Россия, ЕС и Китай могут создать глобальную

Россия, Европейский Союз и Китай могут создать евроазиатскую глобальную навигационную систему, которая стала бы мощным конкурентом американской системы GPS. Об этом заявил агентству "Интерфакс" источник в российском правительстве.

Вопрос о сотрудничестве в освоении космоса будет обсуждаться 22-25 сентября в ходе официального визита в КНР премьер-министра Михаила Касьянова.

Источник отметил, что Китай решил инвестировать в европейский проект создания глобальной навигационной системы "Галилео". Россия также активно сотрудничает с ЕС по этой тематике. В настоящее время глобальными навигационными системами располагают США - система GPS, а также Россия - система ГЛОНАСС.

Глобальные навигационные системы используются как в мирных, так и в военных целях. Они позволяют определить в режиме реального времени, в частности, местоположение объекта, скорость и направление его движения. При военном использовании данных таких систем достигается применение высокоточного оружия.

Российская система ГЛОНАСС в настоящее время не располагает необходимым количеством на орбите навигационных спутников.

Источник в правительстве РФ заявил, что "в случае объединения проектов "Галилео", ГЛОНАСС и усилий Китая могла бы быть создана евроазиатская глобальная навигационная система".

Возможность этого, отмечают российские эксперты, уже вызывает озабоченность США, у которых мог появиться сильный конкурент в сфере предоставления навигационных услуг.

В российском руководстве высоко оценивают перспективы развития космического сотрудничества с Китаем. В Москве напоминают, что в ближайшее время Китай планирует запустить пилотируемый космический корабль. Таким образом, Китай станет третьей страной в мире, способной запускать человека в космос после России и США.

В настоящее время между Россией и Китаем заключено 23 контракта по разным направлениям космической деятельности.
 
  Источник: Интерфакс-АВН

Не понятно только, нафиг в этой затее Китай. Россия и ЕС имхо спокойно могут справиться вместе. ЕС - деньги, Россия - технологии.

А вот ещё одна статейка глазами economist'а.
Про Россию НИ СЛОВА!!!!!!!
Вообще то че-то там они про Россию заикнулись, но как будто о второстепенном участнике этого проэкта (попытались прировнять Россию к канаде...).
Ну и как всегда, по пиндосской традиции охарактеризовали Русский ГЛОНАСС как creaky("скрипучий")...Нет слов...

Space race

Sep 22nd 2003
From The Economist Global Agenda


China is to join the European Union’s project to launch a rival to America’s GPS satellite navigation system. The news will add to American defence chiefs’ worries about the project

THE European Union’s plan to spend more than €3.3 billion ($3.6 billion) on Galileo, a constellation of 30 navigation satellites, has been dubbed “the common agricultural policy in space” by one critic. Millions of people worldwide—from motorists to financiers—already enjoy free use of America’s Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) network to measure location and time accurately, so, the doubters ask, why spend all that money duplicating it? But in the five years since development work on Galileo began, realisation of its potential benefits has grown and thus the chances have increased that the project will fly. They received a boost on September 18th, when the European Commission announced that China had agreed to join the project and help pay for it. On the same day, the German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, and the French president, Jacques Chirac, discussed a package of big infrastructure projects, including Galileo.

America started launching its 24 GPS satellites in the late 1970s, to improve the navigation of its ships, aircraft and missiles. In the war in Iraq earlier this year, an estimated 60% of the coalition’s bombs were “smart” ones guided by GPS. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan authorised the civilian use of GPS, since when it has become a vital tool for motorists and hikers, who use portable devices tuned to GPS to find their way around, and for those—such as financial-market traders—who take advantage of GPS’s precise time signal.

Until recently, a GPS device could determine its location to the nearest ten metres or so. It is reported that the American military improved this to around three metres during the Iraq war. But Galileo is designed to be accurate to within just one metre. It is also expected to overcome GPS’s lack of accuracy in the polar regions and (more importantly in commercial terms) built-up areas. Though GPS is currently available free for civilian use, this “favour” could be withdrawn at any time. Galileo’s backers believe that, although some users will have to pay for it, its guarantee of continuous availability, combined with its greater accuracy, will make it much more attractive for commercial uses, especially safety-critical ones: one day it might be used to allow “free flight” by commercial aircraft, with their pilots using the system to choose their own route without the expense and complication of ground-based air-traffic controllers.

America is planning to improve its satellite-navigation system further: next year, it will start launching a second generation of GPS satellites, which will offer greater accuracy for civilian users and, for military purposes, greater protection against the signal being jammed by an enemy. But the launch of third-generation GPS satellites, capable of competing with Galileo, is not due to start until 2012, four years after Galileo is scheduled to begin operating.

The EU’s member governments agreed last year to provide €1.1 billion for the first phase of developing their satellite-navigation system (not to be confused with NASA’s Galileo space probe, which has just been destroyed in the atmosphere of Jupiter (see story). Private firms are expected to put up a large chunk of the initial cost and, in June, a public-private body known as the Joint Undertaking was set up to carry the project to completion. China is reported to be offering to invest at least €230m and other countries may also join in, perhaps including Canada and Russia (which has a creaky navigation-satellite system of its own, called GLONASS).

Such grand projects have a habit of costing more and taking longer than originally promised. A study in 2001 by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, reckoned that Galileo would cost €200m more than the EU had estimated. But it also predicted it could have annual revenues of up to €515m by 2020. Though direct revenues alone would not make Galileo profitable, adding in the indirect economic gains resulting from better navigation of land, sea and air vehicles would produce a benefit-to-cost ratio of as much as 4.6 to 1.

While the EU is portraying Galileo as a civilian scheme aimed at boosting economic growth and creating jobs, it is also, in part, a military project. In 2001, Mr Chirac said European countries would become America’s “vassals” if they did not build their own navigation system. Since then, the conflicts in Kosovo and Iraq have reinforced European fears that continuing to depend on GPS compromises their sovereignty.

American defence chiefs, for their part, worry that a rival system could be used by an enemy to direct missiles at the United States. They are especially worried that Galileo’s transmission frequencies will overlap those of the revamped GPS: the two systems might interfere with each other. The Europeans insist that Galileo will be secure, and that interference with GPS can be avoided.

But America’s fears are economic as well as military: it suspects that the EU might try, for instance, requiring aircraft entering its air space to use Galileo-based navigation systems, to the detriment of American firms with products based on GPS. And European countries, China and the like might develop weapons that are compatible with Galileo rather than GPS, which would mean American defence firms losing a competitive advantage.

Nevertheless, the creation of Galileo and the improvements to GPS open up all sorts of intriguing possibilities: people prone to heart attacks, or the frail elderly, could wear small and highly accurate locator devices combined with body sensors, which could call medical help in an emergency. Things that tend to get stolen or mislaid could easily be tracked. But think of the civil-liberties implications too. Once there are devices that can reveal exactly where someone is, who they are with, and even what they are doing, can the day be far off when we are all under the constant surveillance of some Big Brother, with the aid of his spy in the sky?