'We've Bought the Wrong Satellites': UK Investment In OneWeb Baffles Experts (theguardian.com) 241
AmiMoJo writes: "The UK government's plan to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in a satellite broadband company has been described as 'nonsensical' by experts, who say the company doesn't even make the right type of satellite the country needs after Brexit," reports The Guardian. "The investment in OneWeb is intended to mitigate against the UK losing access to the EU's Galileo satellite navigation system. But OneWeb -- in which the UK will own a 20% stake following the investment -- currently operates a completely different type of satellite network from that typically used to run such navigation systems."
OneWeb is building a global satellite internet delivery platform similar to Starlink, and plans to piggyback a British navigation system on the satellites. But the satellites will be in low Earth orbit at 12,000km altitude, compared to other navigation systems at 20,000km. "The fundamental starting point is, yes, we've bought the wrong satellites," said Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester. "It's bolting an unproven technology on to a mega-constellation that's designed to do something else. It's a tech and business gamble." OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in March.
OneWeb is building a global satellite internet delivery platform similar to Starlink, and plans to piggyback a British navigation system on the satellites. But the satellites will be in low Earth orbit at 12,000km altitude, compared to other navigation systems at 20,000km. "The fundamental starting point is, yes, we've bought the wrong satellites," said Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester. "It's bolting an unproven technology on to a mega-constellation that's designed to do something else. It's a tech and business gamble." OneWeb filed for bankruptcy in March.
license (Score:4, Interesting)
actually it might work...
IF they can transition some of the transmitters to broadcasting GNSS signals they might even be able to beat the Galileo constellation for accuracy and provide a uplink/downlink for the military and civilians I wonder how they are planning on doing the clocks ?
most of the problems with satellites is the political/contract nonsense not the actual ability
Re:license (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see how they could repurpose the satellites - the precise timing needed for navigation is going to take more than a firmware update. But what they do get is approved spectrum, a body of engineers ready to repurpose, satellite construction facilities, and established relations with commercial launch services that won't be screwed up by Brexit mess.
It's a lot of money to spend though, and it's really just a political show - Britain doesn't really need their own sat-nav system, but building one anyway is a way to show that we are really independent (we aren't) and that we don't need Europe (we do). It's like bringing back the pre-EU blue passports: It's just a way to raise the national middle finger at the EU, throwing money down the drain so that the patriots of the country can continue to sing Rule Britannia and wave their made-in-China flags.
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Given how UK headline writers usually operate, I'm surprised that one hasn't yet gone with, "Oops, All Comsats!" ;)
Re: license ip from von ^BRAWN^ (Score:2)
The whole point of /.
from the beginning
is that there is no censorship
fuck off newbie
(Yeah I know they went back and scrubbed something once, Scientology or something)
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How do you know that Britain doesn't need its own sat-nav system? Why doesn't Europe just use the US system? If you've invested hundreds of billions of pounds in your military, don't you have an obligation to ensure that your weapons actually work in wartime?
What do blue passports, chinese flags and singing patriots have to do with this story? I suppose making emotive statements against "Brexit" is an easy way to get modded up to +5, so well done, I guess.
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How do you know that Britain doesn't need its own sat-nav system? Why doesn't Europe just use the US system?
Because they *want* their own. With bridge and ladies of pleasure.
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Because they *want* their own. With bridge and ladies of pleasure.
Yep. You can bet is was tea and medals for everybody after this contract was signed.
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brexit is an emotive "thing" as its not based on rational thinking
Right, so shouldn't we be above that? Posts which boil down to "Brexit is bad" all getting modded up +5 I Agree - that's a good thing?
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Right, so shouldn't we be above that? Posts which boil down to "Brexit is bad" all getting modded up +5 I Agree - that's a good thing?
The post didn't just say "Brexit bad". The main thing the post said, which you couldn't separate from "Brexit bad", is that Britain spends most of its time and money doing show off illogical things. This is true and is directly related to the whole Brexit feeling. Brexit makes sense if the UK is an exceptional special European country much better than all the other ones that is being disrespected by the EU. There's an idea that the UK is a special nation in Europe, the only one capable of a blue sea nav
Re:license (Score:5, Interesting)
So every country should launch it's own satellite navigation system? I'd say you're shilling for big GNSS but that's not a thing. The reality is countries have launched satellite systems only to support military alliances. Pretty much any war that will be fought in the future will see the UK allied with either the EU or USA, and unlike your military GPS system Galileo doesn't support the ability to magically shut off civilian use while maintaining service for just one group, so if the UK does end up in an armed conflict with the EU the result is all or nothing in terms of satellite capability, both sides have it or neither do.
