The need for Galileo is now more pressing than ever

[Darren]

Galileo has frequently been described as a costly vanity project. And with the omnipresence of US GPS system it's not hard to see why, until recently at least, justifying the enormous expense of Galileo has been a difficult exercise.

But now, with Donald Trump at the helm, doubts about his isolationist policies are making the case for a separate GNSS network far more compelling. Such services do not exist solely for the benefit of your in-car or smartphone navigation system. They are heavily relied on for precision timing in banking transactions, mobile phone services and power networks. Commercial aircraft are also now making more and more use of them for precision approach and to permit more efficient use of crowded air space.

So it's not hard to see how reliance on a service that could be withdrawn at a moments notice could well have proven to be very short sighted.

Galileo will also provide new services including a global search and rescue service which provides a 2-way link that will notify the sender that their distress signal has been received and, as well as the basic free navigation signal, there will also be a high precision service accessible by paying commercial users.

Perhaps Galileo wasn't such a bad idea after all?

Source: esa.int

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Darren Griffin

[sussamb]

Well there's always GLONASS if Trump pulls the plug, but I can't see it happening.
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Where there's a will ... there's a way.

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