Europe’s future commitment to the project, known as Galileo and designed to create a new, improved and European-controlled version of America’s Global Positioning System, is to be decided in Brussels on Thursday and Friday, when European leaders will try for a second time, after talks failed in November, to hash out a long-term budget for the 27-nation bloc.
With recession and austerity clouding much of the Continent, they will argue over where the ax should fall on a European Union budget for 2014 to 2020, which would total nearly $1.35 trillion as drafted.
An over-budget satellite navigation system that is years from full completion, largely a duplicate of an American system already widely used in Europe and unlikely ever to generate much revenue would seem to be in the budget cutters’ cross hairs.
But Galileo’s backers are confident, so much so that they are asking for $8 billion beyond the more than $4 billion already spent. For Galileo promises perhaps the one thing that still seems able to overcome European leaders’ devotion to austerity: economic and technological independence from the United States.
“It is like a car going on a highway — it is very difficult to stop,” said Lucio Magliozzi, chief operating officer of Telespazio. The Italian-French company manages the Fucino control center, which is tracking the handful of Galileo navigation satellites launched by Europe so far.
Note EU-Digest: the basic argument for Europe to have Galileo remains the same: leaving the future of space research just in the hands of America, China and Russia is not an option.
Read more: Europe’s Galileo GPS Plan Limps to Crossroads - NYTimes.com
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