It's like buying a small yield nuclear bomb because you have a disagreement with your neighbour. It's stupid. You don't need it and won't use it because you know it'll screw you as well.
Why doesn't Europe just use the US system?
Civilian vs Military. The world whether you like it or not is wholly dependent on GPS for everything from navigation to your mobile phone actually working (seriously lose GPS and you lose time synchronisation between bases and 4G goes down), EU built the system exclusively because the world needs a system that will works when the USA picks its next fight. Remember what made GPS work, not some magic technology, but rather Bill Clinton's pen which magically made the system accurate enough to be usable in all sorts of applications. Galileo doesn't have the ability to simply screw the world while maintaining military capability, and thus it wasn't a US vs Europe thing, but rather a military vs civilian.
Also Galileo is the result of years of additional research has 3x better accuracy and better coverage in Europe. Devices making use of both systems enjoy major benefits, benefits that the UK its citizens will continue to get regardless of how much they hate Europe. There is literally no point in any military power other than China or Russia building satellite systems as any future conflict would result in one of your allies having a functioning system.
What do blue passports, chinese flags and singing patriots have to do with this story?
Everything. You've missed the GP's point, that doesn't mean his post wasn't insightful. The UK is on a self destructive journey to prove they are "better" than the EU in every possible way. Most of it is completely pointless window dressing and a complete and total waste of time.
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What do blue passports, chinese flags and singing patriots have to do with this story?
Everything. You've missed the GP's point, that doesn't mean his post wasn't insightful. The UK is on a self destructive journey to prove they are "better" than the EU in every possible way. Most of it is completely pointless window dressing and a complete and total waste of time.
You make some good arguments - the kind of points you have made are what we should be discussing. The "Brexit is bad" posts with their +5 "I agree" mod trivialise the whole issue.
Being forced to invest £x00M in a GPS system DOES seem like a waste of money, but Brexit is a political reality now. If the military say that they need this system in the event of a war, then the UK has to bite the bullet and spend. Who knows who Britain's allies will be 50 or a hundred years from now.
I don't agree that the U
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>"If the military say that they need this system in the event of a war, then the UK has to bite the bullet and spend. Who knows who Britain's allies will be 50 or a hundred years from now."
I can't imagine any near-future in which the US and UK are not strong allies and the UK wouldn't be granted automatic access to our (US) system. None. 50 to 100 years from now whatever they build now will be obsolete, anyway. And if there were writing on the wall, it doesn't take all that long to build one at that t
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It does seem very unlikely. Most people in the UK are strongly in favor of the US-UK alliance.
Apparently, there are 3 Chinese tech firms bidding for the OneWeb satellites as well as the UK government, so you could argue that the UK are bidding for assets that they could later sell if necessary. As you say, the UK may not be as stupid as certain commentators would have us believe.
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That is a possibility to consider - perhaps there is something going on behind the scenes, directed by something the intelligence services have worked out, and the aim isn't so much to secure OneWeb as it is to deny the technology and infrastructure to the Chinese buyers.
Re: license (Score:2)
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If the satellite investment proves to be a waste of money, I will be the first to criticise the government
You don't spend money and determine if you wasted it afterwards. You come up with a cost benefit analysis up front to aid your decision making process. So let's run that theory now.
What problem is the UK trying to solve?
What benefit would be given from shoehorning this into the wrong system?
What is the opportunity cost of investing this money elsewhere?
Bonus round:
Is this problem we're solving anything to do with a bankrupt company whose CEO is good friends with Cummings suddenly getting a government invest
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I thought that that UK didn't build and maintain nuclear missiles (any more - there were some efforts in that direction in the 1950s) but just paid through the nose for US ones. Am I wrong?
