How many sat-nav systems does it take to find a light bulb?
by Simon Handby in Your car on 29.11.07
There’s been some recent coverage of Galileo, the European Union’s mooted global positioning system (GPS). You’d be forgiven for thinking that we already have GPS, but the current system relies on satellites owned by the US military, and the US reserves the right to switch them off.
It hasn’t happened yet, but such is the importance of GPS for military and economic reasons that the EU doesn’t seem keen to take the risk. In fact, Galileo’s project manager told the BBC that “the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the US, and also the Europeans have to deploy their own system in order to match their own needs”.
We’re not experts, but that seems like a lot of satellites. Galileo alone will require 30, each of which weighs 675kg.
Won’t getting them all up into orbit involve rather a lot of rocket fuel, not to mention rocket science?
IMAGE - by Flickr user Craig Hatfield
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