Galileo "Stupid," Says EU Commissioner
- From: Sam Wormley <swormley1@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:00:41 GMT
Galileo "Stupid," Says EU Commissioner
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/CORS/Newsletter/082807.doc
GPS World, August 28, 2007
A European Union commissioner's remark that the Galileo "is a stupid
system" created a buzz in the online GNSS community.
A major wire service reported that Guenter Verheugen, German
commissioner in charge of industry, said at a news conference that
Galileo wasn't as important to EU space policy as many other projects
because it has limited functions.
Galileo, though promoted as the flagship of EU's space activities, is
hardly mentioned in a Resolution on the European Space Policy adopted
May 22 by the fourth European Space Council, a joint meeting of EU
Competitiveness ministers and representatives from ESA member states
held in Brussels, Belgium.
Verheugen told the press, "I fully disagree, fully disagree, that
Galileo is the most important project of European space policy. It is
a project of traffic infrastructure. The GMES (the EU's major project
on Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) is definitely more
important than Galileo, as it offers a huge range of operations,
whereas Galileo can only do one thing - help you to navigate, nothing
else. In this sense, Galileo is in a certain way a stupid system."
Press Reaction. The "stupid" remark drew responses in the press.
Financial Times columnist John Gapper said, "I must disagree with Mr.
Verheugen: I think navigation, and the software and services it
allows, is not stupid. Actually, it is one of the most intriguing
technologies to come along since the Internet. I dread to think what
Mr. Verheugen would have had to say about the Internet if he had been
asked to judge before its usefulness became clear."
Gapper touted the future value of Galileo to social networking,
Internet-based services, safety, and security. "Europeans have an
unfortunate tendency to let the U.S. gain an unassailable lead in
various areas of technology and then moan about its hegemony," Gapper
said. "That often occurs because the U.S. is prepared to take a
financial punt that something will prove valuable even if this is not
immediately obvious. Unlike Mr. Verheugen, I would wager that Galileo
falls into this category."
Relatively Simple? Verheugen supported efforts to push ahead with
Galileo despite concerns about the size of the market for satellite
navigation. "It's significant from a commercial point of view, but
compared to the technical complexity of other activities in space,
Galileo is relatively simple. It's not complex. That's what I meant
by stupid," he clarified.
.
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