Galileo To Be Europe's Answer To US GPS

judgecorp writes "Two Galileo satellites that will signify the start of the European Union's answer to the American Global Positioning System will be launched into orbit on Thursday aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket. It's using Soyuz because it is cheaper than the French Ariane — and the satellite system is supposed to free Europe from dependence on a U.S.-controlled positioning system."

Comments

For such a vital system.

[EsbenMoseHansen]

.. more redundancy is always better. This is probably some of my tax money that has been spent the best. Aside for those used to repair the roads, teach the children, take care of the sick and so on and so forth.

Re:For such a vital system.

[ShakaUVM]

>>.. more redundancy is always better. This is probably some of my tax money that has been spent the best

GPS is great, sure, but IIRC Galileo isn't compatible without devices being modified to also accept Galileo signals. So this project is going to cost quite a bit of money in re-engineering and replacement costs for devices to use the new system in addition to GPS.

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

The improved technical features of Galileo over GPS, though, are quite nice.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Plammox]

From what I heard, this was the unfortunate (for EU) consequence of the US answering "go f*** yourselves" to the EU demand of US forking over the GPS system to UN-control. The empty threat of building our own now has to become a reality. Yay for more jobs in the EU private space sector, though.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

GPS devices have a limited usable life anyways, at least the consumer devices. As the satellites are being shot into space and the system becomes operational new devices start to include also Galileo capability. The basic technology isn't that different from GPS, it isn't like going back to the 80's to develop the first GPS receivers again.

Not all of EU is in NATO. And it wouldn't be impossible for some of the EU states to shoot down the GPS satellites either.

Re:For such a vital system.

[91degrees]

There are more possible relationships than close cooperation and active war though. Suppose parts of Europe have a disagreement with Israel, or the US decides to support a war against Egypt or Turkey that the EU opposes. The US and the European countries aren't going to be shooting at each other or taking out each others satellites, but might decide that they don't want the enemies of their allies to use their GPS system.

Re:For such a vital system.

[jawtheshark]

And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

You do realize that it's exactly statements like this that make us want to become as independent from the US as possible, right?

Re:For such a vital system.

[Yvanhoe]

Before Galileo was decided, US did not give the ability to use the full precision of the GPS to non military US units. It also has the capacity to unilateraly switch off GPS on a zone. Galileo will be a civilian system, for anyone to use. Presumably always on.

About redundancy, note that 2 other positioning systems are currently deployed :
Chinese Beidou : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Beidou_navigation_system
Russian GLONASS : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/GLONASS

Re:For such a vital system.

[Barsteward]

There were rumours years ago that the US only agreed to allow Galileo if they also had a "override and switch off" button.

Re:For such a vital system.

[julesh]

The other scenario is that the US can shut down GPS if it believes it is being used by terrorists. The EU might not agree with that assessment, and want to keep it open. Having Galileo gives them that option.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Gordonjcp]

I don't really see what the US can do about it. If you don't like it, stop bumming rides off us. Go and find someone else to help you lift your payloads into space, now that you have no viable launch vehicles. How are things between you and Iran these days? I hear they're making great progress towards reliable LEO delivery.

Re:For such a vital system.

[jandersen]

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

Military alliances like NATO have their place, but I think a major part of this is not about being America's enemy, only about independence. Is it in Europe's interest to not feel they have to bow to America's political pressure? I should certainly think so. America is far to much in the pockets of big corporations, and as long as that is so, I think a politically weaker America is in everybody elses interest - and possibly in the American people's interest as well.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Get of the conspiracy bandwaggon. Galileo has been a major news item (at least in Germany; I remember several news items from the decision to create Galileo, over the first prototypes, over the massive cost overruns, etc...) and is not a black-helicopter type project. It was started when the US degraded GPS-performance during the Kosovo-conflict.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Not all of EU is in NATO. And it wouldn't be impossible for some of the EU states to shoot down the GPS satellites either."

WTF are you on about? Not everyone on the planet is psychotic warmonger! Yes there are lots of disagreements within the EU, Swizterland is technically not in the EU but they don't raise an army and start storming across the Alps, pen-knives in hand, spoiling for a fight every time they disagree on something with Italy or France!

Re:For such a vital system.

[cbope]

Stop spreading FUD. Europeans do not believe the EU is an evil institute. Sure, there are disagreements and minor political conflicts from time to time, just as there are elsewhere, but to imply that all Europeans think the EU is evil is going just a tad too far. At least we are not under the complete control of corporations as in the US. The EU still has a spine, at times, to stand up for what the citizens want in the face of corporate pressure. It's not perfect but it's far better than the US at the moment. When was the last time US politicians did something for their citizens that was not acting in concert with some corporation or organization (**AAs, I'm looking at you)?

Re:For such a vital system.

[SomePgmr]

Why? All he said is that it's probably not primarily a militaristic endeavor.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Zontar The Mindless]

The purpose is easy. Extract money from the citizens. That's the only purpose for which the EU exists.

Please spare us the "TAXES R T3H 3V1L" crap. I pay lots more tax here than I would in the US; however, unlike the case in the US, I find that at least some of the taxes get spent on things that tend to make life better for all.

It's sad that Europeans have to read this news on US sites.

Did you actually see where the links in TFS point to?

Maybe that explains why so many Europeans feel the EU is an evil institute. But I bet nobody outside the EU ever hears about tat.

"So many" = "a few right-wing nutjobs".

Nice attempt at trolling. Better luck next time.

Re:For such a vital system.

[phayes]

more redundancy is always better

Not necessarily. This is less adding a spare tire in the trunk that can be used to replace a flat on one of the existing tires & more the first few pieces of a new & incompatible wheel attachment system that has been devised to keep european space workers busy. In a decade or two once all the pieces have been installed and a distribution network is set up it may actually turn out to be a better system but to be able to use it you're going to have to pay through the nose.
The definition of better depends on who you are. Clearly better for the space workers & people who need the upgrades & are willing to pay for them. Not necessarily better for people happy with the existing setup.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Richard_at_work]

Uhm, you do realise the US has several "viable launch vehicles"? They just ditched the only man rated one.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Evtim]

ShakaUVM says: I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot

Well, you better buy it, because Galileo is an old project which so far was crippled solely due to politics. Already back in the days when http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright was secretary of state she was in Europe trying to stop the project using any pressure available. It was on the news.

Now, let us through away the polit-speak and polit-correctness for a moment and view the situation from purely pragmatic point. OK, ready?

Now, you are an empire. You control most of the world seas, have military bases in more than 100 countries (blatantly breaking even the agreement about Antarctica), your currency is the world currency, your language is lingua franka. Your military is larger than the rest of the world combined. Also, your military doctrine states that any attempt by any nation to diminish your almost complete dominance in space would be considered an act of war. You also do not subscribe to almost any international agreements that can even potentially harm your revenue, cultural, political or military dominance. Add to that the fact that in realpolitik there are no friends as such, only temporary collaborations with others that happen to have the same agenda or are benefiting from yours.

And empires in particular cannot have friends (even if there were friends in politics), only protectorates or enemies. By being so dominant you inadvertently position yourself as the enemy of everyone else. Sooner or later.

Now, last time I said on /. that the you-know-who is an Empire with all that implies, I was modded troll. Now, please do as you please, but try to think about this, read history, read between the lines and above all, find an intelligent military officer that can tell you what exactly they teach them in West Point. Then read history again. And remember - any other nation would behave the in the same way. Just don't fall for the "we are all friends and allies here, hell bent on promoting life, happiness and democracy all over the world"

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

At least we are not under the complete control of corporations as in the US. The EU still has a spine, at times, to stand up for what the citizens want in the face of corporate pressure.

Great, here we go again, it always happens when Europeans disagree, that the US gets drawn in at some point even when they try to remain neutral.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Arancaytar]

I hear they're making great progress towards reliable LEO delivery.

So they've moved on to lions now? I hear the chimpanzee thing didn't work out so great. ;)

Re:For such a vital system.

[L4t3r4lu5]

This time, through extra car taxes, measuring exactly how many miles you have driven.

I hate to point out the obvious, but this isn't necessarily a bad idea. Let's reverse the analogy; Granny and grandp send emails to their kids and occasionally buy a SlapChop from Amazon. They pay for a broadband connection, £10 per month for 1GB data cap (numbers pulled out of my ar... errr the air). This is the equivalent of "old lady who only goes to the shop once a week" car driver who would pay very little road tax. Then you have the 2x year old who pounds the tubes day in, day out, unlimited data cap and top-tier speeds. He pays £60 per month for that service. This is the rep or professional driver who is constantly on the road, and he pays more tax.

I think it makes more sense than paying for how much CO2 your car puts out, regardless of how often you drive.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

No, European nations could never be the dickheads that they make the US out to be right? Europe is built upon a history of tolerance and peace. Your smugness and uneducated stance amuses me.

Re:For such a vital system.

[EsbenMoseHansen]

Competition will drive the prices down. As for keeping existing setup,. few keeps their existing equipment for very long. I certainly buy a new car GPS every few (5?) years, because (a) batteries sucks after a while and (b) they get better and (c) I am too lazy to buy new maps. Admittedly, (a) and (b) has a big influence on (c).

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need everyone to be a warmonger. One nutcase in the wrong job will do it. Yugoslavia wasn't that long ago either. Shit does happen.

Re:For such a vital system.

[DNS-and-BIND]

FYI: "bumming a ride" is American slang derived from railroad hobos meaning "to ride for free where someone is already going anyway". It's a synonym for hitchhiking. America pays cold hard cash for its satellite lifts. Please stop using this phrase, you don't know what it means.

Re:For such a vital system.

[migla]

I'm sure the EU can be perceived as an evil institute from a vantage point on the left too.

It could be characterized as a big fucking machine that can be used as tool for good, I guess, in opposition to other big fucking machines on this globe.

On the whole, I don't know if it's good or bad to have a big fucking machine like this. Good thing if we, the people, can wield it for democracy and good in the world, but really really bad if power is taken further away from the people and centralized to a big boot to pin us down. We'll see.

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheTurtlesMoves]

WTF are you on about? Not everyone on the planet is psychotic warmonger!

No they are not. But that does not mean you let them be the only one in control of important infrastructure. Its not like the US wouldn't do the same. Turning selective availability back on is not really a act of war... but rather a powerful negotiation tool if such a extreme situation comes up. With all the doom gloom and war that everyone here on /. predicts will result from AGW, then i think its prudent to have a backup.

Allies in one war are often enemies in the next.

Re:For such a vital system.

[damburger]

Private space sector? Really?

Because I could've *sworn* the clean room I saw a Galileo satellite being prepared in was owned by ESA...

Re:For such a vital system.

[DNS-and-BIND]

Please stop using the word empire, you don't know what it means. I'd expect a European to have better knowledge of the history of imperialism than this. After all, Europe had real, actual empires. By the way, how are those reparation programs going for the victims of European imperialism?

Re:For such a vital system.

[theVarangian]

Maybe that explains why so many Europeans feel the EU is an evil institute. But I bet nobody outside the EU ever hears about tat.

"So many" = "a few right-wing nut jobs".

To be fair that sentiment is shared by a few left wing nut jobs.

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheTurtlesMoves]

The US strongly objected to the fact that the frequencies overlap. So you can't jam Galileo without also jamming GPS. The converse is not true. It is rumored that they overlap precisely for this reason. Also a minimum accuracy level (sufficient for civilian activities) of Galileo is suppose to be impossible to turn off, even by the EU.

I very much doubt that the EU put a off switch in for the US. We just don't get along that well. See the leaked diplomatic cables for proof. And how can the US not allow Galileo going forward? By shooting them down?

Re:For such a vital system.

[neokushan]

Speaking as a European, I'd just like to say that you're talking out of your arse. Yes, some europeans oppose the EU, however the majority aren't that idiotic and see it for what it is - good for everyone involved. If it wasn't for the EU, the economic crisis would have been 10x worse.

Re:For such a vital system.

[peppepz]

EU citizens often get a negative view of the EU because national governments blame the EU for their own negligence. Inflation skyrockets? "It's the Euro's fault". They need to raise the minimum retirement age? "It's the EU that is asking this from us".

Also, nationalist movements gain consensus by opposing against yelding any sovereignty to the european institutions; this makes the EU weaker, which then allows themselves to point out the EU is just a bureaucratic superstructure with no decision power.

The nationalists whine against the EU when it's time for a state to offer its help to other countries in the union, and then whine again against the EU when it's time to get help from the union, and it doesn't arrive because the nationalists in the other states behave exactly in the same way as they did before (see what happens every time some states are hit by an immigration wave).

Re:For such a vital system.

[Zironic]

As far as I can tell the truth is this.

The US has the ability to override, switch off, lower accuracy etc with their GPS system.
They will not have the ability to do that with Galileo.

Originally the EU had also planned to have Galileo use the same frequency that GPS does, which means that not only could the US not turn it off, they couldn't jam it either because then they'd jam themselves too.

However after threatening to shoot any Galileo satellites using the GPS frequency down, the EU finally agreed to use different frequencies so jamming would be possible.

Re:For such a vital system.

[kubernet3s]

Are they really going to log the information of every satnav that communicates with Galileo, match it up to a car, and then send you a bill in the mail? GPS actually doesn't work like that (The GPS system can't figure out who's listening). Wouldn't you have to register with the Bureau of keeping track of weird things, just for them to know where to send the bill? Assuming this works at all. Which it doesn't. People seem to think that GPS satellites are something like sky cameras, that look down on you and tell you where you are. At least one conspiracy theory *requires this literally* http://ironiestoo.blogspot.com/2010/10/is-galileo-really-just-eu-big-brother.html Miraculously dumbassed stuff (signs on the road indeed!). Didn't we all just read Wikipedia's GPS entry after that CERN thing? And this is not to mention all the other reasons why a GPS system wouldn't (not just couldn't) function as a position monitor, including all those mentioned here, the construction of a multiple other GPS networks in other countries, and the lack of necessity for a NEW system, should the big bad EU want to get up to some mischief. Troll? The fact that there's a chance you're not is sad for us all

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheTurtlesMoves]

The US does not really hold this position, at least not for a while. Its holding on, but only just and not from a position of power. And most don't think for much longer. Not as the dominate player. May still be the bully in the school yard though. But that is not the same thing.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MemoryDragon]

Actually GPS is by far not the only one. Russia currently overhauls its old Glonass System which should be up to par in a few years, and I assume China also is working on its own system.
And I agree the more the better to have redundancy.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Plammox]

This may be, but a global positioning system consists of much more than just the satellite. In the country I live in now, private companies are delivering the infrastructure (think: ground antennas and control systems) to ESA, so yes, a lot of larger and smaller subcontractors are involved.

Re:For such a vital system.

[damburger]

It may at a push be private sector, but its certainly not normal, commercial private sector.

Galileo is ultimately an ESA project, even if they contract out to the private sector. Hopefully, some of the revenue it generates will go into non-profit spaceflight.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

But it was build by...?

Just because a building is owned by the government it doesn't mean that the construction company for the building has to be owned by the government too. Same is valid for satellites or rockets.

Re:For such a vital system.

[peppepz]

And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

They wouldn't even need to shoot down anything because Galileo, by request of the USA, uses different frequencies than GPS, so the USA can jam it on their territory (or elsewhere) without disrupting the correct operation of GPS.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Zironic]

Well, to be fair the Euro was a fuckup (The problem wasn't the idea of creating a common currency, it was allowing the PIIGS into it) that's by now far beyond the control of the individual member states.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Kjella]

Here in Norway we're almost 5 million people and our largest military threat - despite it being post-Cold War is Russia, which is a huge country who could field more soldiers than we have people. If NATO won't help we're screwed anyway and if NATO comes people expect the cavalry to come charging to our rescue anyway. But is the US interested in protecting people that can't be bothered to have a decent defense of their own? If everybody is betting on NATO to aid them, who'll be the ones delivering all the aid? Would you seriously accept the logic on anything that "They have tanks, so we don't have to" "They have carriers, so we don't have to" "They have submarines, so we don't have to". No, Europe should have its Galileo because it's ours even though the US has theirs and we're allies. An alliance should come on top of your own defense, not instead of it.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Soluzar]

If I'm reading the comment right it has absolutely nothing to do with perceived moral rectitude. It has to do with being in the uncomfortable position at the muzzle end of a gun.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

In an ideal world that had no privacy concerns, the right way to do it would be to weight the taxation method to match the expected costs of climate change and road maintenance.

Somebody driving an ultra efficient low emissions car should still have to pay for wearing down the tarmac and all the benefits they get for road infrastructure, yes, but they shouldn't have to pay as much as somebody who gets the benefits of infrastructure while at the same time emitting large amounts of exhaust gases.

Re:For such a vital system.

[mmcuh]

From the start Galileo was designed to be even more "GPS independent", for example it was going to use the same frequency band as GPS so that the US couldn't use ground-based interference signals to block it without also blocking their own GPS in the same region. But someone scared them out of that.

Re:For such a vital system.

[mmcuh]

Did the immigrants come over and steal all your jobs, women and punctuation marks?

Re:For such a vital system.

[tinkerton]

In the UK there seems to be a majority who thinks the EU is evil. This belief is fueled by a constant stream of anti-EU stories that are often nothing more than myths.

Re:For such a vital system.

[EdZ]

GIOVE-A was built by SSTL. Lots of the components for the actual satellites are built by SSTL. ESA orders the project around, but private companies do the actual manufacturing and assembly.

Re:For such a vital system.

[jdfox]

Not all nationalists see the EU this way: just those who support the larger, longer-established national governments. Smaller nationalist movements like the SNP in Scotland, etc often see the EU as a potential alternative to their existing "parent" nation-state, which in Scotland's case is the UK.

Of course, this makes the EU all the more irritating to Euro-sceptics in the UK...

Re:For such a vital system.

[prefect42]

Thing is, fuel tax does this quite effectively. Yes it's only a linear punishment, but then road tax in the UK certainly isn't (a high MPG diesel can easily be in the £20 a year tax band, but your thirsty V8 could easily be £445 a year). This'll mean taxation that varies based on your car and the time of day. But don't forget that high flyers will probably get this refunded through expenses. I think it's a lavishly expensive and over complicated solution for a problem that doesn't really exist, that I'm not sure won't lead to a whole host of private toll-roads and a generally less open road network than we enjoy now.

Re:For such a vital system.

[prefect42]

Believe me, plenty of money is being directed into the private sector on this deal...

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, because we will buy our galileo sat nav from military contractors.

Re:For such a vital system.

[TESTNOK]

>

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

But the disadvantage is not just present in case of (bizarre, as you say) hostilities between the US and EU. If the US military is involved in some conflict somewhere and decide that it is beneficial to them to limit or even shut down GPS for civilian use, then every-one is affected by that. Example: suppose you were hiking around South-Italy during the Balkan conflict (just across the Adriatic Sea, there), and the US had switched off GPS, or limited it to military use only. Bummer. And that's just a vacation. Business etc are affected just as well. So having an independent system seems better.

