[time-nuts] Galileo funding (bailout)

[Jason Rabel]

So true, so true.

It's funny seeing some GOES receivers & antennas still being listed on eBay
for hundreds of dollars when they have no signal to receive.

Something I've always wondered about the ACTS system, is there any public
code so that a person could run their own local ACTS server?

I don't know if you follow the NTP newsgroup, but if one guy over there had
his way, your quartz, cesium, and rubidium clocks would also be obsolete as
he wants to change the length of a second... lol. ;)

As for surplus from the Galileo project, I don't think we will see
anything... Perhaps the single Satellite will go up for auction on eBay so
they can recover a little bit of their costs from this boondoggle...
*snicker*


> An interesting feature of surplus timing gear is that while quartz,
> cesium, and rubidium clocks still count seconds when they are
> surplused, time transfer systems such as those based on Omega,
> Loran-C, GOES, WWV, CHU, WWVB, ACTS, NTP, GPS,
> GLONASS, and Galileo are only useful when the complex and
> expensive transmitting infrastructure behind them is still operational.
> 
> Earlier forms of Loran are gone. Omega is gone. I watched the
> last bits as GOES died a few years ago and now all the GOES
> receivers in my collection are effectively silent. I suspect, over
> the decades, as budgets and technology changes, that the same
> will eventually occur to all timing systems that we know today.
> 
> /tvb