Re: free
While I was quite happy to condemn the original politics of Galileo where the EU weasels, sorry ministers, said it would all be paid by the commercial use, we all knew that was a lie. With GPS being free and mostly available courtesy of Uncle Sam, almost no one will pay much for an alternative.
But I fully support the EU doing Galileo for the following reasons:
1) Developing the technology & infrastructure in the EU to do it.
2) Having an alternative to GPS in case Uncle Sam throws a hissy-fit (or a budget stale-mate turns things off).
3) Improving the overall reliability and accuracy for everyone as they then have a choice of GPS. GLONASS, BeiDou, Galelio and any other regional or LF options.
While it may represent several billion Euros, per person in the EU it is small change and we have already seen the UK gov piss away similar sums on failed IT projects over the last decade.
So cheap for what we get in my view.