Re:For such a vital system.

[ColdWetDog]

Bureau of keeping track of weird things

I like that. We need one of those here.

Re:For such a vital system.

[M1FCJ]

The funny thing is, someone driving an ultra efficient low emissions car pays less thanks to the higher mpg. In EU, the significant cost of the fuel per liter is taxes thus efficient car pays less tax. Linking the road tax (i.e., cost of the infrastructure) to the mileage actually makes it more balanced overall.

Currently in UK cars built after 2001 pay the road tax based on CO2 emissions. Anything older pays a flat rate based on the capacity of the engine.

They don't have to track down the cars. During MOT, mileage is one of the values recorded thus it can be used to calculate the taxes. Even though it is relatively easy to clock a car, majority of the people will not bother with it.

Re:For such a vital system.

[ColdWetDog]

Oh, I don't doubt there is an 'off' switch. I'm not sure that it's hooked up to anything...

"Sorry sir, it's not responding!"

Re:For such a vital system.

[M1FCJ]

The blogpost entry you've linked is... It's so stupid, it hurts...

Re:For such a vital system.

[Kagura]

The other scenario is that the US can shut down GPS if it believes it is being used by terrorists. The EU might not agree with that assessment, and want to keep it open. Having Galileo gives them that option.

The US can shut down the Galileo system in a non-destructive manner, as well, if it wishes. This will happen in a real-life situation sooner rather than later.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Chrisq]

>>.. more redundancy is always better. This is probably some of my tax money that has been spent the best

GPS is great, sure, but IIRC Galileo isn't compatible without devices being modified to also accept Galileo signals. So this project is going to cost quite a bit of money in re-engineering and replacement costs for devices to use the new system in addition to GPS.

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

The improved technical features of Galileo over GPS, though, are quite nice.

It will be very useful to the Muslims when they take over Europe, however.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Full precision has been in place for quite some time. I was one of the GPS operators (SSO) that basically began the process of this back in the mid-90s. This is total BS because the EU is going broke fast and they want to launch a billion dollar+ program (yes, Euro billion plus, whatever) for duplication? Not buying it. GLONASS is different because they don't pretend to be our friends. Their system declined due to funding, but now they have the money again. GLONASS birds launched in the 90s were garbage. While our Block 1's intended for 3 year usage were hitting a decade in life (SVN3 hit 13 years when the electrical system could no longer sustain it through eclipse season), their's were barely hitting design life.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a major part of this is not about being America's enemy, only about independence. Is it in Europe's interest to not feel they have to bow to America's political pressure? I should certainly think so.

Being independent means being America's enemy, at least from America's view.

If you don't bow to America's political pressure, then you are acting contrary to American interest, and that is enough to make you an "enemy".

Re:For such a vital system.

[damburger]

Its no secret that certain people in Europe (mostly politicians) want to be able to take unilateral military action. In the modern era, having your own GPS network is part of this.

Re:For such a vital system.

[RoLi]

As an European, who will be very poor pretty soon, I can only see this as a remnant of a pre-crisis pissing contest.

Just today the EU has blown up the Euro bailout-package from 400 to 2000 billion, which means that about 5000 Euros is taken via inflation from each EU-subject.

Of course our "representatives" have only agreed to the 400 billion package, so the step from 400 to 2000 is just the beginning.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

Wow there's a lot of misinformation floating on this relatively simple subject. First, Block I, II, IIA, IIF, and IIRs do not have the capability to switch off zones. GPS satellite antennas are also not electronically steerable, as say a Milstar EHF comm bird, so you can't "turn off a zone," electrically/RF wise (or to ignore jamming). The satellites are a semi-sync bird, which means 12 hour orbit time around the entire Earth. They're only over regions a short period, and so physically going up on every satellite to turn them on and then off would be insanity on the ops floor (2 SOPS, Shreiver AFB, CO) and unsustainable beyond a day or two. Simply stated, not practical or really necessary. Using $15 in parts from Radio Shack I can jam GPS for small areas, if I didn't mind potentially going to jail.

For the comments, "We can shoot them down." Completely irresponsible. It's like saying, "If we want to destroy their bridge, we can just Nuke it." If you destroy a satellite, that position in space becomes unusable due to debris for centuries. We're not going to do it. This is why we were very angry with the Chinese for testing ASAT awhile back. Completely unnecessary and very irresponsible. We don't test GBU's on busy highways in the middle of urban cities (unless you include Iraq, but I kid).

Re:For such a vital system.

[ctrl-alt-canc]

I am afraid that the US will shut down GPS due to lack of funds for maintaining it...

Re:For such a vital system.

[1s44c]

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

And all you think about is war. Isn't it quite possible that one day the US will realise they can charge for GPS access? Maybe Europe doesn't want to risk being charged a fortune for something they have learned to depend on.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Reservoir Penguin]

I swear we need to reinstate the house of un-american activities, Slashdot is crawling with commies and socialist commie sympathizers. Your collectivism sickens me, surrender your hard earned money to make "life better for all"? Really?? How about "all" start earning their own income and stop stealing from my paycheck!

Re:For such a vital system.

[Zoxed]

FYI Galileo is an EU project, subcontracted out to ESA and private companies. (And most of the "real" work of ESA is sub contacted out.) (EU and ESA doing mainly funding, project management, co-ordinating etc.)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Tsingi]

You don't need everyone to be a warmonger. One nutcase in the wrong job will do it.

Like GWB, or Obama.

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheRaven64]

As the other poster said, it depends on the nationalist party. The Welsh and Scottish nationalists are fairly pro-Europe because neither country is really viable as a totally independent entity, but both are larger than some other EU member states and could work as members of the EU, rather than members of the UK.

The current situation in the EU is a bit of a mess. I'm broadly in favour of the institution, but far too much power is concentrated in the totally unaccountable parts of the political system. Unfortunately, any proposal for reform gets shot down by the anti-EU faction who would rather see the EU collapse than see it transformed into something good.

The Euro was also largely a mistake, because they created a centralised currency but without central control on spending. This, effectively, let countries like Greece borrow against economies like Germany, which encouraged unconstrained borrowing and spending. I don't really know how this could be fixed. Centralising control over national budget is politically unfeasible, and keeping a currency stable without that kind of control is not easy.

Re:For such a vital system.

[alex67500]

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down.

Good God, you're so arrogant you could almost be French. Ah non, wait! Unlike ze British, we have actually kept a nuclear strike capability. 12 heads pointed straight at you, you just don't know where they'll be coming from. No-one would come out a winner from this, but please, give it a go :-)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Kjella]

Maybe that explains why so many Europeans feel the EU is an evil institute.

Sure, there are disagreements and minor political conflicts from time to time, just as there are elsewhere, but to imply that all Europeans think the EU is evil is going just a tad too far.

Where exactly did he go from many to all? That was your hyperbole. Anyway, EU citizens are torn between two opposing issues. On the one hand they're afraid that EU lacks direct democratic influence, that government-appointed politicians and lobbyists make directives while the public first is called to outrage when the actual law is implemented in the individual countries and it for the most part is too late to change. It's gotten a little better with the EU parliament changes but even so they've often been the voice of reason against an unreasonable Council that isn't directly elected.

On the other hand, many people are afraid of an US of E where the nations and national interests are overrun by Brussels. The relation between "German" and "European" is quite different than between "Californian" and "American" (though both have stolen a continent's name). You can see this now with the suggested soltions to the debt crisis, some want Greece to abandon the Euro while others think now's the time to make economic policy on the EU level, not national governments. Neither solution is without some fairly large downsides.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

Everybody is thinking about war. I was involved, in a small way, with the planning of Galileo, and one of the very big concerns in Europe was that the US could start charging for the use of GPS. The technology is already on the GPS satellites, and it could be done regionally (with fairly big regions, but enough to keep it free in the US whilst charging in Europe and Asia if not in Canada and Mexico). The free availability of GPS without selective availability is subject to annual presidential review. Considering the extent that the world is dependent on GPS now, if the USA started charging it would have the rest of the world over a barrel. Galileo isn't so much about military competition as commercial competition.

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheRaven64]

I don't think it's a majority. In the european elections, voting for UKIP (who vote against any bill in the European Parliament, no matter how sensible it is) is a pretty clear vote against the EU. They currently have 15% of the seats, and received about 15% of the vote in the last election, including the bump that they got from disillusionment with the more mainstream parties over the expenses scandal.

Re:For such a vital system.

[petermgreen]

BINGO, active war between the US and EU seems rather unlikely but strained relationships seem far more reasonable and actively destroying or disabling another nations satellites is a FAR higher escalation than merely disabling a service you give the world for free.

The EU has become FAR too reliant on GPS service, a service that is only available due to the altruism of the US government.

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheRaven64]

I pay lots more tax here than I would in the US; however, unlike the case in the US

That depends on where you live in the EU, but it's true for fewer than half of the members if you include everything (sales taxes, property taxes, and so on) and it's only true for a small handful of EU member states if you count the amount spent on healthcare in the 'tax' column.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

Nowhere near as easily. To shut off GPS in a region the DoD just has to press a couple of buttons in Colorado (IIRC). To shut off Galileo in a region they have to get jammers into the region itself, and those jammers are a target. Or they could do what they've said they would do as a first measure -- work with the Board of Trade to apply economic sanctions to the operators of Galileo to force them to shut it down.

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheRaven64]

I've not heard about Galileo for a long time - last I heard was at the Farnborough air show almost a decade ago - but one of the main selling points they had back then was the idea of having both Galileo and GPS receivers in the same device and using them to calibrate each other. This would mean that even if you jammed the Galileo frequencies, the device would switch back to using just GPS and would still be more accurate than a pure GPS device because of the initial calibration.

Re:For such a vital system.

[errandum]

Galileo also provides two way communication when needed. It's also supposed to be more accurate than GPS, but I've yet to see that.

Also, why should Europe have to suffer when the American military decides to offset the GPS coordinates due to military exercises and whatnot? It makes perfect sense to have two.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

The EU also gains the UK a "sodding fortune". You might not have noticed that the migration laws work both ways. The company I work for (almost all of whose employees are British) works globally and gets a lot of its work from within the EU precisely because of EU procurement regulations, common European standards, ease of travel and working rights. You don't like immigration? Well, you need to send the Anglo Saxons and the Celts back: Keep Britain Beaker! (But wait! Oh noes! Even the beaker people came from Spain originally!)

Try getting your information on Europe from somewhere other than the Daily Mail and Murdoch.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

It would have, if they hadn't agreed to a design change that now allows selective jamming of the Galileo civilian signal by the US without affecting the GPS military signal. In the "discussion" leading up to that decision, the USA even threatened to shoot down Galileo satellites if it came to such a conflict without selective jamming being possible. Lovely.

Re:For such a vital system.

[singingjim1]

Wasn't America part of a European empire? Oh, that's right, we rejected that idea and then became the most inclusive country in the world and, as a nation of free people, not politicians, have started and led pretty much every social reform movement of significance on the face of the planet. And we happen to be starting another social movement against greed and aggression right now. So stop the America bashing and understand that "We The People..." is inclusive, not exclusive. The "American Way" isn't imperialistic, it's an invitation to be included in something that is inherently good. I understand people are suspicious of salesmen. But what we are really selling, as a people, not as a government, is freedom. Freedom with boundaries of course since their are those who hate freedom and wish to harm those that embrace it. As far as the whole satellite thing goes. No one really cares. It's just a political football to lend credibility to those whose job it is to kick it around.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

This is total BS because the EU is going broke fast and they want to launch a billion dollar+ program (yes, Euro billion plus, whatever) for duplication?

No, they don't want to launch the programme. They launched the programme something like twenty years ago. They want to continue the programme, which is coming to fruition.

Re:For such a vital system.

[mattcasters]

Fact remains that GPS is controlled by the US (military) and that restrictions are in place for civilian usage as far as accuracy, speed and altitude are concerned. I also still remember quite clearly that during the Iraq war all GPS receivers in Europe were off by about 100m at some point. I do not think that was an accident.

As far as shooting down GPS satellites is concerned: according to Wikipedia that completely irresponsible comment was a threat made by US officials:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_(satellite_navigation)#Tension_with_the_United_States

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

NATO is irrelevant to this. The DoD declared back in the 90s that in a conflict situation they would consider any GPS augmentation ground station to be a valid military target whether or not it was on friendly soul.

Re:For such a vital system.

[vlm]

GPS devices have a limited usable life anyways, at least the consumer devices

Huh? If the AA batteries are flat, change them.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you start threatening military action, no amount of "but is't not our first choice" is going to get you back into a trustworthy position.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, you would prefer even more unskilled Nigerian and Pakistani immigrants to the skilled, hard-working Poles from the EU?

Re:For such a vital system.

[DrXym]

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot. And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down. So it doesn't make a lot of sense along those lines.

I think it's credible. GPS has become critical to Europe and I guess they don't like the idea of being beholden to the US for it.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not about the US turning militarily hostile, it's about them just being dicks for the sake of their own business and corporations - something which they have shown themselves likely to do, on many occasions already.

It's the same reason the US want to be independent from reliance on OPEC - it's got little to do with war and much to do with financial and social stability.

Re:For such a vital system.

[AmiMoJo]

They can turn sats off over radio link. That link is also used to monitor the state of each satellite and do fixes from time to time. There used to be the ability to reduce accuracy to something like 50m, but the US claims that is not available on all current hardware. Even assuming we believe them they can still simply shut the system down, or introduce deliberate clock drift, or generally screw it up in some way.

You can't seriously expect us to believe that there is no way the US can cause the rest of us problems without physically sending someone up there.

There is also the possibility of the US becoming politically unstable or unable to maintain the GPS system for some reason, so at the very least we need a backup. It takes decades to set this sort of thing up, so we have to think long term. I'm not trolling, just explaining the thinking.

Re:For such a vital system.

[rich_hudds]

Of course America is an empire, and I do know what the word means.

You have troops in the middle east that support puppet regimes that serve your interests.

Just because you don't rule those countries directly does not mean they are not part of your empire. The British used a mixture of direct rule and puppet regimes, there is little difference in reality.

The only place you have withdrawn from recently is Saudi Arabia in 2003 pretty much in response to 9/11. You also moved your position on Palestine at the same time thus conceding the two main points made by the terrorists. This seems to have been largely overlooked by the American media as they concentrated on the Afghan war.

The troops in Saudi Arabia were moved largely to Qatar which is basically under Saudi control anyway though so it was more of a gesture concession than a real one. If Saudi Arabia was attacked you can be pretty sure they would help out.

Of course you can pretend that the Saudi government is a real government and you are helping out a friendly country for democratic freedom loving reasons if you so wish. I think that's probably what you'd argue.

I'm not necessarily saying having an empire is a bad thing by the way, but if you have one it's probably better if you acknowledge it.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Yvanhoe]

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Selective_Availability#Selective_availability

GPS includes a (currently disabled) feature called Selective Availability (SA) that adds intentional, time varying errors of up to 100 meters (328 ft) to the publicly available navigation signals. This was intended to deny an enemy the use of civilian GPS receivers for precision weapon guidance.

http://www.securityfocus.com/news/10140

President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.

So from what I understand, the accuracy of GPS can be degraded for civilians whenever the US government wishes to do it, and GWB tried to make it possible to switch off the network whenever a terrorist attack hits U.S. You have to admit that this doesn't make non-US users of the system feel very secure. I guess that in case of a terrorist attack, the US would not be very concerned about an ongoing French military operation in Ivory Coast for instance, and would switch off or degrade the system without a second thought.

Re:For such a vital system.

[DrXym]

Sure they could but jamming would be an overt act of war and presumably Europe could jam back. Until such times, Galileo means Europe isn't dependent on America for a critical piece of infrastructure.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

They only just shut off LORAN last year.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Stormthirst]

Of course, this makes the EU all the more irritating to Euro-sceptics in the UK...

You say that like it's a bad thing ...

Re:For such a vital system.

[1s44c]

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible

The purpose is easy. Extract money from the citizens. That's the only purpose for which the EU exists. This time, through extra car taxes, measuring exactly how many miles you have driven. You'd expect this to reach the headlines - but no such thing. It's sad that Europeans have to read this news on US sites. Maybe that explains why so many Europeans feel the EU is an evil institute. But I bet nobody outside the EU ever hears about tat.

Road toll charges have been discussed for many years. It's not worth replacing US GPS just to implement that as their are cheaper ways. We just don't want to be held to ransom over GPS access at some later point.

A lot of Europeans ( I'm one ) don't really trust the EU but that's a long way from considering it evil. The single currency has saved a lot of us a small fortune in transfering money from state to state. Also being free to work in any member state without a visa is a huge advantage.

Re:For such a vital system.

[1s44c]

At least we are not under the complete control of corporations as in the US. The EU still has a spine, at times, to stand up for what the citizens want in the face of corporate pressure.

Great, here we go again, it always happens when Europeans disagree, that the US gets drawn in at some point even when they try to remain neutral.

No they don't get drawn in, they interfere. There is a difference.

Re:For such a vital system.

[rich_hudds]

When exactly are the Muslims taking over? You been watching Fox news?

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Galileo isn't so much about military competition as commercial competition.

Not sure the numbers work there. Even if you ignore the approximately $5 billion in initial costs, it costs $750 million/year to maintain. Was the US really ever going to charge the EU $750 million/year?

Redundancy is fine, but I think this is mainly French nationalism and a reflection of the world's recent distrust of the US.

Re:For such a vital system.

[peppepz]

But the euro was also largely a success, and I don't think that the EU would be faring better now if the euro wasn't there. For people living in the less performing economies, the euro meant that their money didn't become trash every time the speculation attacked their weak currency. Economies like Germany got their advantage from the euro because it boosted their exports.

The establishment of stronger control mechanisms, which was supposed to happen shortly after the euro introduction, was opposed even by the French and the Germans themselves, who had to face the growing euro-skepticism deriving e.g. from the immigration problems.

Now, the european central bank still has indirect means to impose reforms in the weaker countries, though we still have to see if this will be enough. For example, they recently sent a "love letter" to Italy asking them to implement certain severe restructuring reforms, under the implicit threat that they would no longer finance their public spending if they didn't comply.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Plammox]

If you want to support non-profit space flight, give these guys a donation: http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/

Re:For such a vital system.

[phayes]

If you think that you're the intended market for Galileo with your hand-held GPS units you're mistaken. Unless you're willing to pay expensive licensing fees for sub meter resolution (which can already be gained in GPS using terrestrial emitters), Galileo brings nothing new to the table. Galileo's main reason for existing is as pork for European satellite constructors selling it to airlines to use in automated landing systems is a fig leaf and it's development for use in cheap chips as a replacement/adjunct to GPS is a misinformed dream.
Competition between an existing free "good enough" solution and an incomplete expensive system has almost always turned out badly for the second.

