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Galileo GPS about as viable as the A380
It's a seductive idea: A heavenly travel guide capable of determining positions down to the meter, providing billions of euros in annual revenue and creating more than 100,000 jobs. And all that for the bargain price of €3.6 billion ($4.7 billion) -- the cost of 150 kilometers (93 miles) of urban highway.

Thirty European "Galileo" satellites were originally meant to be beaming their position signals down to Earth as early as 2008 -- thereby providing a serious alternative to US global positioning system (GPS) satellites. But today's reality looks different.

Galileo's new administrative director Pedro Pedreira will likely present a sobering report at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit this week. Pedreira warns that Galileo will be going into operation in 2012 "at the earliest."
Inshallah
Unless the French workers remain on strike.
With that, fears that have been circulating in the satellite navigation business for months will be confirmed at the highest level. The prestigious European Union project is developing along the same skewed lines as the Airbus A380 before it -- crushed between a "me first" mentality and bickering national collaborators.
Posted by: mrp 2007-03-07
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=182461