The European Union decided to launch its own satellite-based navigation system, Galileo, as a counterpart to America’s GPS.
I don’t understand why they’re doing this. Apparently, the EU dislikes to depend on a system that’s controlled by the US military. I don’t buy this; I mean, they’re not really afraid there could be major conflicts between europe and America, are they? One point that’s mentioned is that the US government can deteriorate the precision of GPS when it seems necessary (they did so during the Kosovo War); but then again, wouldn’t Europe have to do the same in these cases, especially when there’s the risk that the enemy could make use of GPS and Galileo for their own purpose?
Another argument I heard is “economic independence”. Europe doesn’t want the expanding navigation market to be under US control. That’s nonsense I think: GPS is free for everyone, without having to pay for it, so why spend billions of euros on launching a system when there’s a working American one?
Related question: Does the US military as the owner of the GPS satellites in any way benefit from its commercial use? I suppose no, but then again it could be possible they charge the manufacturers of GPS receivers a patent fee or something.
So, you think it is a good idea for Europe to depend on something they have no control over? What if tomorrow the US decided to start charging for use or make it unavailable? What if The US gets into a shooting war with country X and Country X takes out a few GPS satelites? Wouldn’t the EU be glad to have a redundant system their allies could also use? If the EU is going to rely on GPS I suggest they contribute to its maintenance. What kind of mentality is this “let’s get the free ride from someone else”?
Well, I just mean nobody forced the Americans to install GPs, they did so voluntarily. But if GPS is there, why bother to create the same thing again? Sure it’s taking a free ride at America’s expense, but from what I read in the papers, Washington is not too happy about Europe’s plans.
I’m interested as to why Washington is ‘not happy’. There hasn’t been much in the press over here (not that I’ve seen, anyway). Given that there doesn’t seem to be any payback to the US (which another system might cause to be reduced) I don’t really understand why Washington would be bothered one way or the other.
As to why the US doesn’t like the idea of a European GPS system I would guess it is related to military applications. As long as the US controls the system they can restrict the more precise aspects of GPS from militaries they don’t like. GPS is still good enough to get a plane close to an airport but not good enough to fly a smart missile several hundred miles to hit a bunker. If the Europeans fly their own satellites then future enemies needn’t worry about the US disabling precise location tracking. They can use the European system. There is no guarantee Europeans will be on board with the US in some future conflict such that they might agree to hobble their own system on behalf of the US.
Let me just add to the confusion that there are already two independent systems up there. The Russians have their GLONASS, which I believe is pretty much free for anyone to use as well.
Personally I think that the real reason why politicians want to build Galileo is that they want their buddies in the industry to get the big orders. Remember that EU is a political organization. The best technological solution is not necessarily the best political one. (i.e. the one that lets you stay in office.)
Galileo is supposed to provide somewhat higher accuracy. Also, a major side benefit would be to the European aerospace industry - the CNN article listed above says it’s a 3.4-billion euro project expected to create 100,000 jobs. This goes a long way in making European companies more competitive against American companies.
I thought the US was also not happy about Galileo using up precious bandwidth. I can’t find a cite right now though, sorry.
Well, that explains a lot: Europeans want to have an independent system for the same reason Americans want them not to have it. America is happy to pay the cost and gets to control the system. Europe now feels the same way. I think it is understandable. Europeeans don’t want to be over the barrel with this (Either you eat more American hamburgers or we turn off the GPS!)
Suppose the USA gets into a shooting war with Irak and denies them use of GPS signals. Suppose Europe does not entirely support the US and does not deny Irak the use of EuroGPS signals. I can understand the US wouldn’t like it. I also understand Europe would want to capability of being autoreliant.
I read somewhere (sorry no cite) that the US has been working on a gravimetric based system (I think that’s what its called) which is supposed to be able to give the exact location of something. Whereas with GPS you can only get close. Perhaps the US military was planning getting the Europeans to chip in on this system and with the EU going their own route it’ll make the cost significantly higher for the US to develop it.
