Could Galileo be for the chop?

[Darren]

The the European Union in the midst of talks over how to spend it's budget there's a possibility that Galileo may be for the chop in an effort to cut costs.

Galileo is Europe's answer to the US Navstar GPS network and, as seems to be the usual case for massive EU projects, it is massively over budget and is years behind the original date scheduled for a full fleet of satellites. Currently only four test satellites have made it into orbit.

Whilst the operational justifications for Europe having its own GPS network are weak, especially in the current financial climate, Galileo does promise increased accuracy, better protection from jamming, and operational independence from Navstar. Many forget that Navstar is operated by the US Department of Defence and we use it at their pleasure.

But can all this justify the massive costs? It is estimated that more than €8 billion is still required to complete the deployment of Galileo. More than €4 billion has already been spent on a project whose total cost was estimated at €3.4 billion when first proposed.

Even if the EU can find the money to continue with Galileo,, they have a difficult decision to make. Should they cancel the programme and write off all the money spent to date including the loss of jobs, or should they struggle on?

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Darren Griffin

[M8TJT]

Struggle on! Its only money and the taxpayer has a bottomless pit of that stuff

[253]

I remember reading something about this in one of the papers at the end of last year. All a bit vague now, think they said they launched the last of the test satellites in October or November and that the system would be up and running in another 5 years.
As it is a EU project, no surprise it has overshot it's budget, probably falsified the accounts in the first place to get it approved. And when completed it won't be able to do half of what they said it would and won't last as long as supposed to.

Don't want to give the impression that I'm a euro septic. (not a typo)
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Triumph Tbird 1700. And now a Bonnie T100.

[Pocketgps]

Come on - 120 THOUSAND MILLION, think about it, and say it again.

How can they spend that A f***ing disgrace.

Just my personal feelings on the companies that build these projects and the EU that keeps paying them

[davemcwish]

[253]

[AliOnHols]

[M8TJT]

[DennisN]

[jwbuchanan]

and with that Spanish team's enhancement of existing GPS to 2m accuracy, who needs Galileo?

[jonrome]

I'm in two minds (as I often am) on this.
On the one hand it would be a shame to lose an independant system that would free us from relying on American good will & on the other hand I remember that under the last control obsessed government there were plans to use it to monitor all our vehicle journeys. And to charge us for the priviledge of course. The control freaks haven't all gone away with the change in governors.

[MaFt]

[Pocketgps]

Sorry, added a 0.

But still 1 billion is a 1000 million. So just how much does it cost to build say 32 sats and get them into orbit.

That still is 375 million per sat. A recent doc by Lockheed Martin suggests that the new American sats would cost on average 120 million each, that's a lot different from 375 million each for the Euro sats.

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