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Is Galileo even working properly yet? I read that the UK exclusion woudl add 3 years to the project's date, and would require a ton of extra cash to be spent (that the EU doesn't really have these days) to replace the bits the UK provides (eg base stations in the south atlantic)
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The UK needs to wind down it's military and resize it to be more appropriate to a small island nation on the decline. No need to get involved in pointless wars just because other countries are.
It's basically welfare for the aerospace industry that is being screwed by brexit cutting it off from the EU's single market and security arrangements.
That and delusions of grandeur like that stupid plane they just wasted nearly a million Pounds painting an upside down Union Jack on. It's not even a British plane, it'
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I wonder which other nations would be pleased if the UK followed your recommendation to "wind down their military"?
One of those nations called people like you "useful idiots".
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Sounds like a quote from Neville Chamberlain.
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Who is going to invade us but somehow not get other European countries involved and for some reason we don't nuke them in retaliation?
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Obfuscate all you want, but there are several countries that would be delighted to see the UK "wind down their military". You know it's true.
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Like who? What will they do if the UK say reduces its military spending by 15%?
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Nonsense. When Chamberlain died the UK still had an Empire.
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Sounds like a quote from Neville Chamberlain.
Chamberlain pushed for rearmament, so no, it doesn't sound like a quote from him.
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I don't see how they could repurpose the satellites - the precise timing needed for navigation is going to take more than a firmware update.
Actually, you need an atomic clock on board (or rather several for redundancy). There is no way to get software to perform on that level.
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With really fancy syncronisation work I can imagine possible ways to maintain syncronisation with ground clocks, or there may even be atomic clocks on board already as they have important uses in communication aside from just positioning. I was thinking of a different problem: Jitter. Why would a communications satellite have the type of hardware needed for perfectly deterministic timing from clock to transmitter? That's hardware, you're not going to retrofit that through any kind of software patch.
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I don't see how they could repurpose the satellites - the precise timing needed for navigation is going to take more than a firmware update
+1
The OneWeb satellites do not have onboard atomic clocks, unlike GPS satellites. They might be able to emulate it by using a NTP-like protocol and ground-based atomic clocks, but as you say it will significantly lack precision.
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You can get very precise timing by continually verifying the time using groundstations and solving for position and time with a several second, not day+ long update cycle as GPS does.
Technically, it is not ridiculous.
Pol
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There's one aspect that is no depressing - assuming they can make it work, it'll cost a fraction of a fraction fo what Galileo did. Hopefully showing governments that spending billions on these grand projects can be better achieved for awhole lot less.
Now, consider HS2 and we're back to normal levels of depression :-)
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It's not that simple. For a start using a much lower orbit than other satellite navigation systems presents problems. Each satellite covers a smaller area so you need more of them, and each one needs a precisely calibrated atomic clock with regular updates from the ground and orbit information. So you have a lot more work to maintain the system and for the receiver to manage.
Being lower also reduces performance, especially in canyons like between buildings. Japan's system designed to fix that flies even hig
It doesnt baffle us UK citizens (Score:5, Interesting)
As were well aware of how utterly techno and scientifically illiterate the arts and PPE trained governing classes on all sides and the civil service really are. Its quite frightening sometimes when they inadvertently let slip how little they understand how the modern world works. For similar recent "triumphs" see our "world beating" vcivid tracing app which was DOA and the sale of ARM to the japanese. Could you imagine the USA allowing Intel to be sold to a foreign power?
Re:It doesnt baffle us UK citizens (Score:5, Interesting)
As were well aware of how utterly techno and scientifically illiterate the arts and PPE trained governing classes on all sides and the civil service really are.
OneWeb are obviously pals of Dominic Cummings:
https://www.ft.com/content/a1d... [ft.com]
Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, was instrumental in pushing the case for the investment, which seeks to secure a frontline position for Britain in cutting-edge satellite navigation systems.
The only techno and scientific fact the governing classes need to know is their relationship to the company.
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Of course if you give a company that has no ferries enough money to buy a ferry then they become a ferry company!
Isn't this the kind of state-spoonsored "investment for growth" that Labour are particularly fond of? Is it only a bad thing when the Tories do it?
A government wasting taxpayers' money (Score:3, Funny)
What a shocker that is...
Re:A government wasting taxpayers' money (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case it's arguably as much the taxpayer's fault. This is only happened because of brexit.
