
Galileo navigation satellite system goes live - vezycash
http://www.dw.com/en/galileo-navigation-satellite-system-goes-live/a-36422029
======
rzimmerman
Galileo's actual value has always been murky. It's use case has changed a lot
over the years. Originally it was meant to be a navigation system free of
GPS's Selective Availability "feature" that diluted precision for civilian
use. The Clinton administration effectively killed SA
([http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/](http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/modernization/sa/))
in 2000. Galileo was sold as a higher precision civilian alternative that was
going to be commercially viable and make money. A few years later the US made
improvements to the GPS ephemerides and effectively increased precision of
GPS, making the benefits less obvious. The new block of GPS satellites offers
even better precision and a lot of the Galileo features (like multiple
civilian frequencies). It's honestly quite hard to compete with a free
alternative that the US government throws billions of dollars at. Still, GPS
can't hit sub-meter accuracy any time soon, so there's a real potential use
case emerging for autonomous cars and aircraft.

If you're excited and interested in Galileo it's really worth reading up on
how GPS works and was built. The first satellite was launched almost forty
years ago and it was operational in the 1980s. It's truly one of the coolest
and most amazing things made by humans.

~~~
avar
Selective Availability was replaced by regional denial capabilities with the
GPS III satellites, i.e. instead of fuzzing the signal the US can now turn off
GPS for entire countries[1].

It's strategically foolish for the major economies like the EU, Russia & China
to depend on the US's goodwill in maintaining a system that drives a huge part
of their economy, GPS is used pervasively for everything, and that's only
increasing.

Trump wants NATO countries to pay their fair share, how long until he gets the
idea that all countries around the world should pay a GPS licensing fee least
GPS regional denial be turned on?

Those are the sort of reasons for why it makes sense to develop a GPS
alternative, even if you're only aiming for feature parity, or even less than
that.

1\.
[https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/at...](https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/ato/service_units/techops/navservices/gnss/faq/gps/#ad1)

~~~
swatkat
_> >> It's strategically foolish for the major economies like the EU, Russia &
China to depend on the US's goodwill in maintaining a system that drives a
huge part of their economy, GPS is used pervasively for everything, and that's
only increasing._

Exactly. For this same reason, India recently deployed its own satellite
navigation system NAVIC[1][2].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigation_Sat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Regional_Navigation_Satellite_System)

[2] [http://www.isro.gov.in/irnss-programme](http://www.isro.gov.in/irnss-
programme)

~~~
satbyy
Indeed. In the India-Pakistan Kargil war of 1999, USA sided with Pak and
turned off GPS for Indian troops. That led to the creation of NAVIC

[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/How-
Kargil-s...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/science/How-Kargil-
spurred-India-to-design-own-GPS/articleshow/33254691.cms)

~~~
saiya-jin
seriously, WTF is wrong with US and their attitude towards India/Pakistan.
India is democracy, never attacked anybody out of blue from 1947 when it was
created (unlike its neighbors Pakistan and China who attacked it numerous
times).

Yet US sides with dictatorship which doesn't even control its own secret
service which creates its own terrorist organizations (laskar-e-taeba).

~~~
angry_octet
India was part of the 'non-aligned' block and at various times has been keen
on building ties with the Russians, buying lots of arms from them. In
contrast, Pakistani leaders have been firmly in the US camp. Hence, in '71 it
was a no-brainer for Nixon which side the US would support. It is bizarre the
Nixon continued supporting Pakistan during the Bangladesh Genocide, but that's
Nixon for you.

Also, India did invade and annex Goa in '62.

~~~
swatkat
_> > Also, India did invade and annex Goa in '62._

... because Goa is an historically Indian territory, and Republic of India
just got it back from foreign invaders!?

