that the approval could be blocked by the veto of the US pushed Brussels to seek
the votes of China, just as it had sought those of the Russians by buying the masers.
It was no secret that Beijing was planning to build its own satellite system, the
Beidou system, that was intended to provide the People’s Liberation Army with
full coverage of the entire Asian continent. When Chinese authorities later
announced that they wanted to expand Beidou all over the world by also using
transmission frequencies that overlapped with the Galileo radio signals, an understandable sense of frustration emerged in Brussels. The situation worsened when
the press published WikiLeaks files with details of how US officials had pressured
governments of various European countries to stop collaborating with China.
Also, and most importantly, the press
40
revealed that Beijing officials, after trying
to buy masers from EADS, managed to get twenty rubidium atomic clocks from a
Swiss manufacturer. According to many observers, these chronographs would be
now aboard the Beidou satellites in orbit
41
and are currently operational.
Political pressures from Washington and the failed cooperation with China
greatly increased the willingness of the European Union’s managerial elite to
build Galileo despite delays and financial difficulties. In the end, the project was
considered – especially in Paris and Berlin – as one of the milestones of the future
European political and military integration, and therefore it assumed a symbolic
and political value such as to exceed any evaluation of economic opportunity.
In 2011, the sudden firing of Berry Smutny, CEO of the German aerospace
company OHB, caused a real stir. OHB was the beneficiary of the lucrative ESA
contracts to build the Galileo satellites.
42
According to the Norwegian newspaper
Aftenposten, which published the details of a meeting between American diplomats and Smutny in Berlin, the CEO declared confidentially that the project was a
waste of European taxpayer money and had been imposed on Brussels to favour
the military interests of Paris. The company executive put forward disturbing
hypotheses that the French were engaging in industrial espionage on German satellite technologies, to the point that they could potentially do more damage to the
Berlin economy tan could the secret services of Washington or Moscow.
43
In this unideal situation, the European Union eventually obtained American
support at the International Telecommunications Union for the approval of
Galileo’s transmission frequencies, but this only happened after the US decided to
build a new ultra-precise version of rubidium atomic clocks, to be sent into orbit
onboard the third generation of GPS satellites. European ambitions were therefore
40
https://www.reuters.com/article/breakout-beidou-idUSL4N0JJ0J320131222.
41
Madry, Scott. 2015. Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Their Applications. Cham:
Springer-Verlag, 94.
42
https://spacenews.com/satellite-executive-felled-wikileaks-diplomatic-cable-disclosure/.
43
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/business/global/19galileo.html.
GPS: The Stellar Clock 63
the votes of China, just as it had sought those of the Russians by buying the masers.
It was no secret that Beijing was planning to build its own satellite system, the
Beidou system, that was intended to provide the People’s Liberation Army with
full coverage of the entire Asian continent. When Chinese authorities later
announced that they wanted to expand Beidou all over the world by also using
transmission frequencies that overlapped with the Galileo radio signals, an understandable sense of frustration emerged in Brussels. The situation worsened when
the press published WikiLeaks files with details of how US officials had pressured
governments of various European countries to stop collaborating with China.
Also, and most importantly, the press
40
revealed that Beijing officials, after trying
to buy masers from EADS, managed to get twenty rubidium atomic clocks from a
Swiss manufacturer. According to many observers, these chronographs would be
now aboard the Beidou satellites in orbit
41
and are currently operational.
Political pressures from Washington and the failed cooperation with China
greatly increased the willingness of the European Union’s managerial elite to
build Galileo despite delays and financial difficulties. In the end, the project was
considered – especially in Paris and Berlin – as one of the milestones of the future
European political and military integration, and therefore it assumed a symbolic
and political value such as to exceed any evaluation of economic opportunity.
In 2011, the sudden firing of Berry Smutny, CEO of the German aerospace
company OHB, caused a real stir. OHB was the beneficiary of the lucrative ESA
contracts to build the Galileo satellites.
42
According to the Norwegian newspaper
Aftenposten, which published the details of a meeting between American diplomats and Smutny in Berlin, the CEO declared confidentially that the project was a
waste of European taxpayer money and had been imposed on Brussels to favour
the military interests of Paris. The company executive put forward disturbing
hypotheses that the French were engaging in industrial espionage on German satellite technologies, to the point that they could potentially do more damage to the
Berlin economy tan could the secret services of Washington or Moscow.
43
In this unideal situation, the European Union eventually obtained American
support at the International Telecommunications Union for the approval of
Galileo’s transmission frequencies, but this only happened after the US decided to
build a new ultra-precise version of rubidium atomic clocks, to be sent into orbit
onboard the third generation of GPS satellites. European ambitions were therefore
40
https://www.reuters.com/article/breakout-beidou-idUSL4N0JJ0J320131222.
41
Madry, Scott. 2015. Global Navigation Satellite Systems and Their Applications. Cham:
Springer-Verlag, 94.
42
https://spacenews.com/satellite-executive-felled-wikileaks-diplomatic-cable-disclosure/.
43
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/business/global/19galileo.html.
GPS: The Stellar Clock 63