“Do we need Galileo” - a Self Fulfilling Prophecy?
Posted by chrissmith in Uncategorized at October 4th, 2007
The “do we need…..” argument has been rehearsed many times. However, delays in the programs, particularly with funding (see latest) are in danger of making the argument redundant. The driver in me doesn’t worry too much about the delays (road use charging being the most obvious source of revenue). However from an IA perspective there’s a lot going for it. Whether it’s ESA or EU that pulls the strings, the independence and redundancy arguments are compelling. I am going to have to put a few hours aside to look into the “integrity signal” claims of “guaranteed”, “certified” and “legal enforceability”!
October 4th, 2007 at 3:16 pm
A piece I wrote in June under the Free Our Data banner talked about the change in funding. I don’t really understand why they thought public-private was going to work, when Galileo has to compete with certainly one (GPS) free service and probably more (GLONASS, and the Chinese thing) in future. It seems to me, too, that the increased coverage implicit in having more than one GNS (so fewer black holes, greater accuracy) and the independence of having one’s own are both worthy goals. I certainly am not eager to have a system introduced that will make driver surveillance easier.
The really absurd part of this, though, is that the one piece of Galileo that was exactly on time was the piece built at low cost by the UK’s own SSTL, which is doing the satellite equivalent of building and launching PCs when the ROTW has been doing mainframes. It’s the big consortia with the big budgets that have had delays, AIUI. Is this another lesson in scale?
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