
Key details of Galileo satellite summer failure emerge - sohkamyung
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/08/galileo_satellites_outage/
======
jdsnape
This is really a re-write of Bert's great piece on the outage, which was
discussed a couple of days ago - if you're interested, I strongly recommend
you go read it
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21476451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21476451)

~~~
throw0101a
The article mentions Bert and links to his post.

 _El Reg_ is an IT(-ish) site, and so tries to summarize things for the
general tech-y public that may be of interest.

~~~
goatinaboat
In fact Bert himself is answering questions in the comments.

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woliveirajr
I'm not sure how a system with complex and tight requirements is able to run
with so many organizations taking care of pieces...

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bigiain
Purely by luck. As the report the article is writing about outlines...

[https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/state-of-galileo-and-
accid...](https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/state-of-galileo-and-accident/)

~~~
smitty1e
What is luck?

Typically a technically competent underground develops that can tunnel through
the organizational morass imposed by the homo bureaucratus infestation
expressed in the org chart, and somehow accomplish the mission.

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outside1234
Should be titled: “Project being run in part by Thales so of course it failed”

~~~
londons_explore
A few defence companies have noticed that failed projects tend to lead to them
getting given more money to fix the problem.

They now deliberately make their projects useless (but still technically
meeting the contractual requirements) simply so they get the followup contract
to make things better.

One project I worked on had _10_ times we had deliberately gimped the system
and the client had come and paid us more money to ungimp it. (For example, we
designed an email client, but "@dhs.gov" was hardcoded in the address field so
you couldn't send an email to anywhere else from the system. Then it cost
millions of taxpayer money to un-hardcode that, despite it being a 1 line code
change)

~~~
toyg
That’s a bit too precise for comfort, if I were you I’d anonymize it a bit
more. Civil liability for fraud is a thing.

~~~
londons_explore
I changed the hardcoded domain in my example... Either way, it was no secret
that or system could only send emails to a specific domain - both we and the
customer knew that. And they paid us $XM to give it the ability to send emails
to anywhere.

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biscotte_
Most of the things managed by the EU end up this way. When you are trying to
manage a project with 28different votes and political powers, all pulling in a
different direction, this happens.

~~~
CraigJPerry
Is there a better alternative than democracy?

Perhaps no cooperation, every country for itself. That seems like a sure fire
way to constantly lose to bigger blocs of countries at every turn.

Single ruler is another obvious but seems like an unfavourable outcome.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
It's not so much democracy, but the lack of a rational governmental framework
that's the problem. The EU is what you get when you try to integrate a couple
dozen countries, but end up making a bunch of dirty compromises and band-aid
solutions, and when nobody even agrees on what the end goal of is (The United
States of Europe? A loose confederation of independent states?). It's not what
you'd get if you were to design a reasonable federal constitution from
scratch.

~~~
close04
> dirty compromises and band-aid solutions

Were the US or UK any different at the start? Founded by conquest and
agreements, they involved a lot of give and take on all sides. Even ~100 years
after independence and signing the Constitution the US was in the middle of a
civil war with the compromises that followed.

The only way to have a union that doesn't require compromises is if _everyone_
is on the exact same page. And that simply can't happen the second you cross a
border (most times even inside that border). Once the union is created you
start trying to homogenize and give it time.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
I'd argue that the Constitution provided a much more rational basis for
government than the hodge-podge of treaties and agreements that make up the EU
right now. At the very least, the US had a well defined system of government
that was relatively easy to understand, and at least the US was clearly a
country, as opposed to whatever the EU is.

In contrast to what the other poster in this thread is saying, there is no
clear end goal for the EU. There are people who want a federal state and
people who want a loose set of agreements between sovereign states.

I'm not saying that the EU is entirely bad. I'm just saying that it's a mess.
It's very useful in some ways (freedom of movement of people and goods), and
damaging in other ways (monetary union without fiscal union is a big problem,
and austerity policies imposed on Greece et al.).

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ginko
The title makes it sound like galileo went down again. Can someone please
change it?

~~~
dredmorbius
Emailing hn@ycombinator.com frequently produces a fairly quick remedy.

I've suggested borrowing from the lede: "Key details about the failure of
Europe’s Galileo satellite system over the summer have started to emerge - and
it’s not pretty."

"Key details of Galileo satellite summer failure emerge" should work, at 55
characters (limit is 80).

That's the suggestion I'd submitted.

~~~
dang
We'll take it. Thanks!