Something no one seems to have made mention of is the dependency that shipping and to a certain extent trucking companies have on GPS.
Would ANY sovereign nation want to be totally dependent on another nation (no matter how “friendly” they may be), for anything that could affect its import/exports? Dont think so.
If for any reason the two powers were in disagreement it gives the Americans a “hold” over the Euros. Probably would never happen but the potential is there.
Yeah, evidently there’s something called “gravimetric satellites” out there, but I can’t find anything offhand on how they work, or if they’re even in orbit, and I gotta go…
There are such things as gravimetric sattelites, but I fail to see how they could in any way replace GPS. What a gravimetric sattelite gives you is density as a function of position, so it might potentially be useful in finding, say, buildings hidden in the jungle (higher density than surroundings) or caves (lower densities). But even if such a system were precise enough to detect an individual person (so far as I know, they aren’t, but the military might conceivably have something along those lines) it certainly wouldn’t be able to distinguish between different people, so it still wouldn’t be useful for figuring out where you are.
I can just picture it… You’re lost in New York, and want to know where you are. You take a look at your little GravPS handheld unit, and it tells you “Well, there’s a person in the south crosswalk at Fifth and Broadway… That might be you. Or, wait, there’re three people on the southeast curb, are you one of them? Oh, and here comes another person down the sidewalk, is that where you are?”
The only connection I can see: The way that a gravimetric system works is that you need to be able to know the exact position of the gravimetric sattelite itself. In fact, all the sattelite contains is a variety of sophisticated tracking systems. But that’s not really a matter that’s relevant to GPS-type applications.
Chronos, I don’t know. All I remember is reading a brief blurb somewhere that the US was releasing the more accurate GPS data to consumer users because they were switching to the gravimetric system. So this could be a boondoggle, or something else. I remember reading back in the early 80s that the US military was working on satellites that could detect large metal objects. This would enable the military to track Soviet subs, of course, I haven’t heard anything about it since. Don’t know if its a related technology or not.
What do you mean by exact? I mean, at some point you have to start worrying about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and the DeBroigle Wavelegth and all that.
Getting back to the original question, the answer to why the Europeans are doing this is simply that they don’t want to rely on the US for something as vital as positioning, especially as it’s being added to everything from phones to aircraft piloting systems. In the case of a war near Europe (or heavens forbid, a trade war - see Canada and softwood lumber or Europe and steel for recent examples of non military conflicts which make other countries doubtful about relying on the US), degrading of the GPS signal could have significant economic, military, scientific and even safety repercussions in Europe.
Of course, as someone mentioned, the grand tradition of mega job creation projects in Europe doesn’t hurt things. But there are potential economic benefits from a higher resolution GPS signal that’s not restricted to military uses as the US one is - I read that they would have an imprecise signal free, as the US GPS system does, and sell encrypted access to a much more accurate signal to transportation companies, location-based service providers etc.
The desire to be undisputed tough guy of the planet, and keep it that way, is all you need to say about the reason the US is against it.
According to this BBC article some reasons for going ahead with Gailieo include supporting safety critical civillian applications (e.g. landing aircraft) during military conflicts and better coverage for parts of northern Europe than is given by GPS.
Of course Europeans are concerned that there may be conflicts between us and the US. Suppose there was a vigilante in your neighbourhood, who was determined to impose his view of what was right by brute force. Even if you generally agreed with his views, would you trust him to help you if you had an argument?
Remember what happened in the Gulf War and in Kosovo. GPS was deliberately set out of synch by the US military. As they have proven what they will do, why should outsiders trust them next time?
How ironic to see sneers about job creation projects in Europe! With respect, is that not what US projects like “Star Wars” are really about? Is that not why Enron and other big business gave so much money to Mr. Bush and other elected representatives?
In case you thought my comment was asneer, I just said it’s a side benefit and I think it’s a legitimate one. It makes perfect sense for goverments to invest in their own high-tech companies. Relying on foreign high-tech companies is as bad as relying on foreign services (like the GPS).