Re:For such a vital system.

[aliquis]

If you destroy a satellite, that position in space becomes unusable due to debris for centuries. We're not going to do it. This is why we were very angry with the Chinese for testing ASAT awhile back. Completely unnecessary and very irresponsible.

Wikipedia:

USA-193, also known as NRO launch 21 (NROL-21 or simply L-21), was an American military spy satellite launched on December 14, 2006.[2] It was the first launch conducted by the United Launch Alliance.[3] Owned by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the craft's precise function and purpose were classified.

The satellite malfunctioned shortly after deployment,and was intentionally destroyed 14 months later on February 21, 2008, by a modified, $9.5 million SM-3 missile fired from the warship USS Lake Erie, stationed west of Hawaii.[4][5]

US at its finest. Argument and logic fail.

Re:For such a vital system.

[1s44c]

No, European nations could never be the dickheads that they make the US out to be right? Europe is built upon a history of tolerance and peace. Your smugness and uneducated stance amuses me.

Right but France doesn't treaten millitary action every time Spain farts. Europe as a whole calmed down with the warmongering.

Re:For such a vital system.

[aliquis]

Follow up on my own comment:

"Boho, the US would never do this!"

Oups, I accidentally tortured the prisoners. Thank god they weren't military prisoners!
Oups, I accidentally blew up a satellite in space.
Oups, I accidentally attacked, took over a country and killed the leader due to non-existing weapons of mass destruction (or whatever the excuse was.)
Oups, I accidentally blew up the journalist.

You can't have nukes!
Oups, I accidentally nuked two cities.

Off topic? Yeah. Insightful? Yeah. Terrorist state? Definitely.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

SA has been off since 1993-1994. I know because I was one of four SSOs who turned it off. 17 years have passed with no change. If we were turning it on, we would have at some point. It's not a trivial matter to turn it on and off. There are also international politics involved now which make this nearly moot. Yes, it was take not only more than a "second thought," it takes quite a bit of effort.

As much as GWB is everyone's new devil pariah most-loathed person, he can't rewire satellites already in space. And before you quote me Wiki again, no the space shuttle can't go out to 11,000 miles to do an upgrade. It's A) No longer flying B) Not capable of going even close to that distance.

Ignore every movie you've ever saw about space. We don't "flick stuff off and on" at a whim. We don't reposition satellites real time, at least not GPS, DSP, DMSP, or EHF (Milstar) birds. Spy satellites are even harder since they're in a highly elliptical orbit which is travelling at exceptionally high speeds when it's at perigee (the nearest point, which is usually where they're spying on). It's a matter of physics.

We've had many terrorist attacks since SA was turned off: Khobar Towers, USS Cole, 9/11, etc. Still off and no degradation.

Re:For such a vital system.

[BetterSense]

How exactly would the US charge for GPS? Don't the satellites just broadcast time-clock signals? I thought the ground devices did all the positional calculation. Unless the US has the ability to turn off GPS satellites when they orbit over a particular world region, I don't see how they could charge anyway?

Re:For such a vital system.

[sourcerror]

Please sign ACTA or else we shut down GPS in Europe. Is that so hard to imagine?

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

Yes, we command and control GPS from Shreiver AFB, in Colorado Springs, CO. They have dedicated antennas, as well as can use AFSCN (Air Force Satellite Control Network). The backup is at the Vandenberg Air Force Base Tracking Station (Cook, I believe is it's call sign). We can degade the precision (SA), the timing, and encrypt it to totally deny GPS use. Only problem is: Pres Reagan opened it up to civilian use in the 80's. Pres Bush/Clinton decreed no degraded precision. As I've mentioned on a few other threads, I was one of 4 SSO's who turned off (effectively.. I won't go into how because I'm not sure if its still classified) GPS in the early 1990s. So, it's been off for nearly two decades.

I apologize if I gave an impression we physically go up. When I say, "Go up on a bird," it's meaning, contacting the Ground Antenna, establishing C2 (S-band) and going "active", which means transmitting S-bits, etc. At 11,000 miles (plus change) there's no practical way to ever physically get to one of the GPS satellites. When we're done iwht them, we spin them up for physical stability, and then boost them out of their operational orbit. It's also referred to as "super syncing a bird."

If we ever get to a point where the US is so unstable it can't Command and Control GPS satellites, the world will be worried about a ton more pressing things than our GPS satellites. For what it's worth a high school student with two week's pay at minimum wage could have the technical and fiscal ability to jam GPS for a large area. The US Gov isn't your boogey man in this scenario. If we didn't touch GPS on 9/11, I think it's a pretty clear indication it's not on the table.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

If GWB or Obama had waged war on Britain or Canada without extremely good cause, for example, it simply would not have worked. The collective establishment would have been like "WTF?" He might have been impeached or forced to resign, Congress would have defunded or outlawed the war, and good chunk of the officer corp might well have resigned before following those orders.

Effectively, Europe is safer because we kinda like Europe. (Well, at least Western Europe.) They can be absolutely bonkers (as we can be), but they have democracy, are not visibly alien to Americans, and they are part of our history books.

One nutcase in the wrong job can fail to prevent a war--but alone, he rarely can start one.

There was the Russian General who refused to launch his missiles when his system told him WW3 had started, and the Czar who let World War I start after he was begged to stop and think--though IIRC, he delayed it for a day or two.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

clarification: We didn't "turn off GPS. I meant "turned off Selective Availability."

Re:For such a vital system.

[Stormthirst]

I suggest you read your own reference. As you're too lazy to click your own links, let me do that for you:

"The term empire derives from the Latin imperium (power, authority). Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples (ethnic groups) united and ruled either by a monarch (emperor, empress) or an oligarchy."
(emphasis mine)

The USA is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples - there's no doubt about that. It's not ruled over by a monarch, emperor or empress. Is it ruled over by an oligarchy? Lets click that link again and we get:

"Oligarchy (from Greek , oligarkhía) is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy."

We (ie anyone outside the USA) see many of the characteristics of the above in all your presidents - especially in modern times. OK, so they aren't royalty (NB the and/or at the end of the sentence). But it is certainly true that if political candidate A has more money that candidate B, the chances are they will win. Family ties are less important, but you only have to look at the Kennedy's to see that it still has power. Commercial ties in the States right now are probably the most important, simply because they 'donate' so much in 'campaign contributions' (read: bribes). Military legitimacy isn't an issue as the President is the Commander in Chief.

The upshot - you have an oligarchy, you just don't realise it. Ergo - you have an Empire.

As for reparations, just wait. The reparations only started *after* the empires crumbled. Just wait till the USA is no longer the empire it is now, and then the reparations will start.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Stormthirst]

You're funny. Have you seen what the French are doing to the Muslim way of life?

Re:For such a vital system.

[Yvanhoe]

I understand that GWB proposition may have been silly, but I do not know what are the ability of the ground stations to do firmware updates on satellites. I doubt that it is impossible.

Turning SA on is technically feasible and I doubt that this would be a very difficult or costly feat. Electing a crazy-enough leader to decide to do so is something US has proven to be capable of. These are good enough reasons for EU to have their own system.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

but I think this is mainly French nationalism and a reflection of the world's recent distrust of the US.

Oh, it's not just French and it's not just recent.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Bowdie]

I think my favourite thing about 2SOPS is their motto : "War to your door, +/- 16 Meters"

as seen on the patch here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2_SOPS_space_systems_operator_040205-F-0000C-001.jpg

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

Sigh...if its on the internet, it must be true. I'll first point out one glaring misstatement. The NRO is not military. They provide Intel to the DoD, but they're not part of it.

Next, the fail is at not reading all of what you cited, so let me continue it and then explain:

...and intercepted USA-193 about 133 nautical miles (247 kilometers)[25] above the Pacific Ocean. The satellite was travelling with a velocity of about 17,500 mph (around 28,000 km/h or 7.8 km/s). The velocity of the impact was about 22,000 mph. The Department of Defense expressed a "high degree of confidence" that the fuel tank was hit and destroyed.[27] The satellite's remnants were expected to burn up over the course of the next 40 days, with most of the satellite's mass re-entering the atmosphere 24 to 48 hours after the missile strike.[25][28]

So, within three months the debris will have burned up and no longer be a threat to space operations. Unlike a GPS satellite, which is not at 130 miles up but rather 11,000 miles up. See the difference? Space begins aound 100 miles up so the satellite, when it was hit, was barely across the threshold of even being considered "space". And to couch anyone else who quotes out of context Wikipedia, yes, you get your spaceflight wings at 50nm, but that's because it takes special apparatus to sustain human life at that altitude.

Re:For such a vital system.

[delt0r]

Its called Selective Availability. The time signals are deliberately dithered (random errors). Does not work against DGPS however unless they turn the signal off completely.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

The US does have the declared capability to turn off satellites when they orbit over particular world regions. More to the point, they have the capability to encrypt, and could sell decryption cards to individual users. Oh, and the satellites broadcast a lot more than just a time signal; the receiver needs to know the position of the satellite and its health status too.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

It's sad, but what you say has a loud ring of truth to it. Somehow, the idea that America is an empire is too heretical to say, even though it is for most intents and purposes. It seems like the only thing we don't do is directly tax other countries. I suppose it's done in other ways, such as unbalanced trade deals and such.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The use of basic (low-accuracy) Galileo services will be free and open to everyone. The high-accuracy capabilities will be available for paying commercial users and for military use."

So, Galileo will be a useless civilian system, for anyone to use, combined with a useful commercial/military system, to be used with EU permission.

Re:For such a vital system.

[craigminah]

Shooting down a GPS satellite is MUCH different and significantly more difficult than the recent satellite shootdowns we've had in the last few years. GPS is about 13,000 miles from Earth while the LEO satellites that were shot down were 200 miles from Earth.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Owned by the ESA, but maybe using components, modules and satellites contracted to the private sector? At least that's what the US system is like, the government buys things, but businesses make the actual equipment and hardware under contract to NASA, ESA, etc.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, this is wrong. Its possible to superimpose a pseudo-random noise on the signal, degrading the accuracy - the level of degradation is adjustable. It can be degraded to the point that its effectively switched off to users without the decode facility. As the design isnt open-source how do you know that it isnt possible to command the constellation to degrade at a particular time? Being semi-sync and all.

Seriously, why would it be difficult to even turn the constellation on or off? Whilst controlled from Shreiver they use an antenna array placed around the world.

As expected, the US will employ technologies to deny the GPS civil services on a regional basis. That doesnt mean just jamming, it could well mean turning up the degradation.

Re:For such a vital system.

[necro81]

Would it be such a bad thing to request a little payment for such a useful and important system? GPS has generated tremendous wealth for the whole world, but you can't launch a satellite with a pile of thank-you cards. Perhaps a $1 surcharge on each GPS receiver chip? It would go a long way towards ensuring the constellation is maintained.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

It might not be a bad thing. But it might be a bad thing if the body setting the pricing were an uncontrolled monopoly, which is what worried Europe enough to invest in the Galileo programme.

Re:For such a vital system.

[tinkerton]

15% could be those who hate the EU enough to make it their main theme when voting. Which leads us to the question 'a majority who are against the EU how much exactly'. Maybe a poll where people are just asked for their opinion on the EU would be a good measure. Well, I'd be interested to see the numbers on that.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Hodr]

You realise GPS is spread spectrum, right?

And I keep seeing mention of how easy it is to "JAM" the signal, but this is assuming everyone uses cheap commercial handset receivers. Expensive commercial receivers, such as those used in surveying equipment, let alone actual military receivers using both bands and m-codes are much more difficult.

And if you did manage to generate enough power, over enough spectrum, to disrupt military grade GPS, they could find you and "remove" the threat with 1940s technology.

Re:For such a vital system.

[jdfox]

>The Welsh and Scottish nationalists are fairly pro-Europe because neither country is really viable as a totally independent entity...

Mmmm... yummy crunchy flamebait! Scrunch scrunch scrunch... :-)

But back here on earth, yes, agreed, and from the polls I've seen most people in Wales and Scotland favour autonomy within the UK, rather than full independence. Catalonia is the best argument I can think of for this: they can run all the stuff they want to run themselves, but don't have to pay for a separate military, passports, foreign service, embassies, etc. Seems like a pretty sweet deal, and with Franco dead they no longer have to fear for their lives for proposing such a thing. I'm hearing pro-autonomy noises from Labour, and even from a few Tories lately. For minor politicians in the existing Westminster parties, it would mean they'd get a shot at being bigger fish in the smaller ponds of Holyrood and Cardiff Bay.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe as a whole calmed down with the warmongering.

That's because the Americans still occupy the continent. Remove all those bases, and it would be back to the same ol' same ol'.. See what happened to Yugoslavia? And the other client states of the former Soviet Union? Austria/Hungary would be on the warpath once again.. A new Napoleon would rise up. It is the American gun which presently suppressing all the old hatred.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Yes, but maybe I haven't been wearing my tinfoil hat.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

By recent I meant 10-15 years.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

I'd rather my ally be upfront with their war contingency plans. Pretending that the US wouldn't shoot down something and actually having secret plans to do so is not what a good ally would do.

Actually, if the US promised NOT to shoot them down, it would be very suspicious.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Tsingi]

If GWB or Obama had waged war on Britain or Canada without extremely good cause, for example, it simply would not have worked. The collective establishment would have been like "WTF?"

So, starting war against the whole world wouldn't work. Which is effectively what would happen if you openly invaded Canada or Europe. So there are limits to what one nutcase can do. (But they can do things like starting a land war in Asia, or going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line. ) Or murdering their own citizens without even charging them with anything. You know you are a bad man when Dick Cheney is sticking up for you.

There was the Russian General who refused to launch his missiles when his system told him WW3 had started, and the Czar who let World War I start after he was begged to stop and think--though IIRC, he delayed it for a day or two.

Every schoolboy knows (or used to) that WWI was started by an assasniation

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

No one is holding the OP at gunpoint literally. It is the same level of political sabre-rattling that all countries do. So it isn't the apples-to-oranges situation you are making it out to be.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a politically weaker America is in everybody elses interest - and possibly in the American people's interest as well.

I would buy that were Europe some bastion of political freedom but, sadly, it isn't. Everyday, you hear about some country over there encroaching further and further into the lives of its people. Between Italy wanting to make it impossible to expose political misdeeds, Germany's various speech restrictions, the UK's veritable panopticon, I really wish there were a third power that could really balance the equation.

Re:For such a vital system.

[nikkipolya]

First, Galileo was a Mathematician and a Physicist and not a satellite or meteor as the article falsely claims. His full name was Galileo Galilei. He had other minor interests in Music, Weaving, Religion and Philosophy too. He was prosecuted and persecuted, by some church people in Europe, until he died of it. He never returned back after that.

Coming to the topic of Europeans, ask me and I will tell you what I as a European feel. But please stop speculating about what Europeans think. It's the feelings that are more important than thinking and that's what's keeping the EU united. Of course, the Germans are an exception to this. And also the Italians and the Spaniards. The Catholic dominated countries are a weak link in the EU.

Re:For such a vital system.

[afidel]

SA is officially dead via presidential order. It's not even available in the most recent version of bird (at least officially).

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ha ha that's how it works here in Japan. The US has a big army and weapons, so we don't have to. Granted, those were the terms of a peace treaty signed long ago - but we haven't renegotiated it for a reason - the US spends a huge budget on military, and we can pump that into the real economy instead and get our protection for free :)

Re:For such a vital system.

[TheRaven64]

I didn't indent it as flamebait. I doubt that either the Scottish nor Welsh economy could really survive outside of both the UK or the EU, but either would do fine as an independent member of the EU, with strong economic links to England. You're right about Catalonia - I have a couple of catalan friends who would love to see the same sort of thing happen.

Living in Wales, I don't really see the London parliament having a clue. They seem to think that the UK equals London, judging by their economic policies. I'm much rather see a stronger Welsh Assembly and EU Parliament and a weaker Westminster.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

We did not accidentally nuke two cities.

Re:For such a vital system.

[lxw56]

SA is officially dead via presidential order. It's not even available in the most recent version of bird (at least officially).

To anyone who believes that (and believes the government can't trivially re-add it if they did remove it), I'd like your help collecting some lottery winnings.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Incadenza]

And if the EU does turn hostile to the US in some sort of bizarro-world, the US possesses capabilities to shoot them down.

It is not the EU turning hostile to the US, it is the US turning hostile the the EU. And that some sort of bizarro world is already here.

Don't you remember that in 2002 a federal law passed congress legislating invading the seat of government of my country - a founding NATO partner?

Re:For such a vital system.

[Hognoxious]

Galileo will be a civilian system, for anyone to use. Presumably always on.

Always on strike, if the French are anything to do with it.

Re:For such a vital system.

[cavreader]

The military prowess of the EU collective make the Arabs look like military strategic geniuses when it comes to executing large scale nation state offensive or defensive measures. By the time the EU collective could come to a consensus on how to fight a war it would already be over. France proved that during WW2. The French military and it's citizens were not cowards or afraid to defend their country. They were betrayed by their "political classes". France was dealing with Communist, Progressives, Liberals, Fascists (Vichy), representational democracy, Monarchist, and Anarchists political factions and while they were busy fighting amongst themselves to come up with a plan Hitler was already touring the Eiffel Tower. That same level of political in-fighting still exist today. Outside of England and possibly France the majority of European militaries have relied for so long on the US for defense they have become useless. The may have some of the best technology but that is only a very small part of in conducting a successful military action. Without the ability to effectively cooperate with one another their militarises are 2nd rate at best. And by the way the EU has been working on the Galileo GPS project for the past 15+ years and it will most likely take them another 10 years to actually make it usable in any coordinated manner once it reaches orbit.

Re:For such a vital system.

[lxw56]

The US government operations alone surely get the value out of the US, not to mention the tens of billions in benefit to the US economy.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Hognoxious]

Obviously a fake. It should read "+/- about, umm, how many feet is that?"

Re:For such a vital system.

[lxw56]

Why not charge the EU $750mil/year? It's surely worth far more to drivers, farmers, engineers, and governments.

Re:For such a vital system.

[jdfox]

Yes sorry, didn't mean to imply that it was intentional flamebait. Just noting that it's a topic that raises hackles much too easily. :-) And I completely agree about Westminster and the Welsh Assembly. Just the fact that Peter Hain and Cheryl Gillan have been handed in turn the role of Welsh Secretary shows how clueless Westminster is about Wales.

Re:For such a vital system.

[afidel]

Like I said, officially it's not there. I have little doubt that it's just a single command away from being turned on, but I doubt it would do any good. The reason is that with GLONASS nearing completion, Galileo coming online, and differential GPS you aren't going to be able to meaningfully confuse the positioning system on anything you're really worried about.

