These have to be spy satellites. GPS is just a timing signal, in space. Technology we had 40 years ago. There is no way you need $100M to build this and have special government authorization to collect the debris.
1. These will be the most accurate GPS satellites available for civilian use. Precision costs money.
2. GPS has huge military implications. These satellites will be leveraged by the military. There are literally military secretes involved in these satellites.
3. The 100M is for the launch, not the satellites. Space X's standard fee is 67M/launch. It seems fair to attribute a lot of the premium to extra security costs around handling military technology.
US spy sats cost an order of magnitude more. Like a billion. And you don't spy from 22000km. That's a GNSS orbit. You do that from low earth orbit. It makes no sense being 40x as far away than you need to, needing that much more magnification (if optical) or signal strength (if EM espionage)
I'm pretty sure this is just Galileo. Yeah it's just timing but Galileo has high accuracy and does SAR reception too. And it's government so the price goes up :)
Also, the EU as an entity does not have a military or espionage agency. If someone does that in Europe it's coming from a country, not the whole EU.
Right, Europe's GNSS birds have the same extra carrier as the current US GPS birds, but whereas the US can say "That's for military use" the EU can't because it does not have a military, so it says that's a "Public safety" feature.
There was another comment about how the $100M is for the rocket and not the satellites, but I'm here to point out that Aerojet Rocketdyne is charging something like $100M to refurbishexisting RS-25 engines from the Shuttle era for Artemis, per engine. In case it's not clear, that's not $100M to build the engine, it's already built and tested, it's $100M to "refurbish."
gamepsys|1 year ago
2. GPS has huge military implications. These satellites will be leveraged by the military. There are literally military secretes involved in these satellites.
3. The 100M is for the launch, not the satellites. Space X's standard fee is 67M/launch. It seems fair to attribute a lot of the premium to extra security costs around handling military technology.
wkat4242|1 year ago
I'm pretty sure this is just Galileo. Yeah it's just timing but Galileo has high accuracy and does SAR reception too. And it's government so the price goes up :)
Also, the EU as an entity does not have a military or espionage agency. If someone does that in Europe it's coming from a country, not the whole EU.
tialaramex|1 year ago
actinium226|1 year ago
adastra22|1 year ago
You read that right, I didn’t make a typo.
katrotz|1 year ago