[time-nuts] End of Loran-C in Europe confirmed.

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

--------
In message <5673C1BD.6070206 at rubidium.dyndns.org>, Magnus Danielson writes:

>It seems like the biggest problem for Loran-C is that they have not been 
>able to build an economical model to support it. That it complements the 
>GPS and GLONASS systems, as well as GALILEO in a somewhat different mode 
>disturbance is a technical detail which doesn't ripple though the reports.

No, it's really very simple, in Europe it is all about saving face.

The political bluff which should have moved GPS control to NATO
rather than DoD failed, and forced the EU to follow through.

Finding the claimed eager private investors failed predictably and in
the end EU had to fund Galileo with tax money, precisely like pretty
much every had predicted.

Then the draft European Radio Navigation Plan said that at few
millions on LORAN produced 40% of the benefit while all the billions
for Galileo hardly produced any[1].

In other words:  Some almost-pensioners with 50 year old cold-war
tech were about 100 times more cost-efficient than the biggest
political prestige project of EU's history.

No wonder all copies of that draft has vanished from the surface
of the planet.

Poul-Henning

[1] The two lost/marooned Galileo sats have cost about the same as
updating and running Loran-C for 10-15 years would have.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.