One does not simply repurpose an entire internet constellation for sat-nav, but UK might have a go anyway
- Reference: 1593513073
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/30/oneweb_bs/
- Source link:
Blighty has been floundering following the realisation that departing the EU would mean losing access to the club's benefits, including the more sensitive bits of the Galileo navigation system (to which the UK has contributed a [1]substantial pot of money ).
Galileo is the EU's take on the US GPS system and features a Public Regulated Service (PRS) for military and other security purposes. As it dawned on lawmakers that the UK would lose access to this service, the mighty British government swung into action, spending £92m for a report on what could be done.
EU tells UK: Cut the BS, sign here, and you can have access to Galileo sat's secure service [2]READ MORE
It had already been told that a homegrown version of Galileo would [3]cost in the order of £3b-£5bn , and that report? Conspicuous by its absence.
Enter OneWeb, [4]which filed for bankruptcy in the US in March and has a constellation of 74 satellites already in orbit. Heck, it even has a UK HQ – a match made in heaven, surely?
Er, not quite. For starters, OneWeb's satellites are designed for internet connectivity; more Starlink than sat-nav. The 150kg satellites operate in the Ku-band and the constellation (which will eventually top 600 satellites if launches continue) will deliver speeds of "more than 400Mbps".
The satellites are not designed to provide the centimetre levels of positioning accuracy on offer by the competition.
That said, operating a navigation system in the Low Earth Orbit of OneWeb (rather than Medium Earth Orbit of something like Galileo) is feasible, although fiddling with the payloads of the existing spacecraft and dealing with the ground infrastructure is, at best, technically challenging.
However, since a [5]straight copy and paste is not on the cards for the Brexit Satellite, slapping the Union Jack on the side of OneWeb's birds will have a certain appeal to UK lawmakers looking down the barrel of £5bn or more to start from scratch.
Reports in [6]The Guardian and behind the [7]FT's paywall have the UK government signing off on a deal that would see it taking a 20 per cent stake in OneWeb, potentially putting around £500m on the line.
While The Register understands that discussions are ongoing across government (likely along the lines of "you want to buy what? "), no formal comment has been made on the specifics "due to commercial sensitivities".
While the move has industry insiders and watchers alike scratching their heads, some have suggested that perhaps the UK should spend its millions on research into an alternative.
The Research and Development Office of Dundee Satellite Station Ltd told us that GPS dated back to the Cold War era, and the satellites were subject to space warfare. "Money," it said, "could be better spent on [8]quantum compass technology that would obviate the need for satellites."
Alternatively, the UK government could just swallow some national pride and sign up for one of the existing systems. Back in 2018, space policy expert Dr Bleddyn Bowen [9]reckoned the £92m needed for the BS study would be better used to stimulate the launch market for small sat flingers in the UK. £500m would doubtless be more than welcomed by embryonic facilities such as the Sutherland Space Port.
Still, [10]we have a tea towel to remind us that, virus aside, the UK is going through interesting times. Perhaps a Brit-centric navigation system will be just the thing to render eyesight-testing jaunts to the likes of Barnard Castle a thing of the past. ®
*Obviously not what it will be called.
Get our [11]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/23/galileo/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2020/02/05/galileo_uk_clause/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2018/08/28/uk_may_go_it_alone_on_galileo/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/01/space_roundup/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2018/12/03/brexit_satellite/
[6] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/jun/26/uk-invest-satellite-rival-eu-galileo-system-oneweb
[7] https://www.ft.com/content/a1da90e8-8869-4740-b5eb-d8c6339d8e2f
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2018/11/11/brit_boffins_quantum_compass/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2018/12/03/brexit_satellite/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/01/29/brexit_tea_towel/
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Full-blown kakistocracy
> that report? Conspicuous by its absence.
RTFA. The wrong satellites is a knee jerk reaction without having even finished the report.
Not to worry, once Grommit has had his eyes tested he and Wallace will be the next men on the moon! (if only)
Re: Full-blown kakistocracy
What could possibly go wrong?
Everything.
Absolutely everything.
O.
Who can justify spending 92 million on a report? HOW can anything cost that much? Assuming you paid the smartest boffins around 100 quid an hour, that's still 920,000 person hours of effort. HUNDREDS OF MAN YEARS. Where has that money gone? To who? Who authorised it? Why haven't they been arrested for misconduct in public office? Come on reg you're meant to be journalists. Do some journalisting. Freedom of information requests etc. Call up people and ask awkward questions. Find out who spaffed public money away like this.
Remember this is 'British Empire 2' we're talking about. We're starting small (it's really 'English Empire 2'), but we're spending like we stole it ["What? We did steal it. Well, okay then - no problem!"]
So where were we? Oh, yes, if you're going to look like an empire you have to spend like one - noses in the trough, consider all awkward matters rapidly closed, move on, break things, never admit anything, never apologise, point to those sunlit uplands, lie, lie and lie again, whatever it takes to keep the money flowing from the sheeple to the people who really matter - my family, my mates and my paymasters.
Job done.
It has been widely reported in the financial press that a senior downing street advisor whose name rhymes with Cominic Dummings was the brains behind this bid. OneWeb have been desperately telling anyone who has any money that their assets (i.e. the useless internet sats on orbit) and their IP (worthless) and their brains (all long gone) can be put to whatever use the buyer wants. The Brits want a GNSS. The Canadians want to use it for comms. One of the Chinese bids had an inkling for imaging.
So the rumour in the industry is that he's mates with one of OneWeb's investors or creditors, who have convinced him that this is not only feasible, but a stroke of innovative technical genius that could deliver both cheap, abundant satellite internet and a world-class GNSS system for about one-tenth the cost of Galileo.