------
neals
I like living in Europe most of the time. And I'm sure if we could get over a
lot of petty, cultural, differences, we could build more amazing things and
innovate at a much faster speed then we have been so far.

~~~
rplnt
Well nowadays it seems like EU is not going to survive as it is. Countries in
the east seem to be more and more opposed to the idea of EU (some 1/4 - 1/3 of
people IIRC). These are countries that most benefit from the EU, not only
financially (funds and markets), but also need the external control to prevent
the come-back of mafia, corruption, etc.

Russia is playing a huge role in this, modern information warfare. They want
the people in countries that suffered for some 20 plus years last decade to
again love the motherland. They play on nationalism (Slavs) mostly (thanks to
refuge crisis, in which Russia is involved directly), and that most media are
owned by the west (and thus lie), and only alternative media will tell you the
truth. About Ukraine, about USA, about Syria, about everything. There are
different levels for everyone to choose from, be it Jews being responsible for
everything, or just plain Brussel Dictatorship.

This sounds like a wild conspiracy, but it's scary as fuck to see it. At first
it seemed like a joke, or a way to make some money (like regular conspiracy
websites would do), but I'm now convinced there are external motives and
financing. And people are eating it up. Loving Russia and all. Country which
is far worse off than any of the EU members.

~~~
azernik
I'm not sure where you got the impression that the EU is less popular in the
east; according to these [1] surveys, Poland is the only large EU country
where EU approval ratings have held up lately, while Hungarians also have
quite good feelings on the subject - despite their governments' very public
disputes with the EU on the erosion of democracy in those countries. The
correlation is weak, but they're also less into decentralisation than others.
And Spain and Italy are also relatively pro-Eu; their populist movements have
been _left_ -wing and pro-EU.

It's rich Northwestern states (and, understandably, Greece) that have big
problems on the popular level with the EU.

[1] [http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/07/euroskepticism-beyond-
br...](http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/06/07/euroskepticism-beyond-brexit/)

------
olig15
_The high precision offered by Galileo was one of the reasons why the Pentagon
rejected the system in the first place. There were fears that adversaries of
NATO or of other allies could use it for military purposes. However, engineers
have found a solution to that problem: should a serious crisis arise, the
military can jam a certain part of the broadcasting spectrum. This would cut
off civilian use, but still retain the functions that are reserved for allied
military purposes._

This seems like quite a big issue; If any of the EU states go to war, then
planes and other civilian things relying on Galileo would stop working? Would
they fall back to GPS?

~~~
ghshephard
Any life safety system should definitely not be designed to rely on
GPS/Galileo/Glonass - they are RF systems that can be jammed by anyone with
any interest in doing so.

~~~
dom0
Practically all life safety systems (boats, cars, climbing etc.) are based on
radio.

~~~
ghshephard
I certainly wouldn't want to trust my life to the integrity of a -130 dBm
strength signal. Particularly if I'm traveling in a tunnel, or heck, deep
forest.

~~~
jimmies
I think, though, that if the alternative is to trust my instincts (which I
don't have), then I'd rather trust that -130 dBm strength signal. I think that
my instincts are the secondary factor when I get lost in the forest, not the
first factor. If I have no reason to think the GPS system is deceiving me, I
would trust it.

------
jonknee
> Using GPS, private users can navigate with a precision of up to 15 meters
> (m). Galileo offers a precision of up to 4m for its fully open service.

[http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/](http://www.gps.gov/systems/gps/performance/accuracy/)

> Real-world data from the FAA show their high-quality GPS SPS receivers
> attaining better than 2.168 meter horizontal accuracy, 95% of the time.

~~~
dmurray
It seems even better than that. My phone can tell me which side of a small
road (2m accuracy) I am on 95% of the time. Maybe it uses a WiFi database and
dead reckoning to improve on pure GPS.

~~~
greglindahl
Phones generally use the WiFi database (plus cell tower info) to bootstrap GPS
startup, but that's not useful for fine positioning.

~~~
aargh_aargh
It's called aGPS.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS)

------
0xcoffee
Are GPS systems just plug and play, or does the software also have to be
compatible. e.g. Could I just replace the GPS receiver in my car to one that
supports Galileo (even though I don't think any are on the market yet)?

