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Europe
Galileo GPS about as viable as the A380
2007-03-07
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

#8  NO surprise here, as the Euros realistically could afford only afford 10 or less [0<5?] of the satellites by 2008.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2007-03-07 22:43  

#7  But I thought it was about as viable as the EU search engine!
Posted by: DMFD   2007-03-07 18:25  

#6  Yes, Mike K.---The Chicom guy failed to realize that EU committees and consortia rarely converge to a solution and keep bickering, while Chicom committes come to a solution (Political power comes from the barrel of a gun, IIR my little red book Maoism).
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2007-03-07 16:57  

#5  AP,
What's really amusing here is that the PRC may very well have been hoping to piggyback themselves into Galileo so as to have their own GPS system witout having to cough up for it. And somewhere, the Chinese apparatchik who came up with the idea is having to do some serious explaining...

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2007-03-07 14:56  

#4  Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Becoming more like the HRE every day.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2007-03-07 13:38  

#3  IIRC, I was reading about the problems of every country wanting a piece of the action in Galileo a year ago in GPS World magazine. Also, some folks have figured out the access key, so rather than having to pay to use the system, it can be hacked, so to speak. There goes the revenue, heh.

The US military has bequeathed quite a gift to the world with GPS, but because of the hatred of the EU for the US, they are willing to spend huge sums on something for spite, basically. Airbus A380s, Galileo, Paleo aid, Egypt aid.....must be nice to have money to burn and nobody accountable for spending.
Posted by: Alaska Paul   2007-03-07 11:21  

#2  This is just as successful as any EUroweenie project (like diplomacy, military operations...)
Let the gloating begin!
Posted by: Spot   2007-03-07 10:44  

#1  Inshallah, lol.
Posted by: Seafarious   2007-03-07 10:43  

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