complementary" is a long word, isn't it? I wonder what it means.
Actually not so. I had to have a survey done to mark some specific spots for calibrating our gps receivers for dgps. He used a Trimble receiver to mark the spot. The spot was within +/- .1 inch and he verified the accuracy using the Russian GLONASS system. I was quite surprised that he actually did this. He said it was standard company procedure.
There was a point in time where the Russians didn't have the money to maintain the system, however that has changed, and I believe they have been adding sattelites to bring it up to full capacity.
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They are getting funding from the government.
1) They want to track all vehicles in the EU. Galileo is designed to have much better performance in urban areas than GPS.
Proposals were on the UK Department for Transport website which detailed the desire to place a satellite positioning tracker with a cellular modem in every vehicle, by law, for the alleged purpose of "road pricing" ; charging for transit on key congested roads at certain times. Road pricing is horseshit because if having to drive on a congested road isn't sufficient deterrent to stop you doing it, then taxation isn't going to achieve it. You could also achieve the same goal much more cheaply with a mandatory active RFID numberplate and a pickup loop on these "key" roads, so Occams razor says that they want something that doesn't just track your use of certain roads.
2) Military reasons
Let's face it. Would you want your military dependant on a system that a culture of well known isolationists who live half a world away can switch off at their whim? Neither would I. Independance from US control is the second motivator.
A gps time source is only off by a handful of ns. You then want to send that time over NTP and add milliseconds of year?
[quote]Assuming the US stick to their promise to keep SA turned off...[/quote]
Well, turning on SA would screw airplanes everywhere, and new GPS III satellites aren't going to have SA (this was announced in 2007 so it may have already started), so it is pretty hard to not keep their promise.
Only if you trust the US to not screw around with it for political reasons. Imagine Sarah Palin as President, who is to say she wouldn't scramble GPS for France & Germany because they refuse to support her invasion of Canada? How about if they release those algorithms and keys just to US companies thus undermining European ones (TomTom etc) and say that the keys can only be exported in completed devices.
The issue with GPS is one of trust and control, simply put the Europeans don't trust the US to play nicely and fair in part because they are funding it.
And if it sounds far fetched... remember the US used to forbid the export of crypto.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I agree that mass vehicle tracking raises very serious privacy concerns, but road pricing does reduce traffic. You might be interested in the Transport For London annual report, which indicates that traffic in the city is about 20% lower than it otherwise would be.
The trouble with your proposal to just track "key" roads is that it encourages traffic to do rat-runs along secondary roads. I experienced this personally when tolling was brought in on a freeway near my house; the alternative routes were suddenly jam-packed with traffic, particularly at off-peak times when they were previously quiet.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
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