The UK voted for brexit based on lies like "nothing will change", "no one is threatening our place in the single market" and "we will have all the exact same benefits we do as members". Because people believed those lies they put the British aerospace industry at risk. Now the UK has been booted out of Galileo it can either let its aerospace be wrecked as work dries up (can't contribute to Galileo for security reasons) or piss away billions propping it up with a half baked British version.
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The UK did this to themselves. The spite was English (the Scots wanted to stay) and then wondering why everyone is pissed at them is not surprising. I am ashamed as a Brit for an attitude that was better suited for 1500.
If you are an investor into a security company, they day you pull out you’ll have your security clearance removed. This is no different at a nation level.
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The economy is doing far worse than the Eurozone. Companies have already left and will continue to the worse it gets.
The Galileo thing is a great example of how stupid brexit has become. The idea was we were going to leave the EU but stay in the single market and all the institutions. Well that wasn't stupid enough so we had to leave and duplicate everything.
All the bollocks about taking back control is already unravelling. The EU isn't budging, the US has said we need to adopt its rules to get a trade deal
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The EU Parliament is refusing to budge so that's going to cause some giggles in the next few months - the EU as an institution wants to impose its control on the UK but the UK will not accept that, and the EU member states want a trade deal. Which is why the EU has already budged, and will budge again, and then panic.
Yes, this is something that is not widely appreciated. For example, Germany export more of their BMWs, Mercedes, VWs etc to the UK than any other country. 900,000 German jobs depend on their car industry.
The EU may want to introduce tariffs for UK cars, but Angela Merkel doesn't. Guess who will win that particular political battle.
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Seriously? You still believe this crap, years after the German car manufacturers have stated that the single market integrity is more important to them?
Besides, the rich Britons will want to buy their BMW and Mercedes cars anyway, they just will pay the additional cost of the trade barriers. I mean, even Kim Jong Un has a Mercedes despite the embargo.
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Whose idea?
The official Leave campaign.
the EU as an institution wants to impose its control on the UK
The EU wants to protect the single market. It's over 6 times bigger than the UK market and the core of the European Union. If they UK wants access to it then it will be on the EU's terms since the UK has abandoned its control over the single market rules.
Which rules has the US said we need to adopt, and why is this any different to any other trade deal.
.
Food standards. It's different from our deal as a member of the EU where we had control of food standards and a veto, and it's different to the deals that the EU does with other countries where it's a behemoth and they can't bul
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Strawman. Qualified majorities may have replaced vetos in most areas, but it's rare that the UK doesn't vote with the majority. Whether the government (and government-aligned newspapers) then claim that the rule they voted for is being "dictated" to them is another matter.
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The economy is doing better than the Eurozone and the EU
No, it's not, it's taken a much bigger hit than the EU as a whole so far this year. At best the IMF projections show growth in the UK over 2020-21 to be the same as the EU, but lower than Germany, assuming a deal with the EU in the second half of this year.
Error in summary: OneWeb birds will fly at 1,200m (Score:5, Informative)
I thought it strange when the summary said they were in low earth orbit at 12,000km - 12,000 km isn't low earth orbit!
The article and research confirms that OneWeb flies at 1,200km, which is Low Earth Orbit.
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Re:Error in summary: OneWeb birds will fly at 1,20 (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, well, I typo-ed a 3 order of magnitude error in my title, so I can't complain!
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My bad, I typoed it when paraphrasing TFA.
Political posturing from ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)
Brexit was never about fact based arguments, economics, logic or progress, it was based on pride and going back to the times when Britain was 'Great'. It was driven by people with a distorted view that national pride is fundamentally important to their identity. This is great example, the typical brexiteer, will respond, because 'space init'. They really are the most shallow people you could possible encounter.
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Well that and immigration controls.
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Brexit was never about fact based arguments, economics, logic or progress
Even though Brexit itself was a mistake, the above statement is largely true for both sides of the argument.
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How so? I mean just rolling the clock back to 2016, the one argument was an endless string of lies and promises of unicorns, while the other side actually completely and utterly failed to present an argument at all beyond a general "life's not bad and we don't know what will happen". That latter argument has turned out be completely accurate while none of the pro-Brexit arguments arguments were.
I honestly don't know how you can say with a straight face that the pro-remain stance wasn't based on economics, l
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This post doesn't appear to have much to do with fact-based arguments either. Or the story.