Re:For such a vital system.

[thrich81]

Care to enlighten us about the secret US Military base in Antarctica? I've been there a few times and am pretty familiar with the place. Other than US Military airlifters on lease to the National Science Foundation there is no military presence (anymore). Up to about 1995, the Navy had a bigger role in the logistics and administration down there but not since.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please sign ACTA or else we shut down GPS in Europe. Is that so hard to imagine?

Firstly, I am happy for Europe that they are getting their own satnav system. I think it will add value for both sides of the Atlantic.

Having said that, take off the tin-foil hat please.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

With all due respect, the US doesn't owe the rest of the world a GPS system.

Re:For such a vital system.

[hedwards]

Yes, but this whole project is purely a matter of French nationalism and NIH. The US can't take down its own satellites without either having replaced it with something new or doing with out. If the Europeans were that concerned with the US doing it, there's nothing at all stopping them from launching their own GPS satellites.

At the end of the day, I'm really not sure what precisely Galileo provides which GPS doesn't.

Re:For such a vital system.

[IceNinjaNine]

No they don't get drawn in, they interfere. There is a difference.

Be careful there.. I remember a EUROPEAN issue known as Bosnia that involved a lot of hand wringing at US reluctance to get involved. Yes, yes, I know, it's an anecdote (along with Rwanada), but there ARE cases when we're rather stay out and the EU has bitched about it.

I'm a closet isolationist and I get irritated at how often we're in other people's business. Current case in point: Libya. Not our problem and non of our business.

Re:For such a vital system.

[FatAlb3rt]

No, Europe should have its Galileo because it's ours even though the US has theirs and we're allies.

And by ours, you mean the EU, which isn't really ours when you're talking from a Norwegian perspective...ya know, not being a member of the EU and all. ;)

Re:For such a vital system.

[IceNinjaNine]

we'd rather stay out.. grrr

Re:For such a vital system.

[ShakaUVM]

>>And all you think about is war. Isn't it quite possible that one day the US will realise they can charge for GPS access? Maybe Europe doesn't want to risk being charged a fortune for something they have learned to depend on.

You do realize that Galileo was built from the ground up to allow charging for accuracy, don't you?

Whereas the GPS sats launched since SA was turned off don't have that ability?

I think you put your tinfoil hat on backwards today.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Eunuchswear]

If you destroy a satellite, that position in space becomes unusable due to debris for centuries. We're not going to do it. This is why we were very angry with the Chinese for testing ASAT awhile back.

What do you mean you're not going to do it? You did it in 1985!

Poor old Solwind

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

He must be Welsh. They've been sore ever since the Vikings stole their vowels.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Merits aside, it would never happen for political reasons.

Re:For such a vital system.

[NikeHerc]

And it wouldn't be impossible for some of the EU states to shoot down the GPS satellites either.

Do you realize the GPS constellation operates at an altitude of approximately 20,200 km?

Re:For such a vital system.

[Kjella]

True, but functionally I doubt we'll ever see a conflict where Norway and the US are at war with someone and the EU is not, so it will be part of the defense this side of the Atlantic. I wouldn't exactly call it freeloading on the EU either, through EEC we pay just as much as if we were a member.

Re:For such a vital system.

[DanTheStone]

Not quite; they got to keep their asterisks.

Re:For such a vital system.

[arthurpaliden]

WW1 was started by the results of the Franco-Prussian war.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Isaac Remuant]

First... slashdot loading a new comment page page upon reply? O_o

Anyway, how many companies and services do you think would be affected by a shutdown? The implications of all those businesses and people might cover a huge sum.

Why would they just trust the US and provide them that leverage? Independence is well worth it and the research and experience will probably pay off for other projects as well.

Re:For such a vital system.

[tlhIngan]

GPS is great, sure, but IIRC Galileo isn't compatible without devices being modified to also accept Galileo signals. So this project is going to cost quite a bit of money in re-engineering and replacement costs for devices to use the new system in addition to GPS.

Broadcom has chips that do GPS and GLONASS together. I'm sure they'll have a 3-way GPS/GLONASS/Galileo chip you can use as well. Perhaps a little work on the software side to accomodate the changes, but nothing too estensive on the hardware side - just another antenna.

Re:For such a vital system.

[nabsltd]

To shut off GPS in a region the DoD just has to press a couple of buttons in Colorado (IIRC).

I don't believe there is any way to shut down GPS at the source other than globally.

The satellites move too fast to have them turn on and off effectively and good GPS receivers can get a lock on satellites that are pretty low in the sky, so about the best they could do would be to shut down GPS for about half the globe.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Tsingi]

WW1 was started by the results of the Franco-Prussian war.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_World_War_I

The causes of World War I, which began in central Europe in July 1914, included many intertwined factors, such as the conflicts and hostility of the four decades leading up to the war. Militarism, alliances, imperialism, and nationalism played major roles in the conflict as well. However, the immediate origins of the war lay in the decisions taken by statesmen and generals during the July Crisis of 1914, casus belli for which was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife by Gavrilo Princip, an irredentist Serb.[1]

The crisis came after a long and difficult series of diplomatic clashes between the Great Powers (Italy, France, Germany, Great Britain, Austria-Hungarian Empire and Russia) over European and colonial issues in the decade before 1914 that had left tensions high. In turn these diplomatic clashes can be traced to changes in the balance of power in Europe since 1867.[2] The more immediate cause for the war was tensions over territory in the Balkans. Austria-Hungary competed with Serbia and Russia for territory and influence in the region and they pulled the rest of the Great Powers into the conflict through their various alliances and treaties.

The topic of the causes of World War I is one of the most studied in all of world history. Scholars have differed significantly in their interpretations of the event.

I was taught that it was started by the assassination. YMMD.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I think you should stop Acting so damn Patriotically and figure out how free you really are and how much power you, "the people", really have.

Nationalist indoctrination dies hard. Even when the intentions might be good, you still want everyone to follow your rules.

Re:For such a vital system.

[glassware]

Thank you for this post. I always enjoy reading Slashdot when I get a stray comment from someone who is knowledgeable about a topic.

It did crush my little 10-year old spirit a bit to realize that the Space Shuttle couldn't go to the moon and didn't have the thrust to get much beyond LEO. But every time I'm lucky enough to visit JPL and see the amazing things people can do with carefully tuned science and technology, I am glad to be able to watch some of the things people like you do.

Re:For such a vital system.

[nabsltd]

Its called Selective Availability. The time signals are deliberately dithered (random errors).

All this does is make GPS not accurate enough to steer a missile into a window. For normal use, the less than 100 meters error caused by SA wouldn't be much of a problem.

It's also very hard to limit this to a region. Although very large areas can be targeted, if (for example) Russia paid for full accuracy but the rest of the EU did not, then pretty much all of Europe would still get the full signal.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

Ahh, the infamous mod pic. Everyone knows that pic. The left patch on the flight suits (and our previous "Space Jammies" which are similar but dark blue, phased out about 12 years ago) are commonly "Morale Patches". She's on Charlie Crew, which chose to be called the Centurians, and that's the saying their crew chose. Our crew was Bravo Crew, and ours was "Striking Accuracy" since we chose to be "Bravo Crew Vipers". I'm logged into FB and a member so that link may not work for you or others. I can't remember the call signs for the others, but all crews on the schedule were referred to alphabetically from A through E or F (I forget). Alpha, Bravo, Charlie...etc. Since those are boring names around the early 90s we started going by the nicknames. Delta crew was Delta Dawgs at one point and later Delta Dingos.

The official squadron motto for the 2 SOPS is, "Pathways for Peace." (Obligatory Wiki link)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Wyatt Earp]

1. GPS devices don't have a limited usable life, I have a 12 year old Garmin that works fine and I still use it.
2. Only one NATO country currently has or it close to developing anti-ballistic missile and anti-satellite capabilities, the United States.

Countries with anti-ballistic missile capabilities would be - United States, Russian Federation, People's Republic of China, Japan (US PAC-3, US SM-3, Type-3 Chu-SAM), Israel (I-HAWK, US PAC-3), South Korea (US PAC-3), Kuwait (US PAC-3), Syria (S-300), Ukraine (S-300), Venezuela (S-300), Vietnam (S-300)

Countries with anti-satellite missile capabilities would be - United States (SM-3, GMD), China (SC-19), Japan (SM-3)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Cinder6]

Wouldn't the easiest solution be to give the satellites an "exclusion range" of coordinates? Don't turn them off, simply don't have them send results if the device is in a certain area.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

The other scenario is that the US can shut down GPS if it believes it is being used by terrorists. The EU might not agree with that assessment, and want to keep it open. Having Galileo gives them that option.

The United States won't shut down GPS. Time and again, its utility for us has far outweighed the potential drawbacks, so much so that selective availability has been disabled, and the latest satellites don't even have that functionality.

As an American, the GPS has been the biggest bang-for-the-buck taxpayer project in a long time. For about $3 per person per year, we get all the features it has to offer. VERY well worth it. That it is provided to other nations for gratis is a bonus. I am glad the EU wants to add their own system to the mix. Before long there will be receivers with the ability to receive from the United States, EU and Russian systems for better accuracy.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Cinder6]

I shouldn't post right when I get up. I was assuming the satellites did the calculations, not the ground devices.

Re:For such a vital system.

[arthurpaliden]

The assassination was the excused to put everything in motion.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Tsingi]

The assassination was the excused to put everything in motion.

was not.

Re:For such a vital system.

[fahrbot-bot]

Galileo will be a civilian system, for anyone to use. Presumably always on.

Probably Ad supported - coordinate information enhanced for a better customer experience, of course.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

Thanks for the kind reply. My grammar was horrible as I had 3 people waiting on me and I guess I was more distracted than I thought (e.g. "you've ever saw", WTF?). You're 99% likely to see me post on any Slashdot article about GPS because misconceptions constantly surround the most known, but least understood satellite in the US Air Force inventory. Oh, and the JPL guys are the real geniuses. I was just a lucky 20 year old who was at the right place (Air Force basic training, "Career Field Open: Electrical") at the right time (AF transitioning GPS satellite operators from officers to enlisted) back in 1990.

My favorite stories are from when I pulled crew in the early 90s. Some how some crazy lady got the commercial phone number for the GPS Operations Floor, Satellite System Operator (SSO). My buddy got the call, "Why are you following me?" Senior Airman, "Excuse me, ma'am. I don't understand your question." "I have this GPS thingy that shows where I am. Why are you following me and how do you know where I am?" We laughed a long time about that one. Shortly after the ground war ended, I got a call from a US Army Colonel who was in the middle of the desert, "Which way do I point my GPS?" "Excuse me sir, what's the question?" "I have a GPS Set [Plugger], which way do I point it in the sky?" *pause to retain military bearing* "Up.........sir. Just stand in an area where you can see sky, and point it upwards." Today we can laugh, but back then it was completely new (and to the Col's credit, it's a valid question for SATCOM). To this day, we have no idea how they got the Ops Floor number. It's normally never given out.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

To anyone who believes that (and believes the government can't trivially re-add it if they did remove it), I'd like your help collecting some lottery winnings.

It isn't there. The government can't trivially re-add it. That is a fact, one that doesn't disappear just because you compare it to something absurd. Take your tin-foil hat off?

Re:For such a vital system.

[hawguy]

The US does have the declared capability to turn off satellites when they orbit over particular world regions. More to the point, they have the capability to encrypt, and could sell decryption cards to individual users. Oh, and the satellites broadcast a lot more than just a time signal; the receiver needs to know the position of the satellite and its health status too.

How does that work, unless they turn it off over an entire hemisphere? My GPS see satellites from horizon to horizon, so to keep me from getting a signal they'd have to turn off satellites when they are anywhere over my half of the earth.

Or does a GPS satellite have a bunch of directional antennas that let them selectively turn off coverage in certain areas?

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

26 years ago! That program was cancelled 23 years ago. This is the equiv to you saying we'd also use a mortar fired or suitcase tactical nuclear weapon since we had one 50 years ago. :) Good luck getting anyone to fire a mortar delivered nuke these days.

The Solwind was in a low orbit where the debris falls naturally to the earth, just as the satellite we hit in 2008 did. Within 3 months all debris was gone, as its velocity decreased with time to the point it couldn't outrun gravity. The Chinese ASAT test still to this day, 4 years later, puts the ISS at risk, as it at nearly twice the height (orbital altitude) of the Solwind (300 miles as opposed to 532 miles).

In all of these examples, we're still way short of the context of my statement: GPS Satellites are at 11,000 miles and the debris would make the position in space unusable for centuries. Hell, the Sync orbits ( ~24,000 miles up) are so full with OPERATIONAL satellites that there's not enough room in the orbit, especially for spots above Europe and N. America.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

But is the US interested in protecting people that can't be bothered to have a decent defense of their own?

Unless Ron Paul makes the cut, not only is the answer yes, but resoundingly yes well into the future.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Independence is well worth it and the research and experience will probably pay off for other projects as well.

There are 3 systems already: Russian, American, and the not-yet-complete Chinese. To be fair, the Chinese system is "secret", but there are already dual GLONASS/GPS receivers on the market. I can't imagine what calamity could wipe out 3 independent systems while sparing the new European one, but hey.

By the way, the Chinese use the same frequencies as the EU satellites, which means that the EU will always have to avoid interference with the Chinese system.

Re:For such a vital system.

[AmiMoJo]

Sure, but you are still asking the rest of the world to take your word for all this. While the EU may be more friendly with you than China or Russia we also consider ourselves independent and are unwilling to rely totally on any system not under our own control. GPS is vital in many areas of life beyond navigation, as I'm sure you are aware.

I wasn't suggesting that the US might actually do something, and I agree that the possibility is remote. It wouldn't be the first space based system that has fallen into disrepair due to economic woes though, and I'm not just talking about US endeavours.

I also forgot to mention that Galileo has some advantages over GPS too, and the US doesn't seem to be in a hurry to make improvements. That would mean people in the EU relying on the Chinese or Russian systems, or some combination of the three, to get things like improved accuracy which will likely become very valuable in the near future. The EU doesn't want to be at a competitive disadvantage, and its perceived stability and strong democracy makes the technology very exportable, much like GPS is.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

Then I repeat: it's not just recent. Galileo was approved more than 15 years ago, and the planning and negotiations go back quite a bit further. The UK distrust of the USA goes back to at least 1776.

Re:For such a vital system.

[mmcuh]

But Norway is a ESA member state.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

It takes them eight hours to orbit, so there's plenty of time for them to turn on and off (or, more likely, turn encryption on and off). You need four satellites to get a fix, so they can control it for smaller regions than "half the globe". Still pretty big, though, which is presumably why Clinton's announcement and most subsequent announcements have referred to "regions".

Re:For such a vital system.

[mmcuh]

As the other poster said, it depends on the nationalist party. The Welsh and Scottish nationalists are fairly pro-Europe because neither country is really viable as a totally independent entity, but both are larger than some other EU member states and could work as members of the EU, rather than members of the UK.

Also, the Welsh and Scottish national parties aren't really the same type of "nationalists" as most others across the EU, who are mostly just trying to pass racism and anti-immigration off as "nationalism". You can't compare SNP to Front National, BNP, Sverigedemokraterna or Dansk Folkeparti.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they call it 'welshing on a bet' in wales?

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

You did read the part where I said I was one of the 4 guys (although I think we did have 1 female on crew at that time) who TURNED IT OFF back in the 90s, right? It's not simple. Just to turn it off, well... I'm not sure I want to put out how long it takes, but I'll stick to my original point: It's not trivial and takes over a huge part of ops that's better spent keeping the constellation accurate. Now, to try and do it off, on, off, on would not be sustainable.

All of this is moot because there are serious legal and political ramifications internationally. The "firmware" update just doesn't apply here. Electrical switches in space have a very finite lifetime. Eventually you will switch and it will cold arc. No more switching. This is why everything has redundancy, and there is a second switch. However, once the second relay arcs.....you're done. So, again, we're never going to just "start flicking switches," or turning things off and on for fun.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Galileo was approved in 2003. Prior to that, no EU money had been spent on the program, and it really wasn't even mentioned prior to 1999.

The UK isn't half as distrustful of the US as France and Germany :)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Candyban]

Europe doesn't need to shoot down any satellite. We have the awesome power of our commission and they will stop any GPS signal dead in its tracks.
See how effective US missiles will be when their coordinates are a week in customs trying to clear all required documents and permissions.

And for a ground war. Thanks to our import taxes, over 30% of all your forces will have to fight for us. Your tanks will not meet our EURO5 norm so they will be prohibited on our soil.

HAH. In your face.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic technology isn't that different from GPS, it isn't like going back to the 80's to develop the first GPS receivers again.

So, it's like when the French developed SECAM. It was basically PAL, which was basically NTSC-2, but tweaked enough to be non-compatible.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you remember that in 2002 a federal law passed congress legislating invading the seat of government of my country - a founding NATO partner?

I don't know what European version of Fox News you watch, but you need to go watch something more fair and balanced. The United States has three separate branches of government. The executive (the president) ultimately has to defer to the policy wishes of Congress. In this case, the wish made clear is "secure their release, using any resources necessary." Or, in other words "spend however much on lawyers is needed to get the Hague to release them."

I am not trying to fault you, personally. You heard through some source that the United States was preparing war plans to invade your nation. You got rightfully upset, and that is a perfectly normal reaction. Is it possible that the source of your misconception is a biased or unreliable report? Is it possible that this story was substantially distorted?

Re:For such a vital system.

[Rich0]

Not all of EU is in NATO. And it wouldn't be impossible for some of the EU states to shoot down the GPS satellites either.

The parent used the words "bizarro world" well - the fact is that the US/EU have far more in common than separate despite all the usual politicking - neither is going to get in a shooting war with the other.

If either the US or the EU had a really serious need to engage selective availability you can bet that some deal would quietly get worked out in the back rooms and both navigation systems would quickly be disabled in the region of concern. Sure, lots of politicians would be screaming about those nasty people on the other side of the Atlantic, but nobody would actually do anything about it since the posturing is for the cameras.

A major shooting war between powers like the US, EU, China, Russia, etc would do little but wipe out the first world economy, and the people running those countries are all very well served by those economies and have no incentive to roll the dice. What is the point in owning a corporate jet if you can't fly it to your vacation home without the risk of being shot down?

Re:For such a vital system.

[Wyatt Earp]

That is only after EU member nations all have referendums before hand. And if some don't pass the referendum, the EU will meet and figure out how to proceed anyway.

Not to mention that the US bombers will have to pay carbon taxes and any armored vehicles entering London will be charged a congestion fee.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Rich0]

Before Galileo was decided, US did not give the ability to use the full precision of the GPS to non military US units. It also has the capacity to unilateraly switch off GPS on a zone. Galileo will be a civilian system, for anyone to use. Presumably always on.

