America has billed itself as the "indispensible nation"

Europe is trying to consolidate it's power and become a force that has no real need for the indispensible nation.

This is a step towards that goal.

They are, of course, not alone in this sentiment.

Be Well.

The European are really thankful to George Bush. Without him, we would have needed much more time to bring the countries together for this project.

We can just all give up our jobs in manufacturing because we will be able to continue our prosperity depending only on our technology. No other nation can do technological things like us. We are so smart and they are so dumb.

Nice to see the Europeans doing something on their own. Who knows? Maybe they'll start building up their defenses again, so we can bring our troops there home. Maybe they'll build a rapid-defense force that is real, not just on paper, so they can step in when genocide is taking place on their own frontiers, like Bosnia/Kosova/Croatia/Georgia/
Abkhazia/Chechen-Ingusetia/ Albania.

Not holding my breath, though.

The US space program is second to none in the world. But better public access is consistent with Freedom and Democracy that BushCo wraps itself in, while secretly working for power and profits for the few.

America's never billed itself as "indispensable". In fact, it's pretty generous of us to allow anyone besides the US military the right to use US military satellites.

The euros COULD have said, "Thank you--what are the chances we could pay the United States for the licenses to use their stuff, and maybe save us some dough by not having to build a network of satellites on our own?" But I don't want to discourage the europhiles from going their own way, and taking care of themselves. For a change.

Did the EU deliberately name it Galileo, a believer in science over religious superstition, because it would offend the Bushies and their FundaPublican supporters?

And Giove (Jupiter, a PAGAN GOD!!!)

The Bushies must be seething!

In fact, it's pretty generous of us to allow anyone besides the US military the right to use US military satellites.

"Anyone" besides the US military is only allowed to use the GPS in a crippled form. Talks to lizenze GPS for Europe broke down, when the US wanted to keep their ability to switch off the whole system.

"Did the EU deliberately name it Galileo, a believer in science over religious superstition, because it would offend the Bushies and their FundaPublican supporters?"

* * * *
Hmmm. Interesting. If that was their point, they weren't trying hard enough. They could have called it "Stalin", or "Hitler", or "Lenin", or the name of almost any other Euro statist dictator for the past 100 years, as they all believed in science over religious superstition, and it would have offended me and my fellow Bushies and Fundapublican supporters. Plus, the insinuation would have been more obvious, and honest.

Did the EU deliberately name it Galileo, a believer in science over religious superstition, because it would offend the Bushies and their FundaPublican supporters?

No, they wanted to honor a great scientist. But they could have called it "Darwin" )))).

Nice to see the Europeans doing something on their own. Who knows? Maybe they'll start building up their defenses again, so we can bring our troops there home.

You may not know it, but Europe has more soldiers combinded than the US. However you are right, our military is less expensive.
The US keeps their troops out of their own strategic purposes, not because they want to protect us. )))

"""They could have called it "Hitler"""

and they could have carried it aloft aboard a Prescott Bush booster rocket.

RisR, Really? Europeans would have been more honest with and about themselves if they had named the agency Hitler?!!

Amazing! The dittohead perspective is indeed fascinating, if nothing else.

Danni,
I thoroughly enjoyed the Prescott Bush Booster Rocket comment!

I'm not a dittohead. Don't even have an AM radio to listen to the guy. I was saying that if they were interested in naming it after someone who believed in science over religion and wanted to offend Americans too, they could have called it something else.

Was responding to another post.

Still, nice to see you think all us "Bushies" get exorcised because of what the Euros decide to name their space capsules, such as they are. We, of course, had the Saturn and the Mercury programs, and trips to Mars--with no complaints.

Maybe you should devote your energies to getting your guys elected, then we can have some real substantive exchanges, eh?

Thanks Uber.

As someone who uses a GPS often I welcome Galileo. It'll be more accurate than the GPS system. The GPS system will often tell me I'm 5 metres underwater or 3 metres above it when I'm at sea level.

"Maybe they'll start building up their defenses again, so we can bring our troops there home"
Well, they are bringing their troops home from Iraq, so I guess fair's fair.
But what happens if they do that in Afghanistan too? We're barely able to avoid collapse in Iraq, would we still be able to hold on to both places without them? We might have to leave an extra 3000 troops there, instead of bringing them home. Especially if NATO pulls its 12000 troops out of Afghanistan.
And what would all our defense contractors do if we couldn't get NATO to buy their stuff?

Nice to see the Europeans doing something on their own. Who knows? Maybe they'll start building up their defenses again, so we can bring our troops there home.

You may not know it, but Europe has more soldiers combinded than the US. However you are right, our military is less expensive.
The US keeps their troops out of their own strategic purposes, not because they want to protect us. )))

Posted by fribo at 2005-12-29 11:31 AM | Reply

Not just soldiers, but tanks, planes, etc.... I think we still got all of europe beat on ships and nuclear weapons though.

"I think we still got all of europe beat on ships and nuclear weapons though."

Excuse me. They're on "our" side. Right? Or did I miss something?

What's the big deal? Hopefully their system will be intergrated with ours(ie some units now are both DGPS and WAAS enabled) and we will all get better accuracy and repeatability.

The real story is that the EU wants to use it as Big Brother and watch over highway toll collections, and "other" ideas.Wonder how well that idea would fly in the US?? Of course leave it to ng3+drudge to ramble off on an illogical tangent about Afghanistan.

Theoretically,yes,they're still on "our" side. For now.

Hmmm. Europe next. Everlasting war. The neo-con/military industrialist/Republican/end- of-worlder wet dream.

"...The US space program is second to none in the world."

Really? I thought they were using Russian rockets to get to space nowadays...