It's a seductive idea: A heavenly travel guide capable of determining positions down to the meter, providing billions of euros in annual revenue and creating more than 100,000 jobs. And all that for the bargain price of €3.6 billion ($4.7 billion) -- the cost of 150 kilometers (93 miles) of urban highway.Thirty European "Galileo" satellites were originally meant to be beaming their position signals down to Earth as early as 2008 -- thereby providing a serious alternative to US global positioning system (GPS) satellites. But today's reality looks different.
Galileo's new administrative director Pedro Pedreira will likely present a sobering report at the Munich Satellite Navigation Summit this week. Pedreira warns that Galileo will be going into operation in 2012 "at the earliest."
Inshallah
| Unless the French workers remain on strike. |