Oh, you can bet they'll have a way to switch off civilian use. I can't think of any scenario where the US would want to flip off their switch but the EU would not, or vice-versa. This keeps coming up but other than people with strange notions of the US and EU being mortal enemies I don't think anybody sees this actually having any practical value. More likely than not even the Russians would play ball - there would be some back room deal worked out where the various parties all agree when the switches do and don't get thrown and everybody will play along.

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

each GPS satellite covers a 4000+ km radius. Actually the DoD strategy to deny GPS usage in case of war is to deploy regional jammers, shutting down a single GPS satellite right on top of Iran will affect Europe/China/India somewhat, shutting three or four satellites to render the signal unuseable for 3D ranging over Iran will certainly disrupt GPS performance over a 2000+ km radius (all estimates, but if anything, I'm underestimating the numbers).
You guys seem to ignore that right now there's GPS/GLONASS fully operational and Beidu almost operational. The cat's totally out of the bag. Galileo won't change that. Plus regional GNSS systems such as Japan's QZSS (one satellite operational, at least three planned) and India's system to being launches soon.
Galileo is a much lesser threat than Glonass and Beidu, since Russia/China aren't allies to NATO.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

When you say, "The Iraq war." If you mean Part 1, then yes. That was in 1991 which is a date before the date I repeat several times that we turned it off, 1994. If you mean part 2, then no. You're wrong. It's never been turned on since we turned it off. 17 years.... 17 years since we had it on. Really think we're turning it on? If so, get your tin foil hat ready.

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

That's complete FUD. GPS is firmly advertised as a free resource to the world. Selective Availability is gone with GPS III satellites, the feature is just not there anymore. And finally, should the US being charging for GPS usage, then there's Glonass, Beidou and other systems, that would gain popularity. The US certainly don't want to loose their mainstream edge they currently enjoy with the GPS system.
You have no idea what you're talking about.
There are three main reasons for Galileo:
1 - The US doesn't grant military signal to Europe civilian users, even law enforcement. Only NATO armed forces have some kind of access to GPS military signal. Galileo will supply an encrypted secure signal for all authorized European users (that the EU decides should have access)
2 - GPS performance is good, but it's not guaranteed. The GPS system was devised as an 18 satellite constellation, and even though it currently has 29 operational satellites, there's no firm commitment that more than 24 satellites will be operational always. Europe's aviation enhancement system (EGNOS) is planned to combine GPS+Galileo+GLONASS for ultra reliable/ultra accurate aircraft navigation, while the American counterpart (WAAS) has no current plans to incorporate GLONASS or Galileo. EGNOS already supports GPS+GLONASS. Should GPS constellation strenght drop to 21 satellites, many of the requirements for WAAS would be lost without Galileo or GLONASS to help.
3 - There are provisions for an encrypted paid service for commercial Galileo users. Such service would be similar to the secure service, but could be switched of separately.

That said, item 1 and 3 would only be useful when Galileo reaches full constellation strength of 30 satellites, there are no immediate plans for that. There are currently plans for just a basic 18 satellite constellation.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't buy that the stated purpose for the system (independence from the US's military) is very credible, given that the US is, you know, part of NATO and whatnot.

The ESA claims that one important reason for creating a new, European system is that:

By placing satellites in orbits at a greater inclination to the equatorial plane than GPS, Galileo will achieve better coverage at high latitudes. This will make it particularly suitable for operation over northern Europe, an area not well covered by GPS.

Source: http://www.esa.int/esaNA/GGG0H750NDC_galileo_0.html

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

GPS, Galileo both use the frequency bands known as L1 and L5. Other systems are planned to use those frequencies as well.
GPS uses in total three frequencies: L1,L2 and L5.
Galileo uses L1, L5 and a frequency just before the L5 band.
Many other systems use L1 and L5 as well (WAAS, QZSS, EGNOS, plus a few more)
The overlap isn't 100%.

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

Wrong in both accounts. Turning one satellite affects a huge area of the world. And the US doesn't have any means to sell decryption cards to individual users as that encrypted signal is the military signal, they would be selling access to the military GPS signal which is very tightly regulated. Allowing non trusted (paying) customers access to the military signal allows other military powers to spoof (generate artificial signals with wrong data, but that would be accepted by the military GPS users), creating a huge safety risk.
No way in hell this will EVER happen.

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

A war between the US and Europe is absolutely impossible.
The economic dependency is so huge, both sides would be devastated economically.
Having some distrust at some level and not wanting to depend totally on each other is normal, but extrapolating that to a war is just utterly crazy. Even an outright war between the US and Russia today is close to impossible, due to the economic dependency and the cost of that alone. Even though Europe doesn't have a whole lot of nukes, for instance, the UK has ballistic nuclear submarines capable of destroying perhaps the whole eastern seaboard of the US if they launched all their nukes at that US region.

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

The greatest mistake of every modern war was thinking that your adversary didn't learn anything from the previous conflicts.
The French, British and Germany armies today are smaller but almost just as technologically advanced as the US. Are you forgetting they're all part of NATO ???

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

It's been so long, I forgot a key fact about your point: During the Gulf War (1991) we didn't have the full GPS constellation up. There were only 14 or so of the necessary 24 satellites up in orbit. The coverage was poor in the Gulf Region and so two Captains got sweet write-ups for coming up with a novel idea to give the region better coverage. There was a satellite that was no longer able to stay 3-axis stabilized, and so it had been spun up. When a satellite is spun, most of it's orbit is spent with the bottom (the side with the antennaes that normally transmit to the Earth) pointed out to outer space. At this point, normally a GPS satellite is set to "unhealthy" and considered non-operational. So what the two Captains proposed was turning the satellite's payload (the Atomic clocks, L-band transmitters, etc) back on, and rotating the satellite Z-axis so that the small portion of the orbit where it DID point at the Earth, was when it passed over the Middle East. It was approved and we were able to extend coverage by a few hours for 3-D (lat, long, alt) and 2-d (lat, long).

GPS wasn't considered FOC, or Full Operational Capable until after the Gulf war (1991) ended. Heck, it wasn't even IOC yet. So, you're right, it wasn't an accident. Feel free to read: NAVSTAR GPS However, keep in mind the accuracy numbers are wrong in the link I include, since this article was written BEFORE we turned SA off for worldwide use. Another reference point since no one seems to think I know what the hell I'm talking about: Launch Dates. Most Block 1's only lived a few years beyond their 3 year design life. They were R&D birds with several design flaws. The exception and case in point, was SVN3. It was up 13 years (I was the SSO who set it unhealthy) and the only reason we turned it non-operational is because one of the batteries wasn't engineered to the same spec as the other 2. It was externally mounted (outside the main bus) and so it went through more severe thermal cycles as it went into sunlight and darkness. When the 3rd battery failed, the other two were still ok, but it wasn't enough to make it through eclipse season (point in an orbit where the sun passes often behind the Earth leaving it in periods of darkness, which is bad because the solar arrays don't make power). My point? Just because it launched prior to 1991, doesn't mean it was operational in 1991. I spent about 15 minutes Googling for a site that listed the total but can't find one. I just know as a GPS SSO in 1991, I was really really bored because we didn't have many satellites at the time to maintain, and for that year alone, we had 3 SSOs per crew. So there were hours between satellite supports .

Hopefully that was helpful. I've spent a couple hours replying to replies from my original...so I'm done at this point. I try to provide insight, be helpful, but a few of the other replies just border on silly.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

GPS still has L2 all to itself. L5 is a brand-new signal for GPS. The old GPS L1 signal is being replaced by a new L1 signal that is backwards compatible and also plays nice with Galileo.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!! You really think horizon-to-horizon gives you a view of HALF of the earth? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! *wipes tears from eyes*

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

Not 100% true, QZSS broadcasts L2C as well. L2C and their military counterparts operate on the same frequency but with orthogonal signals. The US only has the military side to himself. But that's true for L1 as well.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

I was working with ESA on identifying the requirements for such a system almost 20 years ago. My time was paid for by the aviation industry; I don't know where the ESA funding was coming from, but as well as ESA personnel I was working alongside folks from quite a few other individual EU States. The main focus was EGNOS, true, but we were already looking at Galileo.

Re:For such a vital system.

[the_other_chewey]

I don't believe there is any way to shut down GPS at the source other than globally.

Yes there is. That's one of the reasons why "selective availability" (i.e. intentionl signal degradation)
on the civilian GPS signal has been switched off: GPS is now split into "GPS regions", which can be
degraded or even disabled individually. It's a simple timing thing - the satellites know where they are
after all.

Of course, the implementation is still tricky - but I guess that's why SA was used instead of this
in the first place: it took a while to figure it out.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

Well the encryption approach works by encryption. I take it you are asking how the turning on and off works. Remember that you need four satellites to get a fix, it matters where they are relative to each other or dilution of precision will trash your accuracy, so they don't have to make it so that you can't see any satellites. Even if four are occasionally visible the system could be made so unreliable as to be of little practical use. And the DoD has been known to shift the orbits to change the coverage over areas of interest (although that presumably reduces the satellite life, so it's probably a last resort). That means that the area of bad coverage will be big, but significantly less than half the globe. And, of course, Europe never knows what the DoD is going to put in the next generation of satellites.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Candyban]

Yeah, our downfall can only come from WMDs (Whining and Mass Delays)
Fortunately we have our elite army of supranational bureaucrats ... Eurostat will come back in a couple of months when they know with great certainty about our strength ... Unless some of the member states have presented fraudulent numbers.

Re:For such a vital system.

[mattack2]

Why don't you correct some of the errors on the Wikipedia page (to the limit of publicly available knowledge)?

Complaining about it being wrong, without trying to fix it when you apparently DO know more than what the page says, isn't helping anyone.

Re:For such a vital system.

[cavreader]

The EU countries are in NATO to take advantage of the US military power. And outside of England I have seen no sign of any European country learning from the past.

Re:For such a vital system.

[shutdown -p now]

GPS is great, sure, but IIRC Galileo isn't compatible without devices being modified to also accept Galileo signals. So this project is going to cost quite a bit of money in re-engineering and replacement costs for devices to use the new system in addition to GPS.

Upgrading old devices is typically not the point, you go for support in new ones. E.g. most of new GPS chipsets on the market have added support for GLONASS, now that it's fully operational - and hence new consumer products using those chipsets support it alongside GPS. To give two names, both iPhone 4S and Galaxy Nexus will support GLONASS.

When Galileo becomes fully operational, I expect the same thing to happen - chipset manufacturers will quickly add support, and then the next iteration of devices will incorporate it.

Re:For such a vital system.

[shutdown -p now]

Nice try, but for some mysterious reason US military uses metric (at least for measuring land distance).

Re:For such a vital system.

[shutdown -p now]

We've had many terrorist attacks since SA was turned off: Khobar Towers, USS Cole, 9/11, etc. Still off and no degradation.

Turning it off because some terrorists somewhere blew up a building is obviously asinine. Turning it off because you're engaging in direct hostilities with a serious enemy - say, China, or even Iran - is a very different matter.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Zombie]

Subsidies for European tech companies?

Re:For such a vital system.

[heironymous]

Every schoolboy knows (or used to) that WWI was started by an assasniation

Well... the hostilities were triggered by the assassination, but the causes of the war were much deeper.

Re:For such a vital system.

[mattcasters]

It's actually great to see your viewpoint. I think that in general Europeans still remember the "100m off" incident and put that in the anti-US context that countries had back then. That sentiment itself was fueled by a silly "freedom fries" attitude across the Atlantic.

As is usually the case a lot of the reasons are not technical but political or irrational. That being said, I'm not at all opposed to extra spending in space technology in Europe even if it is for dubious reasons ;-)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

The assassination started a chain of events, and then people knew that war was a real possibility. Once war was a real possibility, everything was driven by railroad timetables--the complex movement of troops to the front was something that had been worked out very precisely and was very difficult, and once war became likely, every leader of every country was told "every day you don't order our troops to the front for war, we lose X miles of our country." Railroad timetables was a big driver that made it hard for people to step back.

As to the telegram exchange with the Czar, a better account of it is here:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/kaiser-wilhelm-of-germany-and-czar-nicholas-of-russia-exchange-telegrams

(I am not an expert.)

Re:For such a vital system.

[sourcerror]

Are you sure it's that far fetched? The US threatened Sweden to be kicked out of WTO if it doesn't do something with Piratebay.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Dear me, I've been caught out as an Eebul Kollektivista.

BTW, you might also like to know that I stole that nonsense about "promoting the general wefare" from The Communist Manifesto.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Maybe that explains why so many Europeans feel the EU is an evil institute. But I bet nobody outside the EU ever hears about tat.

"So many" = "a few right-wing nut jobs".

To be fair that sentiment is shared by a few left wing nut jobs.

True, true. But not this one. :)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Yvanhoe]

There is a difference between "non trivial" and "impossible". If you end up electing Rick Perry and that God tells him to not let non-US heathen use GPS, it is technically feasible on a small budget.

The fact that doing it too often may eventually break it isn't a reassuring feature either.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Bowdie]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the clarification.

Now I've got a new phrase to google : "Morale Patches" brilliant!

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

It's not a feature. It's physics. It happens when you switch your lights on and off in your house everyday. You just: never do it in the vacuum of space, in direct blistering heat from the sun, or deathly cold darkness of outer space. When you physically move an object which has an electrical charge, at an instant just before they touch, it will jump to the "path of least resistance," which is either ground (usually bad), or the other wire which completes the circuit (ground for the battery, which is almost always good). In your house, when the switch eventually physically fails, you go to Home Depot. On a satellite, you "fail" over to the other switch. If it fails on, there's usually a way to re-route around it to the secondary switch.

To the Perry fairytale, then you need to start building your bunker and folding the tin foil for your hat, which will make this whole GPS discussion moot. Because the same scenario/logic you use holds for the Nukes as well, at which point nearly all communications will cease to work for quite some time due to the EMP and the subsequent electrical charge in the atmosphere.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

At the end of the day, I'm really not sure what precisely Galileo provides which GPS doesn't.

The US cant take down our sat nav systems because we dont sign up for ACTA, etc.

We dont trust your government any more than you do.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Reservoir Penguin]

I wish this was not included into Constitution, "promoting the general wellfare..." is the number one justification of big government.

Re:For such a vital system.

[1s44c]

Europe as a whole calmed down with the warmongering.

That's because the Americans still occupy the continent. Remove all those bases, and it would be back to the same ol' same ol'.. See what happened to Yugoslavia? And the other client states of the former Soviet Union? Austria/Hungary would be on the warpath once again.. A new Napoleon would rise up. It is the American gun which presently suppressing all the old hatred.

You greatly overestimate your importance to Europe, not that I'm saying you have none, just you overestimate what you have.

Trade keeps Europe at peace. We all have things the others want.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, yes, that's how NATO is supposed to work. Norway doesn't need to have 7 tanks, 2 subs and half a carrier. The weapon systems it does have, it's supposed to have in larger numbers though. The most funny example is AWACS; IIRC only the UK, USA and Luxembourg have AWACS planes - and the Luxembourg airforce doesn't have any other planes but AWACS ;).

Re:For such a vital system.

[Yvanhoe]

So what do you mean ? The switches to turn AS back on (I am amazed that this is a physical switch rather than a software flag) are broken right now ? Or will they eventually break if we use them too often ?

Call the Perry scenario a fairytale but you can't deny the fact that you elected, twice, a nutjob who went to war relying on god's plans and tried to convince my president to go into Iraq thanks to biblical prophecies. You can't deny that 4 of the republican candidates (including the top 2 in the polls) think they are endorsed by God. You can't deny that US and EU views on some territorial issues like Israel are diametrically opposed, even under the Obama administration.

If I were a strategist in EU, I would not trust America to keep that channel open.

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Isn't QZSS secondary to GPS? Don't they have to yield to GPS signals by international treaty?

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Maybe it was private money? Or money from a single country? I'm obviously not as knowledgeable as you on the matter, but I can't find any information about money being spent by the EU on the project until 2003 after the ESA review. It certainly makes sense that stakeholders would have been spending at least something on it prior. I still think it's a waste of billions of dollars, but it's not my money and the US certainly wastes billions on other stupidness so I won't be too critical :)

Re:For such a vital system.

[Anonymous Coward]

The US hasn't been all that great about maintaining the GPS sats. With the cancellation of the manned space flight program, and the periodic games the US congress plays with the budget, it's not that great an idea to rely on a US-provided service. If you want reliability, do it yourself.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

There are a few ways to turn AS on and off. Someone in an earlier post was saying we'd turn it on and turn it off, so I was going down that avenue. Actually turning it on and off. There is a second way, and I kept this out of the discussion to keep things simple. The second way isn't recognized as "turning it off," although in all practicality it is off. This is why you'll hear differing dates of when we turned it completely off. I really don't want to go into more detail on this. To answer your underlying question, any physical switch in outer space will eventually cold arc. It will either freeze on, or off. It happens here as well, but you don't think, "Oh it's arc'd closed." You just think, "Oh it's broke," because it may have actually just "broke". Given the engineering that goes into a satellite, it would be a very unlikley scenario where it just literally "breaks." It does happen on rare occasions. Some times explosive pins don't "explode" properly to allow solar arrays, antennas, etc to open up, etc. These are man-made devices so they do occasionally fail just like stuff you use everyday.

No, Bush did not convince Blair to go to war with Biblical stories. Given this is now going exceptionally into unproductive bouts of fiction, I'm done. Cheers.

Waste billions of Euros and/or Pounds and enjoy the duplicate system.

Re:For such a vital system.

[digitig]

The decision on which system to use for Galileo was apparently taken in 1999 -- I was already out of the loop by then -- but the three candidate systems at that point hadn't come out of nowhere. Yes, it took another few years before funding was approved to actually build Galileo (2003 as you say) but of course the ESA isn't an EU body -- it's an intergovernmental organisation independent of the EU with its own funding from member governments -- so there was European government money being spent on Galileo before the EU spent any.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Yvanhoe]

No, Bush did not convince Blair to go to war with Biblical stories.

I was refering to Chirac : http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2009/aug/10/religion-george-bush

I have some French sources for that as well.

I love how you claim it is overly simplified to say we can turn AS back on but do not wish to discuss the details to prove your claim. Indeed, it is the second time you make a useless ellipsis about physical switches in space, instead of explaining what a physical switch has to do with something that looks like a software flag and why turning it off was easier to turn it back on. I think that indeed we are at the end of the conversation.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

I don't have anything to prove. I was trying to explain something in as best of a way possible to someone who has no frame of reference. My "useless ellipses" was exactly how I turned SA off in 1994.

Ha! You believe the French!? That's rich.

