And I thought they had to, because they weren't allowed to have the military part of Galileo. Which makes the UK the only country without access to high precision GPS.

They had no success negotiation access to Galileo, so they are forced door a Homebrew alternative.

America is the leader with GPS, last time I checked.

To be honest, a lot of your comments lack realism and objective references. I'm 100% sure you live in the UK

Having done a lot of the work here there is considerable expertise in the UK, thus it will be far cheaper for the UK to go it alone than would otherwise be the case.

'SSTL was selected to supply the navigational payloads for the first 14 Galileo Full Operational Capability satellites, in partnership with prime contractor OHB System AG of Germany, in January 2010. In 2012, the OHB-SSTL partnership was awarded a second contract to supply a further 8 spacecraft for the programme and earlier this year the Batch 3 contract was again awarded to the OHB-SSTL partnership.'

Source: https://www.sstl.co.uk/media-hub/latest-news/2017/sstl-celeb...

> To be honest, a lot of your comments lack realism and objective references. I'm 100% sure you live in the UK

:)

Realism:

It's logical that the UK was involved when they were a EU member ( through partnerships as your opinionated source mentions).

1) It doesn't mean they are a leader ( as you mentioned).

2) It doesn't mean they have the expertise to set everything up ( which they didn't want to, since they tried negotiating for military access to Galileo)

3) It's not going to be cheaper now. They already spent 2,1 billion pounds when they were in the EU.

:)

Edit: can't reply anymore, but I do agree that I don't work in that sector and I don't know those companies.

It would surprise me that there is no ( current) EU-member alternative for the work that SSTL had done.

Edit 2: the current owner of SSTL is EADS ( Airbus). Which has it headquarters in France. SSTL is founded in the UK though.

Edit 3: Inmarsat History is synical in your statement that the UK is better off alone with brexit. Since it's origin is because of international cooperation

:)

Deary me! I don't think anyone serious in the satellite business would argue that SSTL are anything but a world leader in some aspects. Apart from that there's also Inmarsat: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inmarsat

The UK also has world leading Geomatics capabilities. I work in this sector.

I think one of the positive factors for the UK as regards Galileo is that technology has advanced hugely since Galileo's inception, thus a new UK system can be superior and far cheaper, hence the confidence behind the idea.

More evidence of UK leadership: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46825269

'UK engineers have completed the build of the novel Quantum satellite.

The telecommunications platform will be the first fully software-defined spacecraft. '