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They still haven't finished Galileo yet; with the project seemingly going backwards ever since the British were forced out. How will they deliver yet another mo

They still haven't finished Galileo yet; with the project seemingly going backwards ever since the British were forced out. How will they deliver yet another moonshot project like this? They don't even possess reusable rocket technology yet to make such a LEO project economically viable.

bionade24 4y ago
> going backwards ever since the British were forced out. It was already going badly for years before UK left. Galileo was scheduled to be finished in 2021, shortly after Brexit and around the same time UK parted from the project.
boudin 4y ago
It's up and running, and like any project like this it's then constantly updated and maintained so "finished" makes no sense
threeseed 4y ago
Is it really a moonshot project ? ESA has plenty of experience in delivering projects like this e.g. Copernicus, Sentinel, EDRS.
- peterfirefly 4y ago
  The Sentinel satellites ARE the Copernicus program(me). Why are the EU spy sats, sorry, totally-not-spy-sats, so poor and so few compared to what the US has?
  - threeseed 4y ago
    a) Copernicus program is bigger than just the satellites themselves. b) What does a meaningless comparison with the US have to do with whether launching a bunch of extra satellites is considered a moonshot or not ?
arlcode 4y ago
Galileo has been operational for a few years. Even customer mobile devices Support and use it. Further more the British had a referendum and decided to leave on their own. Quite hard to call that force out. In fact it's impossible to expell a member state.
- nbevans 4y ago
  Operational? Yes. Reliable? No. It has had numerous outages in the last 4 years. How do you explain several non-EU states being members of the Galileo programme - namely Switzerland and Norway? Hell, even China invested into it in 2003. And yet, the UK which invested almost a quarter of its funding is booted out on the basis of an unrelated political issue? It doesn't make sense. The British even offered to continue funding and investing into it. So "forced out" is an accurate description.
  - justeleblanc 4y ago
    > No. It has had numerous outages in the last 4 years. That's just plain false. There was one major outage in 2019. Since then, nothing of note.
    - mardifoufs 4y ago
      I think it has, when compared to GPS or even GLONASS. https://insidegnss.com/galileo-logs-a-5-hour-timing-related-outage-explanation-awaited/ https://insidegnss.com/galileo-logs-a-5-hour-timing-related-... https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileo-accident/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileo-accident/
      - justeleblanc 4y ago
        The second link is the major outage I'm talking about, yes. The first one is indeed significant, but to call it an outage is a stretch. You're linking to some blogspam that is basically [copying the official statement](https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/galileo-nominal-service-restored https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/galileo-nominal-service-resto...). To link that without linking to the [follow-up explanation](https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/further-information-on-the-event-of-14th-december https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/further-information-on-the-ev...) is, well... Not exactly an okay move. In that follow-up, you'll read that only ill-configured receivers (that ignored satellite health) were affected.
microtonal 4y ago
Yet, I can switch on my GPSr, use Galileo and get higher accuracy than GLONASS/GPS.

bionade24 4y ago

> going backwards ever since the British were forced out. It was already going badly for years before UK left. Galileo was scheduled to be finished in 2021, shortly after Brexit and around the same time UK parted from the project.

boudin 4y ago

It's up and running, and like any project like this it's then constantly updated and maintained so "finished" makes no sense

threeseed 4y ago

Is it really a moonshot project ? ESA has plenty of experience in delivering projects like this e.g. Copernicus, Sentinel, EDRS.

peterfirefly 4y ago
The Sentinel satellites ARE the Copernicus program(me). Why are the EU spy sats, sorry, totally-not-spy-sats, so poor and so few compared to what the US has?
- threeseed 4y ago
  a) Copernicus program is bigger than just the satellites themselves. b) What does a meaningless comparison with the US have to do with whether launching a bunch of extra satellites is considered a moonshot or not ?

arlcode 4y ago

Galileo has been operational for a few years. Even customer mobile devices Support and use it. Further more the British had a referendum and decided to leave on their own. Quite hard to call that force out. In fact it's impossible to expell a member state.

nbevans 4y ago
Operational? Yes. Reliable? No. It has had numerous outages in the last 4 years. How do you explain several non-EU states being members of the Galileo programme - namely Switzerland and Norway? Hell, even China invested into it in 2003. And yet, the UK which invested almost a quarter of its funding is booted out on the basis of an unrelated political issue? It doesn't make sense. The British even offered to continue funding and investing into it. So "forced out" is an accurate description.
- justeleblanc 4y ago
  > No. It has had numerous outages in the last 4 years. That's just plain false. There was one major outage in 2019. Since then, nothing of note.
  - mardifoufs 4y ago
    I think it has, when compared to GPS or even GLONASS. https://insidegnss.com/galileo-logs-a-5-hour-timing-related-outage-explanation-awaited/ https://insidegnss.com/galileo-logs-a-5-hour-timing-related-... https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileo-accident/ https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/galileo-accident/
    - justeleblanc 4y ago
      The second link is the major outage I'm talking about, yes. The first one is indeed significant, but to call it an outage is a stretch. You're linking to some blogspam that is basically [copying the official statement](https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/galileo-nominal-service-restored https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/galileo-nominal-service-resto...). To link that without linking to the [follow-up explanation](https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/further-information-on-the-event-of-14th-december https://www.gsc-europa.eu/news/further-information-on-the-ev...) is, well... Not exactly an okay move. In that follow-up, you'll read that only ill-configured receivers (that ignored satellite health) were affected.

microtonal 4y ago

Yet, I can switch on my GPSr, use Galileo and get higher accuracy than GLONASS/GPS.