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

L1/L2 and L5 frequency was originally assigned to GPS, so in order for anybody else to use that frequency they need to coordinate with the US Air Force.
But that's by design, there is no need for a yield provision as long as the signals were designed to co-exist and everyone follows the agreed designs.
The ITU is the authority that coordinates worldwide usage of air frequencies.

Plus the military signals operate on the orthogonal polarity to the civilian signals and that polarity is exclusive to GPS.
All airborne signals can use the vertical and horizontal polarity as two completely separate signals. In the case of L5, the signal uses both polarities (one for the positioning signal, the other for the dataless or pilot signal).

The CDMA encoding that all signals on L1/L2/L5 use is very robust and interference resistant (from similar power signals), allowing for dozens of simultaneous signals in the same band on the same region of the earth. Notice that each satellite broadcasts a 50 to 250 bits per second signal, so there's a huge margin of safety, considering the base signal runs at 1-10 mega baud (resulting in 20000 to 200000 bauds per bit).

Re:For such a vital system.

[MightyYar]

Thanks for all the details - people like you are the reason I still bother with Slashdot.

I understand that the various positioning satellites are pretty friendly on the frequencies that they use - so why did the negotiations between China and the EU progress so poorly a few years ago?

Re:For such a vital system.

[Forty Two Tenfold]

No, Bush did not convince Blair to go to war with Biblical stories. Given this is now going exceptionally into unproductive bouts of fiction, I'm done.

Oh, a tantrum! No, the fiction Bush served Blair and the rest of the world was not from the bible. It was from Central Intelligence^WSubterfuge Agency. Still fiction, though.

USians have a knack of electing stupid, aggressive and insidious people, but it's normal - crap goes in, crap comes out. Cheers.

Re:For such a vital system.

[JohnnyComeLately]

Hahah...YES, now go away or I shall fart in your general direction a second time! (yes, I mangled the lines on purpose). I know Bush is the absolute devil, boogeyman, Christian crusader, etc, etc, etc, that every one loves to hate, but I'd just ask you to do one thing. Read his book. No, you don't have to read the whole thing. Skip to the chapter about the first few months of his presidency, and then the day of 9/11. OK, now pick up any one of the books written by intelligence, or CIA insiders during the period BEFORE 9/11.

As you read the writings of people who were actually there, made decisions, watched their colleagues (CIA) die, and dealt with Pakistan, a clear, common denominator will emerge. The funny thing is someone here on Slashdot used to argue this with me all the time (pre-9/11) and, turns out he was right (I was wrong): We had no idea what was brewing and zero interest in figuring it out. The group that tracked Bin Laden was the "black sheep". Here, we would mock them with Tin Foil hat comments and ask how the alien anal probe procedure went. The people who said, "Hey, I think the Pakistanis are just taking our money and helping our enemies," were ignored as it didn't jive with State Dept, White House staff, etc, opinions/priorities. I could continue but the point of all this is: There are very clear, commonalities amongst all the writings, even amongst those who disagree and come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, but not one says Bush had pre-9/11 motive, nor a 'Biblical reasoning" to go in. Everything else we can nit-pick with 20/20 hindsight, but I just have to laugh when best sources are third hand references and French quotes. Although, having worked alongside many French military officers, I'll admit I have an anti-French bias. All that said, the CIA had no interest in Bin Laden, or figuring out what they should do about Afghanistan. Afterwards, it was a mad dash, at which point mistakes were made. The motivation being, not a bible or CIA motives, but to strike back at a group harboring the planners of the largest attack ever on American soil. It really is that simple. Hell, even Gaddafi took notice and started distancing him self from terrorism. I didn't hear Iran saying it was a CIA conspiracy at that time.

Right. We elect stupid aggressive leaders unlike Syria, Germany, Japan, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Britain (already in 4 wars in just the 21st Century: Libyia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone), Russia,...

Re:For such a vital system.

[WorBlux]

I'm betting if you pull signal from both networks you can get an even more accurate signal.

Re:For such a vital system.

[WorBlux]

With a single local base station you can go from a 3ft error to a 3 in error.

Re:For such a vital system.

[Forty Two Tenfold]

OK, now pick up any one of the books written by intelligence, or CIA insiders during the period BEFORE 9/11. As you read the writings of people [...] common denominator will emerge.

Epistola enim non erubescit. Either they lied through the teeth or they are mentally unfit to call themselves "intelligence".

the CIA had no interest in Bin Laden, or figuring out what they should do about Afghanistan

Yeah, too young to remember the cold war and CIA involvement in Soviet-Afghan conflict, where they actually trained and supplied bin Laden, are we?

Right. We elect stupid aggressive leaders unlike Syria, Germany, Japan, Iraq, Iran, India, Pakistan, Britain (already in 4 wars in just the 21st Century: Libyia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Sierra Leone), Russia,...

None of those is as holier-than-thou or entitled to pose as the Earth's police force as the US while being the matchless terrorist state, if one reads the UN's definition of terrorism without bias. The US is the utter scum of the world, and I'm insulting scum here.

Re:For such a vital system.

[macpacheco]

China is the only GNSS system that is playing the proprietary card and their typical behavior of cloning other's people work without compensation.

1 - China was initially interested in a partnership with Europe towards Galileo, however it seems they wanted to invest a little and get 100% of the satellite expertise that Europe has and that China wants.
2 - China's own GNSS system, Beidou or Compass II, has been operating for like two years, and still no ICD's were made public (it's promised to come out anytime now), while the norm is that GNSS civil system ICD is published before said system even starts launching (Beidou has been launching satellites for like 4 years I *think*). ICD is the documentation necessary to use that system. There's a GPS civilian ICD, a Galileo ICD, a Glonass civilian ICD and so forth.

In end, China is not a democracy, China is a dictatorship (by comitee), and they do everything they can that isn't blatantly wrong to benefit their own industry and their own national interests, including blatant industrial espionage, cloning foreign technology in violation of international patents, and many other behavior I consider obscene.

The only way we can try to force China to respect international law and customs is to repeat that statement ad nauseoum, until they bother to change.

I advise against depending on either Glonass or Beidou, because they don't come from a government with a history of international cooperation and respect for its own international commitments, Russia is similar to China in its end result, but with different issues.

But having a GNSS receiver capable of using all four GNSS systems will be amazing, it will automatically use GLONASS and Beidou when its working and ignore it if there's trouble, accuracy will easily get to better than 1 meter in places where today GPS just has barely has enough signals to work at all (as long as the receiver is dual frequency). Today we're lucky to have 10-12 satellites in view, with four systems we should see 30 satellites minimum even in mountain terrain, and about 12 in urban canyons.

Launching from Kourou

[Eunuchswear]

This is the first Soyuz launch from French Guiana.

(And so this is the first launch of a possibly man-ratable launcher by ESA).

Re:Launching from Kourou

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the Soyuz launch pad is 20km West of the Ariane launch pad, in Sinnamary.

CNES' web site about the event: http://www.cnes.fr/web/CNES-fr/4108-soyouz-en-guyane.php

Photo set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/esa_events/sets/72157627767903603/show/

Re:Launching from Kourou

[Eunuchswear]

Ooh you pedant.

Yes, you're right.

Still in France though. :-)

Re:Launching from Kourou

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedantry is the new trolling.

At least you stand in the great tradition of Futurama that "technically correct is the best kind of correct!".

Re:Launching from Kourou

[Sulphur]

Pedantry is the new trolling.

At least you stand in the great tradition of Futurama that "technically correct is the best kind of correct!".

And politically correct is the worst.

Re:Launching from Kourou

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the record:
Ariane 5 is man-rated. It was originally designed for the Hermes Spaceshuttle project which was scrapped after the collapse of the SU opened a second route for ESA to send men to space.
Ideas for an independent manned space programm of ESA (CSTS) nowadays still rely on Ariane 5.

New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Galileo system is also an important part of the new car taxing scheme... Where you basicly pay taxes from the distance you drive. Now only if those cheap chinese GPS jammers would block Galileo signal too...!(?)

Re:New taxes....

[jawtheshark]

References? First time I hear of this...

I'm sure it isn't impossible that this is a reason, but then taxing on actual road usage would be the fairest anyway. ;-)

Re:New taxes....

[lordholm]

A bit off-topic, but anyway...

Are you talking about the Dutch proposal? I thought it was dead after the new government came into power a year ago. In any case, with the exception of the Orwellian nightmare points this generates, it is a pointless waste of money exercise since people already pays per km by paying high petrol taxes. If the government needs the money, raise the petrol taxes! If it is to reduce car traffic, it will not be as efficient as raising petrol taxes since I see this every day. If I get a bill at the end of the month/year for my driven km, I will most likely not think of it in the meanwhile.

This will also generate huge headaches when planning your own finances, since the bills will be very difficult to forecast.

I suppose, you may want to reconsider when every single car runs on electricity, but I am not sure about whether that is needed; when that happens all that oil money that was payed to foreign powers, will stop flowing out of the country and most likely be available for local investments (assuming electricity is produced domestically).

I would really like to see some independent review of these proposals, do you know of any?

Re:New taxes....

[ledow]

And what would this do that GPS wouldn't?

Sounds like scaremongering to me. If they want to put a blackbox in your car, they just need to make it law. The technical way they do it is neither here nor there and does *not* require Galileo in any way. Hell, they could do it the same way London runs the Congestion Charge Zone, or the way the DART tag works for the Dartford tunnel, or a myriad European countries manage their motorways charging, or just putting 10p on petrol.

Stop spreading bullshit. Road taxation is a completely separate issue that does NOT require (and never has required) Galileo. Hell, it doesn't even require GPS.

Re:New taxes....

[rapiddescent]

our local OWASP chapter had a great demo from a Cambridge university (UK) researcher who could effectively jam GPS signals and make the GPS receiver believe it was somewhere else. Very cool tech, using GNU-radio and a whole lot of talent. The basic theme was that the GPS protocols are not trustable and todays society places way too much trust in the system.

This also coincides with a major naval exercise off the north coast of Scotland (where extensive GPS jamming was taking place) which ended up with a fishing vessel unable to make a distress call using the automated "big red button". The exercise was hastily stopped as islanders services stopped working (including internet) - it turns out that a lot of civil infrastructure relies on GPS.

With a foreign power in control of GPS, the EU had to respond. The USA is not the closest allie to European countries (including the UK) as you would think. The USA stood by for 2 years whilst france & belgium were invaded and also stayed neutral when the UK administered Falkland islands (Islas malvinas) were invaded in 1981 by the argentians.

next job: Internet.

Re:New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he's thinking of federal plans to tax all road travel by requiring special GPS devices to be installed in cars.

No, wait, that's the United States of Freetopia that's planning on doing that. Note that article's from this month. You might remember that the US at a federal level and a whole bunch of states keep on trying to sneak this through and keep on failing to suppress public outcry long enough to pass it, but it's never been killed once and for all.

No idea about programs like it in Europe, but it's definitely happening in the US. The only question now is when.

Re:New taxes....

[jandersen]

The Galileo system is also an important part of the new car taxing scheme... Where you basicly pay taxes from the distance you drive

Which is a very sensible way to do i, since you are going to pay road tax anyway. To me it makes a lot of sense that Mr and Mrs Peterson, who drive about 5 miles every day, would pay less, whereas lorrydrivers and others who drive tens of thousands of miles every year whould pay a lot more. After all, they pollute more and they wear the road surfaces dwn more.

It seems so typically American to roll out the big scarecrows of "The Evil Government" and "The Evil Taxes" instead of stepping back and thinking about things. (I know, most Americans actually do exactly that, but you never hear from them).

You know, in Europe people are not 1) paranoid about the government - possibly because we actually believe in our democracy, and 2) we are not against paying tax, even high taxes, if we can see that it is fair.

Re:New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

"GPS" based toll systems are occasionally floated and shot down. They will pass eventually: People who stand to earn billions from such pork barrel projects can be quite tenacious. (Most recent attempt that I know of: German Greens politician Winfried Kretschmann wants a GPS based toll system for passenger cars.)

Re:New taxes....

[damburger]

I don't mind paying taxes, in fact I think the UK could do with a bit more tax at the higher end, but I don't trust David Cameron at all. Largely because he wants to privatise the NHS instead of raising taxes on the wealthy (low by European standards atm).

Also, he is a fucking lizard.

Re:New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is on the all over the news in Finland these days.

Here's the big picture of the EU plan: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM:2011:0144:FIN:EN:PDF

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

What’s especially funny is that by the time these toll systems gain wide adoption, they will become irrelevant.

I believe that in the next two decades we’re going to see really autonomous automobiles, i.e., self-driving cars. They will mark the beginning of the end of the era of a personally-owned vehicle, as well as parking space issues. These cars will have all it takes to become public transportation (also, automatic carpooling via mobile phone), with cars being owned by municipalities instead of individuals. Which will also mean the downfall of taxi drivers – however, used car salesmen will get screwed too.

Taxation by distance traveled will therefore become obsolete; you will be paying by distance traveled anyway. Though I guess not only municipalities will purchase those cars; taxi companies might purchase them as well (same income, albeit with no need to pay any drivers!), but I don’t really care how exactly they are taxed.

Re:New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is a very sensible way to do i, since you are going to pay road tax anyway. To me it makes a lot of sense that Mr and Mrs Peterson, who drive about 5 miles every day, would pay less, whereas lorry drivers and others who drive tens of thousands of miles every year whould pay a lot more. After all, they pollute more and they wear the road surfaces dwn more.

(Emphasis mine)
Personally, I think it would be better if they abolish VED entirely and increased tax on fuel. That way taxation would be tied to consumption and people would have an incentive to drive more efficient (and in many cases, smaller/lighter) vehicles. Moreover, it would silence those who bang on about foreign lorries not paying for the wear and tear they cause on British roads.

You know, in Europe people are not 1) paranoid about the government - possibly because we actually believe in our democracy,

I disagree; there's a great deal of disillusionment with politics, particularly about our representatives being found to have committed fraud with expense claims and getting away scot free*.

and 2) we are not against paying tax, even high taxes, if we can see that it is fair.

In principle, yes. However, whichever country you look at you'll always find people who don't want to pay for services that they don't use, often because they're wealthy enough to afford superior options in the private sector. In Britain we call them Tories :)

*I'm going further and further off-topic here but this really boils my blood. If, say, I claim benefits fraudulently I don't just have to pay them back; I go to prison. I don't just get a metaphorical slap on the wrist and an admonition never to do it again.
There's a distinct lack of accountability for politicians but I've little doubt that this is the same the world over.

Re:New taxes....

[TheTurtlesMoves]

I really hope so. I think it will take longer however, mostly for liability and perceived safety reasons. People are just happier if it was another person that stuffed it up and killed them or their loved ones. They get all stuck on punishment and revenge and blame when its a machine.

Re:New taxes....

[lordholm]

That is a general policy document, it does not mention the use of GPS or Galileo at all. Most of the document also only apply to freight, rail and air transport.

Some parts of the document is about personal vehicles, but there is nothing concrete mentioned except that congestion charges should not be avoided by non-local cars. Essentially they are in some cases when they are based on ANPR tech like in London and Stockholm.

The document does say the Union will develop guidelines for states that wish to implement certain measures for congestion / pollution taxes, but it does not say anything about forcing this on the member states. This is harmonization for the states that want to, not a top down directive forcing the member states to do something.

If a state want GPS-devices in cars, they can do so (though this hasn't been tried with the human right courts, I am only looking at the document itself), but the EU will not force them to. I suggest that if your state wish to implement GPS-devices, you take up the issue with your MP.

Essentially, the doc says something like this: the Union should develop rules so that if a state wish to do X, then X must comply with Y, but the Union will not force the state to do X if they do not want to.

Re:New taxes....

[TheTurtlesMoves]

internet stopped working because of no GPS? Citation required. My BS meter is off the scale.

Re:New taxes....

[TheTurtlesMoves]

I would say the in Europe people have a healthy paranoia about the government. But we are far less adverse to taxation if it makes sense. If we really are serious about the externalities caused by CO2 then it needs to have regulated cost. Just as one example.

Re:New taxes....

[Dr_Barnowl]

See the UK Department for Transport publications on Road Pricing

A quick search through documents, e.g. "Issue 4, dealing with potential fraud ... " reveals the "European Electronic Toll Service".

General reading through the documents will reveal this is a scheme for taxing road use via the use of a "black box" with a positioning system and a GSM cellular modem. I've seen other DfT documents which I can no longer locate which are clearer on the matter of integration with a European system.

Of course, any such system also provides the capability of snooping where any vehicle in the target area travels.

Some back-of-napkin costings also reveal that a system like this is an order of magnitude more expensive to both install and run than mandatory active RFID tags in license plates and pickup loops at the ends of target roads (the original justification is that this will reduce congestion at peak times on these roads). On the other hand, RFID systems do not have the advantage of tracking your every movement.

I might be mis-remembering it, but I recall that Galileo specifically mentioned for it's improved performance in urban areas as compared to GPS.

Re:New taxes....

[theVarangian]

With a foreign power in control of GPS, the EU had to respond. The USA is not the closest allie to European countries (including the UK) as you would think. The USA stood by for 2 years whilst france & belgium were invaded and also stayed neutral when the UK administered Falkland islands (Islas malvinas) were invaded in 1981 by the argentians.

That's not quite fair. The WWI and WWII invasions of Belgium and France were pre-NATO and the USA had no obligations to intervene. The Falklands war placed the US in a pickle, firstly Argentina had some support in S-America and they could hardly intervene without creating a diplomatic mess, secondly any help from the USA for Britain would have been deeply humiliating to the latter. As it was the British succeeded by the skin of their teeth so no harm was done. The US also provided diplomatic help behind the scenes by securing either the cooperation or neutrality of several S-American nations in favor of the Brits.

Re:New taxes....

[lachlan76]

Some telecom gear uses GPS for time synchronisation, so when that disappears, things can break.

Re:New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

*I'm going further and further off-topic here but this really boils my blood. If, say, I claim benefits fraudulently I don't just have to pay them back; I go to prison. I don't just get a metaphorical slap on the wrist and an admonition never to do it again. There's a distinct lack of accountability for politicians but I've little doubt that this is the same the world over.

It's not just that, the moneyed classes seem to continually get away with privatizing profit and nationalizing the results of their most disastrous financial decisions. If there is lack of accountability for anybody it's just as much the assholes (read: the riches 5 percent of society) whose idiocy caused the unaccountable politicians to gut things like healthcare, policing, national defense and infrastructure to pay for their financial disasters.

Re:New taxes....

[lordholm]

Indeed, it is sensible. But the even more sensible thing would be to administer the km-tax though petrol tax as this is already implemented as part of the infrastructure and reduces the administrational overhead by only falling on the petrol sellers that are far fewer than the consumer. It is also automatically punishing cars that burn too much fuel.

And guess what, this is already done...

