Galileo may be a dead issue!

[+HaLiJuSaPa]

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070606/D8PJC4L02.html

[+Knight2000]

Maybe i misread. But it looks like they want it so why would it be a dead issue?

80 percent want the EU to set up an independent service to rival the U.S.-run Global Positioning System

[TeamCypherX]

I don't think its a dead issue. It's just going to take them so long to get the financing done that it will be a good 10 years before it's actually a rival to GPS. By that time the market will decide which system it wants to work with. If Galileo can deliver what it promises, I think it will be a great rival. If it turns out to be like GLONAS (The Russian System), GPS will win.

[+HaLiJuSaPa]

Here's another article on it:

 

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070607/D8PK29OG0.html

 

Looks like the Chinese may be building something too now!

 

Actually, if the "interoperability" that the article mentions means that standard GPS receivers as they are now can read and interpret the signals, having these other two other systems would be a great thing (I really didn't have an opinion one way or the other before, though I could understand how Europe might want their own system as opposed to one run by the US military).

Edited June 7, 2007 by HaLiJuSaPa

[+Renegade Knight]

The EU should get with the US and keep up a system that costs both less.

[+embra]

The EU should get with the US and keep up a system that costs both less.

I fully agree that an international system including the US would be the best for managing what has become something of a public utility. But the US Air Force (custodians of the GPS system) has "control issues."

[CharlieZulu]

Galileo will survive, albeit late, and will interoperate with GPS.

 

India and Japan are going to field their own systems, but they will be regional/local, rather than global.

 

Russian GLONASS is not fully operational and may never be.

 

The Chinese are the real bad dudes here, since they are attempting to put up their own system without consultation from anyone, and have actually fielded two satellites on frequencies which were obtained through the proper channels by Galileo. Of course, these are the same guys who took out one of their own weather satellites with a directed missile, just to flex their political muscles, and caused a 10% increase in orbiting space junk with blatant disregard to the international space community.

 

Just my 2cents.