~~~
jsjohnst
No, they aren't usually.

~~~
IanCal
However there are some devices that are already capable of using Galileo.
Recent Qualcomm chips and tomtom devices are I think.

~~~
jsjohnst
Yep, but I'm not aware of any automobiles using them yet. And I'm also not
aware of any cars that allow you to swap out the navigation hardware either.
Feel free to interject if you know of any!

~~~
0xcoffee
My car's headunit just has a GPS input in the back, my GPS sits under the
windshield.

------
nayuki
The article contained a strange word "eparated". It took me a few seconds to
realize it meant "separated". I tried Googling the word to check how good its
spelling correction was - but instead it came back with no correction and real
results about automobiles. It seems to have parsed the word as "EPA rated",
alluding to fuel efficiency.

------
nazca
Any guess when devices will start using Galileo? I'm thinking about dropping
some coin in a Garmin Fish Finder & chartplotter for my boat. Currently sell
models that use GPS & GLONASS.

~~~
IanCal
There are some already capable, but they'll need a firmware upgrade. Recent
Qualcomm chips for phones do at least.

------
guelo
With the new Trump/Putin alliance NATO will be threatened. It makes sense for
Europe to develop independent military infrastructure and to ramp up military
spending.

~~~
lorenzhs
Galileo is a civilian project, though. It has features that are limited to
police, border security, military, etc but it's an EU project. The EU doesn't
have an army (its member states do, but the EU doesn't).

~~~
kuschku
The EU does have a coast and border guard, though, which is a paneuropean
military entity.

~~~
jaakl
Can you be more specific? I live few kilometers from EU outer border with a
hostile country, but have never seen or heard of such paneuropen guards. AFAIK
paneuropean is only a law which requires every country to guard all their
borders, and only non-national military we have is NATO.

~~~
dglancy
Frontex ([http://frontex.europa.eu](http://frontex.europa.eu)), its more of a
co-ordination agency, but it does I believe have its own staff on secondment
to it.

------
bradhe
Now that there's a second player in this world, maybe we can standardize the
hardware? Great the satellites are online...but how many devices have been
manufactured with the requisite hardware?

Also wonder how many devices this network can support. I'm sure there is
sufficient capacity but I'm just curious how the capacity is calculated!

~~~
alykhalid
Galileo isn't second, its 4th or 5th in the market. Depending on how you read
the table on this page [1].

>Also wonder how many devices this network can support. I'm sure there is
sufficient capacity but I'm just curious how the capacity is calculated!

Satellite navigation systems broadcast signals on a specific frequency. Anyone
listening, should be able to pick up the signal. Therefore I assume infinite
capacity.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_navigation)

------
cm2187
Do we know when Galileo-compatible chips are expected to be deployed widely?

------
nullnilvoid
Europe is really late to the party. GPS has been here for a long time. China's
Bei Dou has been operational for a few years and is entering the 3rd
generation.

~~~
rzimmerman
The first GPS satellite was launched almost 40(!) years ago
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_satellite_blocks#Block_I_s...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_satellite_blocks#Block_I_satellites))

------
phkahler
Where do they get off claiming Ariane 5 has a perfect record? It's explosion
is one of the classic stories of software failure.

~~~
effie
Indeed, I was surprised to read that too. Probably mistake on author's part.

~~~
mrb
This 1996 failure was not a "production" flight but a "test" flight (the very
first test flight in fact). I guess the article implicitly claims all
"production" flights were flawless.

But that too would be an overstatement. There was a second (and last) failure
in 2002 for the first test of the ECA configuration of Ariane 5. (ECA,
Évolution Cryotechnique type A, is an improved Vulcain 2 first-stage engine
with a longer nozzle with a more efficient flow cycle and denser propellant
ratio.)

All ~75 launches since 2002 have been flawless.

