The latest proposal to scrape up the billions of euros needed to fund Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system “fell on deaf ears” yesterday, the AP reported. Germany had proposed getting the European Space Agency to pay some of the additional costs of the Galileo system, but no other European Union finance ministers supported the proposal during a meeting Tuesday in Brussels. Germany put the proposal forward as an alternative to using agricultural subsidy surpluses to fund the €2.4 billion ($3.5 billion) needed to deploy Galileo after plans to have a public-private partnership pick up the tab fell through earlier this year. A final decision on how to fund Galileo is planned for an EU summit meeting in December.
Some in the UK, meanwhile, are resisting the EU push to use taxpayer money to fund Galileo, at least without some sort of independent examination of the worth of the system, A parliament committee called on the government to “top this folly and endeavour to bring the European Commission to its senses”, in the words of its chairperson, Gwyneth Dunwoody. “What taxpayers in the United Kingdom and other European countries really need and want is better railways and roads, not giant signature projects in the sky, providing services that we already have from GPS and other systems.”
The anti American lobby in Europe will be dissappointed, they want Galileo to give Europe “independence” from US hegenomy. Don’t expect them to give up, they’ll push hard on this one, big industrial contracts are also at stake.
Why space decisionmakers on both sides of the Atlantic repeatedly insist on expensively duplicating existing capabilities that they already have access to for free or at low-cost never ceases to amaze and disappoint me. Given the very limited resources that do flow to civil space exploration and applications, it’s crazy for decades-old allies, or, worse, agencies of the same government, to replicate navigation, launch, and other systems. Do the advantages of a European space-based positioning system really outweigh the costs when Europe has access to undithered U.S. GPS signals for free? Do the advantages of Ares I (assuming some are left) really outweigh its $10 or so billion price tag, especially when NASA has access to USAF EELVs at marginal cost?
These resources would be much better spent building truly new capabilities that no ally or sister agency possesses. Despite 50-odd years of growth and development, why do we still act like children and jealously insist on having the same toys? Why are organizational boundaries still the biggest obstacle to efficient and effective use of very limited civil space resources?
Arghhh…
“These resources would be much better spent building truly new capabilities that no ally or sister agency possesses.”
I agree. To the extent that Galileo is based on pride, I’d suggest that new capabilities that the U.S. doesn’t have would be a lot more impressive than essentially copying GPS. If they want to actually run some GPS satellites, maybe some kind of swap could be made. With NASA concentrating on ESAS, there are a lot of potential spectacular technical and business incentive driven advances they won’t have the opportunity to try. This is a great chance for Europe to make some impressive news.
As an American, I’d hope that if this does happen, it brings NASA to its senses and gets them trying to catch up (not duplicate), if for nothing else, for pride.
Anonymous: Why space decisionmakers on both sides of the Atlantic repeatedly insist on expensively duplicating existing capabilities that they already have access to for free or at low-cost
Putting yourself in an outsider’s shoes, would you trust the United States, and particularly the current Administration, not to remove access to GPS if the US got pissed off at you? If I were Britain, I might be prepared to risk it, but I can hardly blame the rest of the Europeans from not wanting to take that risk. Or, think of it this way: would the United States trust even Britain with the keys to the GPS?
These resources would be much better spent building truly new capabilities that no ally or sister agency possesses.
This is undoubtedly true. But, with very rare exceptions, and outside of Britain, Europe almost never does this. They try to produce a bigger and better version of what the United States have already done (787=A350WB, 747=A380, GPS=Galileo, and so on). There’s not an original thought in the lot.
— Donald
“Putting yourself in an outsider’s shoes, would you trust the United States, and particularly the current Administration, not to remove access to GPS if the US got pissed off at you?”
Given that the Bush II Administration authored and just announced the policy to do away with selective availability, yes, if I were a multi-decadal U.S. ally, I would trust them. I’m no fan of Bush II, but if I were representing a long-time ally like France, Germany, Italy, Britain, etc., I would argue that the probability of getting into the kind of a conflict with the United States that would force a future White House to rescind the Bush II policy on selective availability over the next, say, half-century are practically nil and not worth the cost (or opportunity costs) of Galileo.
Even then, in the event of such a conflict, I would expect the U.S. military to employ ground-based techniques that deny GPS signals to forces in local areas, rather than dither the signal world-wide. It’s in the U.S. interest to go that route anyway.
Of course, if I was going up against the U.S. in a conflict or a conflict involving the U.S. military was occuring on my soil, GPS would be a very small worry. Things would obviously have gone to hell, and I’d have much bigger problems to fret about.
FWIW…