[eeh]

If someone is inclined to critique this, have they considered the whole situation, and do they have better ideas? Remain in the EU has sailed, sadly. What do we do now?

Is it possible investing in an existing space company is the best path for the UK to have its own GPS-like satellites?

[growlist]

The UK has a world-leading satellite industry, and could just launch them on Falcon 9 or Starship when operational - likely at drastically lower cost than Ariane. In fact I suspect that due to technological advance and lower cost of launching on SpaceX, the UK could probably develop a superior system to Galileo at a fraction of the cost, which would be amusing.

[madaxe_again]

If they wanted a high resolution positioning system to cover the British isles, it could be accomplished with an entirely ground based triangulation network at a tiny fraction of the cost. Same principles, just cheaper, and a smaller area covered.

[eeh]

Does that work with GPS chips in phones?

Does that facilitate research into space?

Does that provide continuity for existing space research/universities?

Is space research considered to be geopolitically important?

I don't know the answers to these, but I do know these decisions are beyond arm chair critique.

[Rebelgecko]

>Does that work with GPS chips in phones?

I'm not super familiar with how Differential GPS works in practice, but I believe that the common phone receivers are able to pick it up. At the very least they're able to handle satellite based augmentations like WAAS and QZSS

[dathinab]

Also less know:

GPS can be used as an additional "highish" precision clock source for servers.

It works based on the device having known GPS position and knowledge that the position didn't change at all.

EDIT: This as far as I know also applies to other GPS like systems.

[dathinab]

The problem is the British sea. If it's just the land mass it's really not a supper big problem. It's still kinda big as devices would need to specially manufactured for their system, which can drive costs up.

[pjc50]

As asked up thread, why do we need our own duplicate GPS system anyway? Is this a sensible use of limited funds?

[eeh]

I don't know what motivation is, but there's a few plausible options:

* the UK may not want critical infrastructure provided elsewhere

* the UK may have research/student folk who would have previously worked on Galileo, but now cannot

* the UK may want to fund this as a vehicle for space research in general

[spzb]

Most plausible:

* UK wants a big vanity project to show how much better they are out of the EU

[eeh]

I don't know which is most plausible.

What makes you think that is most plausible?

[spzb]

The last four years of living in the UK

[eeh]

Ah, the classic "the government cannot do a good thing, therefore this must be a bad thing".