By the way, you don't need Galileo for km-tax. You could do this reasonably well with the GPS system or without the GPS system. Or, by placing a black box in the car that is read out when you pass a border and yearly at your car inspection (also, every car keeps track of the km driven as it is), administrationally, this is a lot easier and cheaper than placing a GPS plus cellphone device in every car.

But wait... now comes the standard objection to doing a simple system for this, what if people manipulate the system? Well, it turns out that it is easy to jam a GPS receiver, and it may also break easily. In both cases you need to check the GPS logger against the mechanical km logger that is already in the car; and the manipulation of this meter is already illegal and more cumbersome than jamming a GPS.

Re:New taxes....

[DNS-and-BIND]

"Stood by" while France and Belgium were invaded? What the hell? That's a new one for me. I've heard tons of creative trashing of America for the most far-fetched reasons, but this is a doozy.

You do know that France was the world's foremost military power in 1940 and everybody expected her to beat the Germans handily, right? Furthermore, any theoretical American Expeditionary Force would have been routed by the Nazis just like the British were, and just clogged up the beaches at Dunkirk. I suppose that whole "liberating France & Belgium four years later" thing did nothing that deserves any credit.

Re:New taxes....

[demonlapin]

Cars will continue to be owned by individuals so long as we have drunks and vandals to make publicly-owned vehicles dirty, nasty, and unpleasant. Especially if there's no driver in the car to stop them. Not only that, you can leave things in the car - from small objects like sunglasses, to large packages while shopping.

Re:New taxes....

[JohnnyComeLately]

Not just some, almost all. Stratum's tied to GPS signals are standard fare in a switch room at Sprint PCS and Nextel. Everything in the realm of high speed digital data transmission needs reliable timing. GPS is a free, easy reference that's accurate to a nanosecond. Those that don't go down will start to drift in timing. Modulation that's not time-reliant will be ok, but others will have issues.

Re:New taxes....

[demonlapin]

You can pay a per-mile tax by increasing gasoline taxes, too, and in the bargain you don't have to hand the government a list of every single place you've driven in the past year.

Re:New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

"I suppose that whole "liberating France & Belgium four years later" thing did nothing that deserves any credit."

It was Russia who beat Germany, not the US. Learn some history.

Re:New taxes....

[rapiddescent]

citations for the chappie who called BS. These are quite isolated communities and so when the comms went down it caused chaos.

1. BBC, Jamming suspended
2: The Scotsman, mentions telecoms + internet problems

sorry, haven't found anything remotely tech from the comms companies.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

Both these problems are circumventable.
Vandals etc. can be taken care of with some monitoring – even if the state of the vehicle were only photographed after a seat has been emptied, since each passenger would pay for the ride either by credit card or by mobile phone, it would be trivial to find the offender and fine him.
Leaving small objects in the car will die out as people can keep them in their bags as well, and any non-driving related objects will seamlessly find their place there. Larger packages while shopping – simple. You just reserve the vehicle, paying some amount per hour, and free it after shopping. What’s more, you could actually fill the vehicle with packages and send it home without you (providing there’s someone there to unload it), while you go on with whatever else you were doing, or take another car in another direction.

Change is inevitable.

Re:New taxes....

[Anonymous Coward]

Change is inevitable.

Except from a vending machine

Re:New taxes....

[DrXym]

I think it's reasonable too to some extent but I don't see the reason to GPS monitor cars. Many EU countries put vehicles into tax bands and also tax fuel. Between the two I would imagine that you accurately capture the amount of pollution a vehicle causes and can tune your taxes accordingly. Even if it weren't enough I don't see why a simple black box that recorded mileage, fuel consumption, average speed, average trip length etc. couldn't be fitted to a car to augment the system.

To track cars all the time seems extremely intrusive. I expect there is a huge potential for datamining for the public good (e.g. figuring out where new roads need to be based on traffic patterns, where to put public transport etc) but also huge potential for harm, erosion of privacy etc.

Re:New taxes....

[rich_hudds]

We already do tax on road usage, we just do it through petrol consumption.

Re:New taxes....

[rich_hudds]

I like your thinking but as long as most people commute every day at pretty much the same time we are going to need one car per commuter which probably means individual ownership.

Re:New taxes....

[JohnnyComeLately]

I'm at work so don't have the time to look it up, but look at tech's on Nortel DMS 100, 250, etc for their switches, base site controllers, etc. For the other "biggie", Lucent 5ESS. Those were (at least 5 -6 years ago when I was still in telecom) the two biggest switch networks deployed in the US. For T1s, look up Alcatel, and Tellabs for digital cross connect, and...ok hit brick wall.. there's one other I'm forgetting.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

One car per commuter is both impractical and unnecessary. And I am quite certain ordering a ride via your mobile phone would allow for some damned efficient scheduling, as well as collecting passengers en route.
Commuting should be fairly easy as it’s constant.

Re:New taxes....

[delt0r]

Having worked in telecoms before and respective fiber networks and associated equipment and with a lot of friends still working in with ISP etc, I am not convinced. They need good local clocks with low drift *just like a gps receiver needs* not absolute clocks (in fact the requirement is far less that local clocks required for GPS). So GPS adds nothing that a PLL + TCXO doesn't give you except better *absolute* time base which is completely unnecessary. I'm with the original citation required. And no, a few news paper articles that say everything more advanced than a wrist watch is going to stop working is just not credible.

Re:New taxes....

[delt0r]

After looking up the first 2 I can find no references at all to a GPS signal reception requirement. Considering some of these things will be installed in locations that a external GPS antenna would required. You'd think it would be mentioned, somewhere. I will ask a few workmates who still work on this sort of thing for more details. I am however very skeptical. There is just no *need* or *advantage* to using a absolute time base of GPS over lower drift local time base. About the only thing I can think of for such a requirement is for billing, which hardly needed much accuracy.

Re:New taxes....

[Hognoxious]

I like your thinking but as long as most people commute every day at pretty much the same time we are going to need one car per commuter

In some places there's these things like long cars with maybe 40 seats in them. Peopletrucks. I think they're just a fad.

Re:New taxes....

[JohnnyComeLately]

I'm surprised you didn't find anything. Here's one I found in 30 seconds using "Nortel DMS Timing GPS" in Bing (sorry, default search in my IE)
Motorola M12+ Timing Oncore GPS Timing Module

Gotta run back to work

Re:New taxes....

[rich_hudds]

The point that I was responding to was that just because cars can drive themselves we might still need the same number. The poster was suggesting that we could all share cars as they could move between people on their own, I was pointing out that people tend to commute at the same time.

Your point about buses added nothing and wasn't funny. If buses were the answer, we'd all be using them now.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

Actually, buses might become much more prevalent for commuting. Buses are a part of the answer; yes, there’d need to be more of them (but not more drivers, mind you!), and given some more incentive, more people might start using them. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but from what I’ve gathered, riding the bus seems to carry a slight social stigma in the US. Is it really true?)
It’s all fairly simple math, as long as you don’t focus just on one aspect. Which is what you did do, and wrongly so.
People now justify car purchase with, among other things, the need to commute. With this kind of system, they might need to commute only to some bus stop or other, because cars could then go off to pick up other passengers. This would reduce congestion, so you might get same or slightly shorter commute time even with passenger transfers.

All in all, it’s doable. It’s economically feasible. However, the automobile industry might show some resistance as it would reduce their sales.
I predict marketing ploys akin to those that made diamonds so valuable; stuff like “you’re not a real man if you let a machine drive you” (see Sly Stallone in “Demolition Man”). Still, there are very few buggy whip manufacturers around nowadays, aren’t there?

Re:New taxes....

[Hognoxious]

.. or retrofit expensive equipment to older vehicles. And what do you do about foreign vehicles?

GP is a retard.

Re:New taxes....

[demonlapin]

The fact that it is possible to live a nomadic life in which you carry everything you may need around with you doesn't mean that people want to live that life. And once you start paying for the car to sit there, empty, it rapidly becomes less and less appealing vs owning your own.

Re:New taxes....

[demonlapin]

The social stigma of riding the bus is not slight. It's huge. Almost nobody who can afford other means uses buses - despite their theoretical advantages, they're slow for point-to-point travel, meaning that you have to put near-zero value on your time in order to make them worthwhile.

I'd love self-driving cars. They'd be great. But I don't want to ride in a bus. It beats walking, but that's about it.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

Why is that so? You are mostly paying for your own car to sit there, empty. Whether you need it or not.

I don’t really see people carrying anything they might need in their cars, either. They’re mostly empty space. And so are the cars.

Re:New taxes....

[demonlapin]

My car isn't empty; it contains my sunglasses (multiple pair; I've been known to lose them from time to time), a stereo preset to my preferred radio stations, and seats that are heated, cooled, and covered in my choice of fabric. It contains a first-aid kit of my own construction, jumper cables, a flashlight, $20 in emergency cash, a pocketknife, a Space Pen (writes upside down and under water!), a full tank of gasoline, a cigarette lighter, small containers of hand sanitizer, a Bluetooth system that is already synced to my phone, and a few other items.

I'm certainly not going to carry all of those around with me - indeed, in the case of the pocketknife I sometimes can't. I don't have any interest in carrying a box containing "stuff you'll need eventually when you're in the car", so there is one in my car and one in my wife's. I don't pay for my car to sit there; I pay for it to be three feet from my back door whenever I want, on zero notice, for my exclusive use. Car-sharing doesn't offer that. It's not that car-sharing never makes sense; it's just that it only makes sense in very densely populated areas where owning a car is a real pain.

Re:New taxes....

[delt0r]

From the link:

Banks, cellular network operators and airports are a few examples of the businesses that rely on accurate GPS timing for a variety of applications. Accurate GPS timing provides a fundamental building block needed to coordinate data and information flow securely through various systems, on a daily basis. By tagging data packets with a time and date stamp, it's transmission time and hence integrity can be monitored.

In other words its a high layer thing not a transport layer issue at all. That is, it is not needed to keep a network ticking over(aka internet). But only specific applications that are in all probability *not* running over TCP/IP. Since if it was the micro and milliseconds of delay and jitter with packet delivery would render any such high accuracy time stamp irrelevant. It is also a module, aka not needed for basic operations judging from the text.

There is really no reason to require a absolute time base for network transport, and with modern packet ques nothing is getting sent anywhere that accurately anyway. As for digital transceivers, it would be a disadvantage to not self time to the signal itself. Talking to my friend working for a big ISP laughed at the idea no GPS would mean no Internet. None of their equipment uses it and though they are not the biggest ISP, they still have well over 5 million customers.

Re:New taxes....

[JohnnyComeLately]

I don't know digital high speed data at the physical layer levels, but keep in mind when we talk about these circuits, you're talking about hundreds, if not thousands, of circuits that are moving meg's of data per second, up to terabytes per sec (OC-192 for example). They're using Timing for modulation (timeslots). So although there may be some in or out of band signaling (I don't know), it's far easier to just hook everything up to a GPS Stratum. Everything is sync'd within a nanosecond. If you're a backbone (like Sprint), your ATM syncs up to your trunks going out to telcos. For the wireless data, it's sync'd to the ATMs going out, or the T1/DS3/OCxx (12...192), along with your base site controllers, echo cancellers (I'm stretching on that...since echo cans don't really care about sync)... etc Hopefully you get the idea. I do know I always see a GPS sync in every wireless switch I've been in (Nextel, Sprint PCS) and everywhere high speed data passes. If you have time, which it seems you do since you're still pursuing this, look up Tellabs 532L and 5500 installations. See if they have GPS. These are the devices that mux and demux DS0s (little 56k slots) all the way up to DS3, etc.

Re:New taxes....

[delt0r]

GPS is not to the nanosecond. Even from your link. 2ns is 1 sigma. The chip rate for GPS is really slow, what GPS gives you over normal local TCXO is *absolute* time, ie lower long term drift, and by long term i mean mins to hours (TCXO are very good over mins, drift is a problem over hours and days). Claiming there is a way to use GPS and make a network depended on it is not the same as it is, and that its the easiest way, or even sane. From your link its adding time stamps to packets, not using it for network timing. That makes some sense (security apps do need a *secure* absolute time reference, but to the ns). Even with the old 2Meg circuits that where TDM, the "clocking" is still done on the line itself, not some absolute external clock. Since absolute time is totally irrelevant. The faster you go the more important it is to be locally synced.

Getting GPS to have a ns absolute clock accurate timer is really hard. See the recent deal with faster than light neutrinos. Note that Ionospheric effects with dither GPS more than ns as well. So at the very least you going to need military grade GPS for at least first order ionosphere corrections. Hell normal coaxial gets all sorts of errors bigger than that and change over time. In 1 ns light travels just 30cm. I don't recall the deal with fiber, but a small temp change will definitely be changing delays on the order of ns over km of fiber. So now even corrected ionosphere GPS is still drifting differently in different locations and the cables/fibers have different drift as well. So what was gained?

None of this adds up. From my own time in the field to the people i know in the field to just 101 electronics digital electronics TX. It just does not make sense. Also lets not forget the OP said internet. Not just some fringe protocol on dedicated lines. There is no direct reference other than a news paper. Note I have full access to IEEE publications and i only really get anything with cellular stuff. Not internet stuff (packet switched networking).

I remain very skeptical.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

A stereo preset to your favorite radio stations is irrelevant; that’s mere personalization that can be keyed to your mobile phone or any other sort of identification. The jumper cables, full tank, and Bluetooth system are irrelevant: they are either standard equipment or unnecessary. Remember, you do not really need a Bluetooth system if you’re not driving.

As for densely populated areas where owning a car is a real pain – you might remember I was talking about cities buying cars for such sharing. Last I checked, cities were densely populated areas where owning a car is a real pain. But what do I know, I only live in one.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

If you can get a vehicle whenever you need it or want it, do you still need to own it?

Re:New taxes....

[demonlapin]

Actually, you talked about "municipalities", not "cities", so I hope you'll forgive me for thinking that West Podunk was going to deploy a fleet.

You keep talking about what people do and don't need. I'm trying to point out that what they want is much more important.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

People often have no clue as for what they want. For instance, you keep listing things that are nothing to worry about because you can’t wrap your head around a different concept.

Besides, Apple made a fortune by giving people not what they wanted, but what they needed from a product. And then made them want it.
What people want largely depends on what’s offered to them.

Re:New taxes....

[cp.tar]

Well, in all fairness, not even vehicle ownership guarantees that as your car can be stolen at any time.

Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

We might as well have Galileo too. Not that it matters, because our push-over politicians agreed to change the design so that the USA can jam Galileo without affecting their military GPS.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[damburger]

OK, I'm a European and not massively fond of the US military, but I am going to take exception to this.

The Galileo *civilian* band originally overlapped with the US *military* band. In other words, you could buy an over the counter device that could guide a weapon to a specific grid reference in an area the US was fighting a war. Remember the rocket forces Hezbollah were able to deploy against Israel? Imagine that with GPS targetting that you can't jam without blinding your own forces.

The US asked ESA to pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top not make consumer devices that had dual uses killing US servicemen. ESA said 'ooh, go on you old rascal' and moved the band.

Now, the situation is that both Navstar (the actual name for US GPS; GPS is just the generic name for such a system) and Galileo have civilian and military bands that don't overlap. Either the US and Europe can jam each others signals, completely, without affecting their own military band. Just as the US can achieve exclusive GPS access in Iraq and Afghanistan, France can do just the same when it unilaterally intervenes in one of its old African colonies.

All the change did was move us from a situation where we were screwing the Americans with our network, to one where we have equal power to screw each others network. This doesn't seem massively unreasonable of the US to ask for.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

The primary point of Galileo was to have a system that would not be at the whim of the US. Otherwise we could just keep using GPS for civilian purposes and save our money. We can argue whether it is a good idea to make Galileo "unjammable" by overlapping GPS military frequencies, but without that there's hardly a reason for setting up a very costly alternative system.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[damburger]

Galileo is better (kind of inevitable, being about 30 years newer). Also, I believe the idea is that a GPS system can get back its launch and development costs by licensing receiver chips. This is a profit making enterprise, which hopefully will mean more money in the long run available for other European space endeavours.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

It if were a profitable enterprise, then we wouldn't have to pump billions of Euros of taxpayer money into it. It is a pork barrel project. Licensing chips for a marginally better system that is no more reliable than GPS, when GPS chips are already widely available, and the Chinese, whose chips are certainly going to be cheaper, are building their own GPS? Good luck with that. Nope, Galileo will never have a positive ROI (not for the taxpayer, that is), and with the strategic aspect shot, we should've scrapped the project.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[GauteL]

Thanks for debunking the whole "push-over" politicians angle. Let me just add that those old rascals over in the US are, after all, our allies. I for one, don't think avoiding needlessly killing our allies is the same as bending over to give them better access to our backside.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the US can degrade their own GPS, Europe could degrade or disable Galileo regionally to protect its allies. What the US wanted and got was that the US won't have to ask. That IS being pushed over by bullies, not being convinced by allies. Overlapping the GPS military frequencies doesn't make Galileo completely unjammable: It would have meant that the Galileo civilian frequencies could not have been disabled without cooperating with Europe or also jamming GPS military frequencies.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[TheTurtlesMoves]

The Galileo *civilian* band originally overlapped with the US *military* band. In other words, you could buy an over the counter device that could guide a weapon to a specific grid reference in an area the US was fighting a war. Remember the rocket forces Hezbollah were able to deploy against Israel? Imagine that with GPS targetting that you can't jam without blinding your own forces.

No you can't. Both GPS and Galileo civilian devices are speed, acceleration and altitude limited. No rocket would work with it. Even our armature rockets had too high acceleration and too high speeds to allow for GPS tracking through most of its flight trajectory.

However they did not ask nicely with the overlapping bands. The US was aggressive about it. Very aggressive. I didn't track the debate to its conclusion. I was still under the impression that the bands still overlap.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[damburger]

Even if you can't work around speed limitations, just make a GPS guided drone from a model aircraft. Its still a danger in the hands of a competent and imaginative asymmetric opponent

It was quite an aggressive move to make our network attack the military utility of theirs in the first place. IIRC the whole thing was part of the spat between Bush and Chirac, both of whom are now out of office. Unsurprising that the issue is now resolved, then.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[mmcuh]

...but if the ESA wanted to, they could have just told the US to get back to them when they had an actual situation where Galileo might be used for military purposes against the US, and they would have a look at it and, maybe, degrade the signal themselves. Unless they disagreed with the assessment. The way they did it now means that the US can make those decisions entirely on their own.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[damburger]

Two points:

1. An overlapped would not have tied the hands of the US military that much anyway; in the face of any serious threat, if Galileo satellites were functioning as an enemy asset, they could fire ASAT weapons at them.

