NationStates Jolt Archive

So the European space program decided to launch it's own version of GPS called Gallileo. The price tag of 3.4 billion Euros is expected to be partially recouped by charging customers to use it. So this is the brilliant idea. Re invent the wheel, then charge people to use it while the original version remains free to all who wish to use it. With thinking like this why does anyone expect the European Union to become a major power anytime soon?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4555298.stm

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It's a version that is not subject to the whims of the US military, though. I think that's the main reasoning. They have control over it, so they can govern how it is used.

It's a version that is not subject to the whims of the US military, though. I think that's the main reasoning. They have control over it, so they can govern how it is used.
Paranoid much? The US military won't shut off GPS. Many of their weapons are GPS guided.

So the European space program decided to launch it's own version of GPS called Gallileo. The price tag of 3.4 billion Euros is expected to be partially recouped by charging customers to use it. So this is the brilliant idea. Re invent the wheel, then charge people to use it while the original version remains free to all who wish to use it. With thinking like this why does anyone expect the European Union to become a major power anytime soon?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4555298.stm

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But you forget that they may mandate its use in European airports by publishing procedures that can only be complied with by using Galileo. Then, every instrument departure and approach that is navigated will need a suitably equipped aircraft. That equipment will need to be CE certified and EU-aviation approved and the proper fees will need to be paid. There may even be a signal decoder that needs to have its subscription renewed on a periodic basis.

There are plenty of ways to enforce the system's use.

I dont know. Maybe its about not having to rely on a foreign government for crucial data. You're telling me if the EU had has its GPS system going for years and America was having to rely on the EU for all its global tracking needs from everything from cars to weapons that they wouldnt try and make their own?

Besides, if they want their own system, they can spend the money and build it.

More a matter of prestige than anything else.

I can hardly wait for the Europeans to form and fund a unified military force. They'll find out what "spending money" really means then.

When you send things into space, you cannot possibly expect them to make a profit. Even if you charged everyone in the E.U. to use Galileo, you'd still ahve to wait a few hundred years to break even.

Has the american G.P.S. made any profit? Nope. It's not the point. Things in space costs billions. Get over it.

I dont know. Maybe its about not having to rely on a foreign government for crucial data. You're telling me if the EU had has its GPS system going for years and America was having to rely on the EU for all its global tracking needs from everything from cars to weapons that they wouldnt try and make their own?
Fortunately, the last technology we ever lagged behind a European country was in the RADAR field. We've surpassed them since those days.

When you send things into space, you cannot possibly expect them to make a profit. Even if you charged everyone in the E.U. to use Galileo, you'd still ahve to wait a few hundred years to break even.

Has the american G.P.S. made any profit? Nope. It's not the point. Things in space costs billions. Get over it.
I don't know. 4 billion EU to launch, maybe a 100,000,000 EU to maintain each year. Amortize that NRE over ten years, so we'll figure on recovering 5 Bn EU over ten years. If they just charged a 100 EU fee for each take-off and landing that's only 5 million operations. Surely that commercial launch and landing operations take place each year. They could reduce the price even further by charging a fee for each receiver sold and each decoder subscription. I don't think it's impossible to make money on this scheme. It'd be more likely to be profitable if they turned it over to some private company, though.

Paranoid much? The US military won't shut off GPS. Many of their weapons are GPS guided.
The theory is that if America was fighting an opponent with GPS-guided weapons, they'd turn the system off as it would increase their advantage (I'm sure American weapons are advanced enough to have back-ups in place if they temporarily lose the GPS signals - things like basic visual recognition of a target - whereas any opponent is certain to be less advanced.).

On another note, the Galileo system is more advanced, and will offer greater accuracy and greater coverage.

Paranoid much? The US military won't shut off GPS. Many of their weapons are GPS guided.

Call it paranoia if you wish, but any sovereign nation would want to do the same. GPS is a huge tactical advantage that the US completely controls and can grant and revoke access at any given time. It's completely understandable that the EU wants to remove such a dependency. You can be damn sure that if China or Russia controlled GPS, the USA would be doing everything they could to get their own system established.

Paranoid much? The US military won't shut off GPS. Many of their weapons are GPS guided.
The US can make it so that GPS is degraded only for their opponents:

The Pentagon feared the frequency structure being demanded by Brussels in the so-called Upper L Band between 1559 and 1591MHz could have prevented American commanders from degrading navigation data in the theatre of war to all but their own forces, as is possible at present.

I usually hate the EU and all its sovreignty-and-money-wasting ways, but even I see the point of this. Why should we rely on a vital resource monopolised in the hands of a foreign government? Why not build our own version? This sort of thing is the one good argument for having a 'political' EU, in my opinion - the ability to initiate projects a single government within the EU couldn't contemplate.

The US can make it so that GPS is degraded only for their opponents:

Not just "can" - does. Not just for their opponents, but for everyone outside the US military. Consumer GPS trackers are not as accurate as the military version; which of course makes sense: you could derive the exact position of those satellites if the signal was completely accurate. Which in turn would make it quite easy to shoot them out of the sky.

Paranoid much? The US military won't shut off GPS. Many of their weapons are GPS guided.
Not paranoid at all. The US military did shut off GPS after 11 September 2001. (Or at very least, it changed the accuracy of the system, so that instead of giving e.g. to the nearest metre, it gave to the nearest kilometre or something like this... I can't remember exactly).

Galileo is also going to be more sophisticated than the current US GPS system, for instance, it will be more accurate, but also more reliable; for instance, it will have a system in it that tells if the measurement is degraded for any reason. GPS doesn't do this, so there is no way of telling if it is giving you a degraded or incorrect reading.

I don't understand why some people in the US oppose such things. Half the time you lecture Europeans on "our need to be less reliant on the US" and then as soon as anything like the Galileo programme or the European Rapid Reaction Force is even suggested, you start condemning it. Very strange.

Don't forget, Europe has already agreed to work with the US (and also the Russians) on Galileo. When it was first planned, Galileo was not going to be interoperable with the US GPS system.

So we are all agreed that the original poster was wrong? Good.