Galileo

A reader sent me a BBC story about the Galileo satellite project which is hilariously wrong and biased. The Galileo project is an unnecessary white elephant, which simply duplicates the US GPS system, a system which is open to general use. Since its inception the EU has been struggling with finding a reason to spend so much on something that will have so few benefits.

"If you think about it, the design of GPS is now quite old - it goes back to the 1980s. With Galileo, with its improved signals, with more satellites - you'll have much better coverage. And this is really quite important when we want to think up new applications."

Note the absence of any mention of the fact that:

Cape Canaveral FL - Jun 28, 2004 An upgraded Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite built by Lockheed Martin for the U.S. Air Force, was successfully launched last Wednesday from Cape Canaveral. The satellite features significant performance upgrades, including an advanced antenna panel, which will increase power for GPS receivers. This was the 11th successful launch of the new-generation GPS IIR spacecraft. The satellite, designated GPS IIR-12, will join 28 other operational GPS satellites now on orbit, and will improve global coverage and increase the overall performance of the GPS constellation. The company has delivered nine more of these satellites to the Navstar GPS Joint Program Office, Space and Missile Systems Center, to sustain the GPS constellation.

HMMM can't have the Euros thinking that Galileo might be redundant when it is launched, can we?