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There isn't one fact in this statement. It is purely your opinion.
This is great example, the typical brexiteer, will respond, because 'space init'. They really are the most shallow people you could possible encounter.
Who is a "typical brexiteer"? 52% of the population voted for Brexit. They are not a generic mass, they are 35 million human beings. How do you know how they would respond to a question about satellites? How are they "the most shallow people you could possible encounter"?
How such a prejudicial generalisation has been modded up to +5 is baffling.
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they are 35 million human beings
17.2m as it happens. Still, more than the people that were too scared to believe the UK can stand on its own.
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>"How such a prejudicial generalisation has been modded up to +5 is baffling."
Because on Slashdot, almost anything that is anti-Brexit will be modded up. As will anything anti-Trump. It should surprise nobody here.
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52% of the population voted for Brexit.
If you're going to criticise someone for not giving facts it helps to have your own straight. 37.4% of the population voted for Brexit.
52% of people who were able to vote and did vote, voted for Brexit. That is very different than a "population". 17.4 million people. That you criticise the GP as being a generic mass, and then proceed to force your opinion upon on those who didn't voice one is somewhere on the scale of intellectually dishonest to an outright assault on democracy.
You don't speak for 35million
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Twenty some years :( Made an account when AC finally got banned.
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No, that's a fundamental misunderstanding of the whole process. Brexit came about just like Trump did, from the complete disconnect between the elite and the populace. The elite desires open borders, globalization, and immigration. The populace hates it.
When the populace votes, the choices it gets are either "more open borders, globalization, and immigration", or "much more open borders, globalization, and immigration". A choice for less of those things isn't open for discussion, and those who try are label
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B.S. (Score:2)
I'm not elite, I'm a working class geek, I grew up on a council estate, most of my real friends are working class.
You are perpetuating is the false view that this was some kind of grassroots movement it was not. Farage, JRM, Johnson, Banks, May etc and the rest of the big brexit supporters are all part of the elite, old money, new money, trader and venture capitalists. Labour voters supported remain 66%, Labour party members at 76%, so while there were a few voting the other way, they were a minority. While
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Brexit was all about democracy.
You ask people what they want, they tell you, you get on and do that. Doesn't matter if its "good" or "bad", the people get what they wanted because the whole country is supposed to be ruled for the people's benefit.
All arguments otherwise basically boil down to "the people must be oppressed and do as their masters tell them". If that's your attitude, then fuck you, you totalitarian fascist. We are not here as consumers and workers for the benefit of a Tony Blair-style politb
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They really are the most shallow people you could possible encounter.
Welcome to democracy. If you assume that intelligence follows a normal curve in its distribution through the population (it does), with the median being around 100 IQ, it follows that half the population has an IQ above 100, and half the population has an IQ below 100 - because that's what median means. It's the value at 50% of the sample. In democracy, however, everyone gets a vote regardless of intelligence. The vote of a genius counts exactly the same as that of a mentally handicapped person. Therefore y
Pioneers don't panic (Score:2)
So they are pioneering a new system. Only fools panic when there is no one to copy from.
Some confusion about the plan on the expert's part (Score:5, Informative)
The FT has been excellent on keeping abreast of this story.
Start with "UK scales back plans for £5bn rival to Galileo satellite system" - https://www.ft.com/content/50c... [ft.com]
And then move onto "UK ready to invest millions to back OneWeb bid" - https://www.ft.com/content/a1d... [ft.com]
The TLDR version is, the UK's not using OneWeb to build a Galileo-style GPS. The plan seems to be to use it as a platform to build a technologically different low-earth navigation service based upon Satellite Applications Catapult's tech. This is cheaper than a new Galileo-style GPS and also has some advantages in redundancy with existing systems.
This is the key quote from last weeks FT.
https://www.ft.com/content/50c... [ft.com]
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Can't access FT. Any details about how this tech is supposed to actually work?
LEO seems like a really problematic environment. Not simply because of the high translational rate over the surface, but because drag is significant, and density can vary by orders of magnitude based on what's going on with the sun at the time.
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Okay but how is this supposed to actually work? If you want more accuracy or better coverage for canyons you need to go into a higher orbit like the Japanese did. From just 1,200km up and only 80 satellites your system is going to have crap coverage and crap accuracy.
