"Pathfinders" Take Shape For Galileo, Europe's GPS 105
oliderid sends along a BBC report on progress toward Europe's home-grown GPS system. The Galileo concept will get an initial test via four "pathfinder" satellites that will be the first in the Galileo constellation. Galileo is intended to be complementary with the US GPS system — when all 30 Galileo birds are flying, a receiver with both GS and Galileo capability should enjoy 1-meter positional accuracy, vs. the several meters available through GPS alone, according to the article. There's a video tour of the facility where the pathfinders are being built. "After all the wrangling, the delays, and the furor over cost, Europe's version of GPS is finally starting to take shape. Due for launch in pairs in late 2010 and early 2011, the 'pathfinders' will form a mini-constellation in the sky. They will transmit the navigation signals that demonstrate the European system can become a reality."
Re:The EU system won't get used (Score:1, Insightful)
It seems you can use it as a quality-enhancing addition to GPS instead of a replacement - that might help.
EU Vehicle Tracking Plan (Score:4, Insightful)
They are getting funding from the government.
1) They want to track all vehicles in the EU. Galileo is designed to have much better performance in urban areas than GPS.
Proposals were on the UK Department for Transport website which detailed the desire to place a satellite positioning tracker with a cellular modem in every vehicle, by law, for the alleged purpose of "road pricing" ; charging for transit on key congested roads at certain times. Road pricing is horseshit because if having to drive on a congested road isn't sufficient deterrent to stop you doing it, then taxation isn't going to achieve it. You could also achieve the same goal much more cheaply with a mandatory active RFID numberplate and a pickup loop on these "key" roads, so Occams razor says that they want something that doesn't just track your use of certain roads.
2) Military reasons
Let's face it. Would you want your military dependant on a system that a culture of well known isolationists who live half a world away can switch off at their whim? Neither would I. Independance from US control is the second motivator.
Re:Time service (Score:2, Insightful)
A gps time source is only off by a handful of ns. You then want to send that time over NTP and add milliseconds of year?
Re:Time service (Score:1, Insightful)
the precision of any of these systems is much higher then NTP; there's no point.
Re:Funding (Score:3, Insightful)
The amount of money involved in this taxation plan alone would make it financially feasible to put a complete GPS system up there.
Excellent. Bring in a system to monitor every movement, and make the citizens being monitored pay for it.