2. EU nations don't want to interfere with US military operations out of a sense of moral duty (at least their governments don't.) They want to secure deals they have made with enemies of the US. None of our governments asked for a mandate to engage in what would basically be proxy warfare against the US.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

Designing your own system in such a way that there is a systematic cost to interfering with it against your will isn't "an aggressive move", it's common fucking sense.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[damburger]

The US can disable Galileo in time of war. Europe can disable GPS in time of war. Europe wasn't screwed here.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[TheRaven64]

It if were a profitable enterprise, then we wouldn't have to pump billions of Euros of taxpayer money into it.

He said a profit-making enterprise, not a profitable enterprise. Infrastructure is rarely profitable to operate, but it can generate a lot of profit by existing. The amount of profit that I make by being able to easily work for companies on the other side of the world, for example, is a lot greater than the profit that my ISP makes from me. Decent roads between industrial and residential areas make it easy for companies in those areas to recruit workers and increase profits, but the roads don't make a profit themselves. There are lots of activities that benefit from accurate positioning information.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

He said "get back its launch and development costs by licensing receiver chips".

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

The point was to have a system that will not be disabled just like that, to have a system that has some built-in obstacle to being jammed. If your idea of being an ally is that Europe must never have a capability that the US doesn't also have, then you're just as much a push-over as the politicians who agreed to neutering Galileo. There is no rational argument against having a system that Europe could have downgraded in agreement with the US should the need arise, except that the US wants superiority, even at the cost of shooting down its allies' satellites.

Re:Duke Nukem forever has arrived

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the rocket forces Hezbollah were able to deploy against Israel? Imagine that with GPS targetting that you can't jam without blinding your own forces.

Yes, it would mean Hezbollah would be able to hit actual military targets and minimize civilian casualties. Something they would prefer at least as much Israel and its allies do. The numbers speak for themselves.

Good for Europe

[DNS-and-BIND]

Geez, those Americans really plotted this one out, didn't they? Spend billions launching and maintaining a constellation of satellites for military targeting, then make that available to civilians, and not even restrict it to US citizens! They made the whole world dependent on GPS, those evil fuckers. That was their plan all along. Fortunately, far-sighted souls in the European government saw through this ruse. Now Europe is rightfully making themselves independent of the Wall Street-controlled US government. Right on! Hit Americans where it hurts.

Re:Good for Europe

[jandersen]

Feeling a bit sore? America is neither our enemy nor our bestest friend ever. America is just a friendly nation; well, mostly friendly, and you guys have certainly always known how to look after your own interests, friendship or not. Which is why it makes sense for Europe not to be too dependent on America. We have our own interests to look after, and a closer relation with China ought to be very much in the cards for us. Being too dependent on America might be a hindrance.

Re:Good for Europe

[l0ungeb0y]

Wow -- what a facetious and ignorant comment.

Actually, Europe would be quite happy to sponge off our GPS satellite network, except for the fact that it's run by our military and we reserve the right to downgrade it's accuracy or shut-off civilin use completely, at any time and for any reason.

So yeah, when you have the majority of the world living OUTSIDE the US and with no control, you can't fault them for wanting to come up with a system they can control.

Of course, just to show what good chums we are, we already stated we'd shoot Galileo NavSats down if we even suspected China (a galileo partner nation) was using them in any military action against our interests. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-04zc.html

AMERICUH FUCKYA!

Re:Good for Europe

[DNS-and-BIND]

China has their own GPS network already up and operating. Why not use them, as they're Europe's new BFF?

Re:Good for Europe

[GauteL]

"China has their own GPS network already up and operating. Why not use them, as they're Europe's new BFF?"

What part of his post did you not understand? If it makes sense not to be too reliant on our friend the US, it sure does not make sense to be too reliant on our new "friend", China.

Good news, bad news, worse news

[damburger]

Good news - with this, the repair of the Russian GLONASS network, and the new Chinese Beidou network, a device will have four satellite networks to choose from to get a signal from

Bad news - this likely won't mean it gets a lock on its position any quicker, due to technical reasons. Essentially, the device has to listen for a few seconds to receive the complete signal.

Worse news - each network will require its own proprietary chip, so increased access to GPS networks will come with increased cost, complexity, heat and power issues.

Re:Good news, bad news, worse news

[julesh]

Bad news - this likely won't mean it gets a lock on its position any quicker, due to technical reasons. Essentially, the device has to listen for a few seconds to receive the complete signal.

Worse news - each network will require its own proprietary chip, so increased access to GPS networks will come with increased cost, complexity, heat and power issues.

Good news -- you have been misinformed. Single chip GPS/Galileo IC with sub-1-second acquisition and similar power usage to current GPS-only chips.

Re:Good news, bad news, worse news

[damburger]

This is memory though, and perhaps I was wrong. A combined chip might be able to get acquisition down more than it was implied to me was possible, by some trick utilising both networks at once.

On the other hand, what you are citing is a press release by a company that wants to sell GPS receiver chips. Its in their interest to massage their performance figures. The question is how do *they* define acquisition and when do they measure the start of the acquisition time from. I would want more information.

Re:Good news, bad news, worse news

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Having worked on GPS type things in the past both systems are very similar and the electronics is not hard to do these days, and because they are so similar the development costs won't be high. Hell someone on Makeit did their own GPS receiver *without* a gps chip. Very cool.

Re:Good news, bad news, worse news

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant. You're wrong, and there's a link to prove it, versus your "from memory" thing about acquisition necessarily taking over a second for which you've provided no detail or evidence whatsoever, so now you're using general mistrust of press releases to worm out of it. Only on Slashdot.

Re:Good news, bad news, worse news

[shutdown -p now]

Worse news - each network will require its own proprietary chip, so increased access to GPS networks will come with increased cost, complexity, heat and power issues.

Apparently, the problems are not as big as this makes them sound, since already most of the upcoming batch of smartphones is boasting dual GPS/GLONASS support - most importantly, iPhone 4S.

Independant of the US?

[Trevelyan]

Didn't the US push the EU to allow them to be able to downgrade the Galileo signal, effectively giving the US a Galileo veto?

At least that's my memory from, I think, 2004.

Re:Independant of the US?

[damburger]

No.

The US asked for the Galileo civilian signal to be moved so it didn't overlap with the US military one. In the original scheme, they wouldn't have been able to block civilian Galileo devices in warzones without blocking their own military signal.

The capabilities of Galileo are unaffected. The civilian accuracy is still better than US military accuracy, but now you wouldn't be able to use it anywhere the US military is fighting.

Re:Independant of the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the original scheme, they wouldn't have been able to block civilian Galileo devices in warzones without blocking their own military signal. [] now you wouldn't be able to use it anywhere the US military is fighting.

So this is the system that is

supposed to free Europe from dependence on a US-controlled positioning system [TFS]

? ROFL.

Similar fallacy in the eweekeurope article, under the heading "American control":

In March, a report by the Royal Academy of Engineering warned that people in the UK had become overly reliant on satellite navigation systems such as GPS, making the technology a prime target for criminals intent on disrupting the country’s infrastructure.

There is no reason why those "criminals" would not be able to jam Galileo signals just as easily.

Re:Independant of the US?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dead ant, dead ant, dead ant dead ant dead ant, dead ant dead ant, independant. Wah wah wah whah wawawah

Galileo is important for aviation

[Anonymous Coward]

For the aviation Galileo is important.
Because with Galileo it is possible to determine if the coordinates are really accurate. I.e. satellites can fail, but with Galileo one knows that there is a failure.
Currently in aviation, GPS cannot be a primary instrument. Galileo makes this possible. Furthermore it makes it even possible to forget about strict highway lanes in the sky. Because every plane knows it's exact position.

Re:Galileo is important for aviation

[damburger]

Ever watch Air Crash Investigations (called Mayday in some countries)? Even with redundant GPS, getting rid of air corridors would be a terrible, terrible idea.

Re:Galileo is important for aviation

[digitig]

Yes, I do, and I also read the official air crash investigation reports as part of my work. Getting rid of air corridors isn't necessarily as bad an idea as you think if it's done right.

Why haven't they learn from Motorola/Irridium?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one will use the service, satellites will burn in the atmosphere, financial losses will be unbearable, and finally Google will buy EU because of EU patents.

Ready for TAX AS YOU DRIVE?

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt the new system will require ALL GPS devices that use this system to have a built in tracker so the government knows where you are all the time. And it will probably also be mandated into all cars... prepare for the new 'TAX AS YOU DRIVE' road tax they were talking about. If you think this for any other reason than 'independence' from the USA, you are dead wrong. This is about CONTROL and TAXES.

Re:Ready for TAX AS YOU DRIVE?

[mmcuh]

Why couldn't they just have required that for GPS rather than spending billions on new satellites?

Re:Ready for TAX AS YOU DRIVE?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this new system will mean you must buy a new satnav, and the new sat nav will no doubt have tracking technology in it. Expect all trucks, buses and tachometer vehicles to have one of these and all companies to be paying some kind automated taxes. Expect all cars to have one of these retro-fitted as a mandatory thing old or new and an MOT failure (annual British roadworthyness test) if not present or having been tampered with.

Re:Ready for TAX AS YOU DRIVE?

[lordholm]

I call bull. Mostly because you can already do this with the Navstar GPS and secondly, because it would be way more cost effective to do that using terrestrial means.

Galileo GPS does not enable the uplink of data (even though the rescue channel will be supported for SOL devices, this channel already exists and is part of another satellite constellation). And besides, there is not enough bandwidth to monitor every european car from space using 1 W transmitters and low power receivers on the satellites, any monitoring of car positions would have to be done using the GSM network. This is already possible by using Navstar GPS receivers (which can pinpoint your position to within a few meters) and GSM transmitters.

Re:Ready for TAX AS YOU DRIVE?

[mmcuh]

Why would you have to buy a new satnav? The GPS satellites aren't going anywhere.

ACCURACY!

[wisebabo]

I read somewhere that Galileo is 10x more "accurate" than the U.S. GPS. Aside from what exactly does that mean (absolute positioning, relative positioning) does anyone know if this is true? I can think of a whole host of new applications or applications that could be made a lot cheaper/easier (like autonomous vehicles) if this is true.

And if it is true, how do they achieve it? Better atomic clocks (in orbit presumably)? Better algorithms? Better knowledge of the satellites positions? Better receivers?

Re:ACCURACY!

[ctrl-alt-canc]

Yes, Galileo is more accurate but only when used in Switzerland.

Re:ACCURACY!

[am 2k]

I guess they're comparing it to consumer-grade GPS, not military-grade. The military-grade GPS always was that much more accurate. So the hardware probably isn't much different, only the access allowed to the public is.

Re:ACCURACY!

[Anonymous Coward]

It is more accurate than the base GPS system, but WAAS augments GPS to a sub-1m accuracy, which exceeds the Gallileo capabilities.

Re:ACCURACY!

[teh kurisu]

I remember reading that Galileo's 'free-to-air' grade would be roughly equivalent in accuracy to civilian-grade GPS, and that the high-accuracy grade would be protected as in GPS. The difference would be that, whereas high-accuracy grade GPS is only available to the US military, Galileo's high-accuracy grade would be made available to anybody on a (presumably expensive) commercial basis.

Re:ACCURACY!

[delt0r]

You can do similar things with Gallileo.

Re:ACCURACY!

[delt0r]

You can in fact buy military grade GPS receivers with the appropriate license. For example commercial airlines avionic companies. All in all the US military has been very open with civilian use of GPS.

Re:ACCURACY!

[lordholm]

Essentially accuracy will be increased to sub-meter positioning enabling interesting applications such as Galileo GPS guided automatic landing. Navstar GPS also have big issues in the extreme north (and south), essentially preventing efficient use of it in northern Sweden and Finland. This is also a key improvement from Galileo.

Relative positioning using the Navstar GPS is already dead-on accurate, so don't expect that to be improved. Galileo was also designed to send reliability info, essentially telling the receivers whether they can accurately rely on the data for SOL critical tasks.

How it is done exactly, no clue! Any Galileo designer who feel to weigh in around here?

Re:ACCURACY!

[Libertarian001]

I'm guessing Galileo doesn't have the FDIV bug.

Re:ACCURACY!

[dinisio]

Better atomic clocks (yes on-board).
"the clocks on the Galileo satellites will allow you to resolve your position anywhere on the Earth's surface to within 45 cm."

Re:ACCURACY!

[Demanufacture]

WAAS is only available in North America. The equivalent CDGPS source for Europe is EGNOS.

Libre Eurpoe

[Anonymous Coward]

They should use the stupid name.

Power output calculations

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone have equations or figures for the power output from the satellites vs the safety-of-life feature on hand held devices? The signal has to be transmitted hundreds of kilometers through various layers of the atmosphere that degrade the signal in unpredictable ways. Would a receiver with safety-of-life need to charge a large capacitor to burst out the signal at maximum possible power?

This leads to the question, is there anything that prevents this system being used to continuously track ships, aircraft, automated robots, wildlife, crop harvesting machinery, cargo, vehicles and whatever else?

More anti-US jealousy

[singingjim1]

If you anti-Americans had your way you'd rent a nice French bomb and poof us out of existence while leaving our culture intact for you to continue to enjoy.

Re:More anti-US jealousy

[Anonymous Coward]

...while leaving our culture intact ...

I don't think that word means what you think it does.

Re:More anti-US jealousy

[singingjim1]

Sure it does. It means all that superficial crap that we export to the rest of the world hungry for almost anything American. I guess it's not like it used to be, but we still put out a lot of crap that you folks eat up. So yeah, it means what I think it means.

Re:More anti-US jealousy

[MightyYar]

It means we make movies, music, and television and you buy them. You even bought our top beer company, despite insisting that it tastes like watered down urine. You can pretend that you hate American culture, but you import it on a massive scale. We get BMWs, Belgian chocolate, and French wine, and you get disposable media. Seems fair.

Hurray

[Hentes]

With the much higher accuracy Galileo could be used for things other than navigation.

*sigh*

[T-Mckenney]

Can human-kind, for once, knock off this nationalist crap and make a universal system that everyone can use? Instead of turning everything into a weapon? Come on, this is getting old.

Re:*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

Short answer: No.
Long answer: See world history.

Re:*sigh*

[polar red]

winners : the 1%-ers/corporations.

Space Wars

[nojayuk]

The US doesn't have the capability to shoot down its own NAVSTAR GPS satellites never mind the GLONASS, COMPASS and planned Galileo constellations. They're not in low-earth orbit but high up in long-period orbits which keep them above the horizon for several hours at a time, altitudes which would be difficult for manoeuverable hunter-killer spacecraft to achieve.

The large number of satellites planned or already in orbit would also require lots of H-K launches to intercept enough units before the positional data received on the ground would be noticeably degraded.

Re:Space Wars

[delt0r]

If you can launch a satellite to the orbit you can launch an anti-satellite to the orbit. Its not like the satellites designed for long life are all that maneuverable while an anti-satellite has life much easier.

And the pulling away from the US continues

[erroneus]

I saw it coming years ago and I'm a little surprised it's not happening faster. We have seen where China, India, Brazil and Russia are forming their own little trade group leaving the US dollar out of the equation. We see increasing instances of heavy resistance to US politicking, law-peddling and bullying. Now we are seeing a pulling away from US controlled global systems.

Expect to see some new form of DNS and other internet services followed by increased instances of segmentation on the global public internet as well. It's just going to get more and more ugly as the various parties in the US involved in this continue to deny it is happening at all.... kinda like global warming.

You know, I'm going to have to try sticking my head up my ass ... they make doing so seem comfortable and awesome somehow.

Re:And the pulling away from the US continues

[Tuan121]

Well aren't you so smart!

Re:And the pulling away from the US continues

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

We have seen where China, India, Brazil and Russia are forming their own little trade group leaving the US dollar out of the equation.
Puff puff, give homey.

Answer?

[Anonymous Coward]

What was the question?

Re:For such a vital system: CBA

[INT_QRK]

If the EU believe the benefits justify the lifecycle costs, then they should go for it, and good for them. Of course, if their choice of incompatible standards introduced into a mature market reduces demand to below profitability thresholds, then too bad, so sad. Good luck friends.

Wiki!

[tinkerton]

there's a wiki about euroscepticism in the UK . Several numbers around 50%.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euroscepticism_in_the_United_Kingdom

Isn't Galeleo proprietary?

[MagikSlinger]

I thought you needed to license the protocols in order to use it. Has the EU changed it's mind and made it a proper public infrastructure?

Accuracy also depends on number of satellites

[Quila]

The more satellites in view, the better the fix. The military actually redirects our satellites so more are available over areas where accuracy is needed, such as war zones.

Re:Accuracy also depends on number of satellites

[popoutman]

Actually they don't. One of the basic tenets of the system is that the orbits are known to the receivers, as well as the distance to the receiver. This is the method that allows the triangulation. Moving the satellites out of the current stable orbits would just make a mess of things, and would render the 4-hour ephemeris that the satellite transmits inaccurate during the time of movement. Given the number of satellites in orbit in the GPS constellation, and given the number of satellites in view at any given time (6-12 generally) there is absolutely no advantage in moving a satellite. It's simply not done for the GPS satellites. You may have been confusing GPS with the likes of the optical spy satellites, that certainly can have the orbits altered.

Europe catches up after 30 years

[peter303]

i am sure the GPS industry is quaking in its boots.

"...answer to GPS"

[elvum]

GPS is a question?

Free?

[slapout]

"supposed to free Europe from dependence on a US-controlled positioning system"

You know, they dont have to use the system if they don't want to.

Re:Free?

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, and US doesn't have to use foreign oil if it doesn't want to.

Re:Free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apples to oranges. The United States buying oil from OPEC is wholly different than Europe getting GPS service for free.

Re:Free?

[shutdown -p now]

I'm not sure what this has to do with the original message to which I replied. Yes, Europe currently gets to use GPS for free, same as everyone else. But GPS is effectively a monopoly that's entirely controlled by the US government - the latter can disable it altogether, or start charging any price they want for it. It's no surprise that Europe wants to break free from that monopoly, even if it hasn't been abused yet. "Not using the system if they don't want to" is simply not a realistic option, just like US not using foreign oil is not a realistic option - it can be done in theory, but the economic damage and lost opportunities are so big that no-one is going to seriously consider it. The only real option is "come up with a viable replacement, and move to it when it's available", which is precisely what Europe is doing.

Re:New taxis....

[Hognoxious]

The point that I was responding to was that just because cars can drive themselves we might still need the same number.

You're working on the assumption that they can only carry one person at a time. I've seen those. Halfcars. I don't understand why they don't fall over.

If buses were the answer, we'd all be using them now.

I said they'll never catch on. And that kind that run along a metal ladder, they're just insane.

Launch delayed

[SynthaxError]

The launch has been delayed because of fueling problem on Soyuz.
They will retry it Friday at 10:30 UTC.

Direct broadcast: http://www.videocorner.tv/videocorner2/live_flv/index.php?langue=en

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