Building a fullfledged satellite navigation system, on the same scale as Galileo or its American, Russian or Chinese counterparts, would cost billions of dollars and take years.

When it comes to satellite navigation, the British government has struggled to find its way over the last five years.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...