So what are they saying, let's have a crap system but at least if someone jams GPS you can still get a vague indication of where you are?
The other issue is receivers. I suppose for the military it won't be a big deal but for civilian use if the
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QZSS is in high orbit because it is a local system, and in order to provide continuous local coverage, a synchronous orbit is required, and these are high altitude. It's the same with the European EGNOS and US WAAS systems. Those systems piggyback the navigation payload onto commerical comms satellites, so are in geostationary orbit over the equator, and this has the limitation that at high latitudes, the
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They're saying "lets have a better system, with modern technology"
From an FT article:
Going higher won't make a difference for canyons (which is a rather exclusive requirement), ten thousand km is just as good as a thousand km - both are "very high u
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In other words it swaps a tried and tested system that will bring unparalleled accuracy and coverage for an experimental one proposed by a company that a few months ago went bankrupt.
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“The Americans do not think a British Galileo would be sufficiently different to GPS,”
I wouldn't trust the Americans on any matters of another positioning system. They actively lobbied to kill Galileo and even threatened that during a conflict they would shoot the Galileo satellites down. They see any other GPS system as a military threat.
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I do however recognise that any time in the past 150 years America and the UK have both been involved in armed conflict, they've been on the same side.
That counts.
Dr Bleddyn Bowen isn't a space expert (Score:5, Informative)
"Dr Bleddyn Bowen, a space policy expert at the University of Leicester." Leicester isn't a particularly prestigious university, and Bowen's actual job title is "Lecturer in International Relations".
Calling him a "Space Policy Expert" is a ridiculous overstatement by "The Guardian". He admits as much in his most recent tweet.
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I just checked his Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/bleddb [twitter.com]
Nothing about him not being an expert that I could see on there. In fact he has re-tweeted several threads from other experts backing up his assertions. One talks about how they plan to use L band, which is very different from the Ka and Ku bands that other GNSS use. Lots of interesting technical detail.
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Well, he says:"A quote of mine is leading the Guardian’s writeup of the OneWeb navigation technology story. Not sure how to fee about that. Other than like Wallace wearing the wrong trousers."
Which I took to mean that he does not consider himself an expert in the field. It's refreshingly honest that he said so, and it's entirely understandable that he would involve himself in the discussion that followed.
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You could link to the actual tweet: https://twitter.com/bleddb/sta... [twitter.com]
He means he feels like he is being taken for a ride by the mechanical trousers in the film because his twitter feed is full of people asking him about the issue. If you read the replies and his replies to those it's clear that's what he means.
If you read the rest of his feed it's full of posts and retweets about how bad this idea is.
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Do you have a counter argument or did you just come to make a two tiered ad-hominem attack without actually disagreeing with anything?
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If The Guardian decide to lead their story with a quote from somebody who openly admits to not being an expert in the field, do I not have the right to point that out?
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But do you have a counterpoint? I mean I'm not an expert philosopher or a professional debtor but that doesn't make it any less valid to point out that you did nothing but provide an ad-hominem attack. It's intellectually dishonest.
Be better.
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Really? How many rockets have been launched from the Leicester's "National Space Centre"? Zero you say? And the "National Space Centre" is just a small museum?
If Leicester has as many space professors as you claim, why didn't The Guardian speak to one of them instead of a "Lecturer in International Relations"?
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Where's God during all of this? (Score:2)
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Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children???
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Whacky idea... (Score:2)
It seems like the Brits... (Score:2)
...have 'the best people' too.
Welcome to Brexit (Score:2)
Is there a list of all BREXIT repercussions? (Score:2)
Every other week something new seems to pop up. This one is pretty big. A nav satellite system is not trivial technically nor financially.
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The sad funny part is that the brexiteers can't blame this one on the EU anymore... .
But they’ll probably try anyhow? Add to this they’ll probably deny Brexit has now cost more than their European contributions. What a serious fuck up. Pride over sense?
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Don't get me wrong, I too think that it was a not a well thought through move. Ideas of making Britain Great again and into something like what the British Empire used to be are delusional in my eyes. That just doesn't work without having numerous colonies around the world that can be economically exploited.
But the situation is a bit more
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The UK pushed really hard not to have non-EU members have core access.
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