14/04/2005
From a report published by
Space Review and relayed by
Telematic Journal, it seems the EU is being a little economic with the
actualité when it comes to the costs of its flagship Galileo satellite navigation programme.
Although it claims that the system will cost between â¬3.5 and â¬4 billion, putting a full thirty-satellite constellation with the proposed capabilities into orbit, it appears that the actual costs will be considerably higher.
According to
Space Review, the US Department of Defence spent $234 million on GPS R&D in 2004. This year it will spend $289 million, and next year they are asking for $401 million. The US is going to be spending more than $900 million in R&D alone on a system that has been fully operational for more than a decade.
This sum is additional to the $900 million that will be spent on the procurement of the actual hardware and software. According to one published source, GPS cost between $10 and $11 billion between 1987 and 2002, with a programme which began in the early seventies.
By that measure, the EU costings seem more than a little modest.