Those of us old enough to remember how well this alleged Mr Dummings's last Tech Solutionism misadventure went may be able to predict how this is going to go.
Because it was a week ago. With that bloody nonsense test and trace app he thought would save the country. 60,000 people have died.
What a shame. An opportunity to write something interesting has been passed up on to make room for a tedious anti-government rant.
If buying completely the wrong tool for the job isn't an occasion for a rant, it's hard to know what is.
So how about going into detail explaining why it's not appropriate.
Put some work in and assume the possibility that the government has considered this after consulting experts in the field and may have ideas beyond the obvious.
But no. Government Tory therefore government stupid. Must not agree with Tories. Must pretend socialism isn't the most deadly ideology in the history of the world. etc.
Re assume...
"the possibility that the government has considered this after consulting experts in the field and may have ideas beyond the obvious"
something something extraoardinary claims extraordinary evidence? Ok, I'm exaggerating, but I don't think it's a fundamentally safe assumption, even if it isn't that out of the ordinary.
Re: Re assume...
They obviously have some plans for it which aren't immediately apparent.
It might be that they want to use it for rural broadband, or they have some boffins who want to try using a massive cluster of satellites to provide positioning in a different way to GPS, offering far more redundancy than the handful of satellites GPS uses - even if it doesn't have the same cm level accuracy.
With China reportedly investing in anti-satellite warfare, a low resolution backup system would be useful - nobody is going to complain if an ICBM misses by a yard.
Or maybe they have some plans to use it as a inter-satellite communication network given that the UK has a fairly large satellite industry already.
Or something to do with the spaceport that the government is trying to get going.
There is certainly more to this than people [are presumably pretending that they] believe.
Are human beings capable of being self-serving idiots?
Are 'governments' comprised of 'human beings'?
Is it possible that governments are capable of making decisions based on self-serving idiocy?
The evidence presented thus far suggests that experts in the relevant fields are, at best, bemused at this apparent decision regarding the satellites. We shall await further developments and illumination, but on the record so far (investing millions in a company with no ferries and no history of operating them, etc.) we should not be hopeful that this latest wheeze has been thought through thoroughly - unless it happens to financially benefit certain 'cronies', regardless of the eventual outcome of the service.
Designed for a whole other purpose, which doesn't require the precision of the atomic clocks in navigation satellites. That will do for a start.
My usual reaction to a Tory government is 'evil not stupid.' Their policies have usually been fairly well thought out given their values. Ones that I consider to be shocking.
The last few years have forced a revision to, 'evil and stupid.'
BTW, that's the last feed this troll gets from me.
Brexit sat-nav eh?
So it'll tell you you're going to one location when in fact you're heading in completely another; will lie about toll roads (they don't exist, no really you won't have to pay a thing); will claim the journey you're about to undertake it the easiest, most straightforward journey in the history of journeys despite it then being horrific; swear it will only take you to quality food outlets which you later find only sell chlorinated chicken, before directing you to drive straight of the edge of a cliff.
All via Barnards Castle, obviously.
Sounds amazing.
And yes I know this is supposed to be about satellites not the driving units. Thank you in advance to those of you for pointing that out.
Re: Brexit sat-nav eh?
When you wrote that, did you think "this is edgy stuff, nobody has thought of these jokes before"?
Why Galileo?
It's easy to say that losing access to Galileo is a problem but, Galileo is not finished and not 100% operational and, what is working, has had some spectacular outages. We have access to the US GPS system and most of us get by with what that offers. Leaving the EU will not stop our GPS clocks, TomTom's and Android phones from guiding us to B&Q so what is the problem?
Re: Why Galileo?
Ummm, why then are we spending/wasting millions/billions on reinventing the satnav wheel?
Re: Why Galileo?
TomToms, Android and B&Q aren't the point. They are a side benefit of enhancing the armed forces' ability to deliver rapid planned disassembly as precisely as possible.
Re: Why Galileo?
And how will Galileo and/or BritGPS change that, given that Mil Procurement takes decades and that no doubt BAE and their ilk will add several million to the base price if we want to support multiple GPS-like systems.
And just how much does military bang gear rely on GPS-a-likes anyway? Presumably they all have alternative redundancy built in like Inertial navigation etc etc. Put a £ price tag on it - that then gives us the ROI and business case.
Galileo was EU-level nationalistic willy waving. BritGPS is worse if only because our pockets can't cash what our false brexit pride wants us to have.
A fail for your comment and a fail on the whole sorry subject.
£92m
"the mighty British government swung into action, spending £92m for a report on what could be done."
Been looking through Hansard, publications and other news sites and no mention of the £92m cost for the report (or the actual report). Where is the source of the £92m cost?
Re: £92m
Following the links from the article, it seems to have originated on this .gov.uk [1]page
EDIT: Reading that page it appears the study is of 18 months duration, so if it really cost £92m thats 200 FTEs at £150/hr
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/space-sector-to-benefit-from-multi-million-pound-work-on-uk-alternative-to-galileo
Re: £92m
Thank you..
Wow - where do I sign up for a gig for £92m for 18 months work?
" The saga of the UK's Brexit Satellite (BS)*
*Obviously not what it will be called. "
Oh, I think BS is exactly what it *will* be called....
Could be worse
At least nobody has tried to sell the current government a bridge. Oh, hold on ...
pop corn time !
Pop corn sellers are in for a freaking blast !
Watch how magical thinking is going to happen to UK politicians !!
Send our own sats (what ? it's costly ?), use another country's system (how could they disable it ?), use bluetooth, it's the future, or WIFI, whatever :)
Full-blown kakistocracy
£96m study to spaff half a billion on the wrong satellites. These are the brains behind Brexit, ladies and gentlemen. What could possibly go wrong?