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The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

joemorrison.substack.com

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Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#61

Post by maxerickson »

mmaunder wrote: post #57

I want SpaceX to put cameras on their Starlink fleet and provide near real-time satellite views via a Google maps interface down to 30cm resolution across most of the planet. As they phase out old birds and deploy new ones this is feasible for them. Each bird already has connectivity. They just need the cameras.

Worldview-4 (a commercial 30-cm satellite) had a reasonably similar orbit and 10 times of the mass of a Starlink satellite. Even if they are able to significantly improve on that design, it's still going to be a pretty big "just need the camera".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldView-4

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#62

Post by hammock »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #46

Me: 20 years in the defense space business. Stating my own opinion. This is basically right. The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case, and those few organizations without a niche use case (the US Weather Service, various militaries, etc) generally want imagery that's so specialized to their own problem that they have to spec, buy, and operate their own orbital assets. T…

I see a similar thing in the consumer data industry. Everyone has their own niche case that they want to find (diaper buyers with 2-2.5 year olds, or Etsy merchants, or flavored whisky early adopters, or new movers in houses 20-40 years old, or whatever) and you end up building umpteen custom models with the raw data that instantly get outdated the moment you use them.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#63

Post by Spooky23 »

mikestew wrote: post #13
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #7

> Allow me to put it more succinctly: selling derived data as a subscription product does. not. work. I don’t care what it is. The juice is never worth the squeeze.¹ Count cars. Count airplanes. Count ships. Segment land cover. Track oil inventories. Estimate biofuels. Measure water levels. Etc. Etc. Etc. I see that he outlined a few exceptions at the footnote… I'll also add Plaid. I think this guy is making some hug…

Fed Ex (quite surprising) have decided that freely providing delivery dates to consumers is too value to leave to third parties... ...or to leave to the shipping endpoint customer, either. I can't tell you how many clicks it takes to determine when a particular shipment will arrive at my door. Off the top of my head: 0. Email from vendor: "your package has shipped!" 1. Log in to the Fedex account. 2. One would think…

Sounds like you’re trying to use a delivery portal but didn’t finish setting it up.

I use the UPS version as I get alot of UPS packages. They typically email me once the shipment is picked up, typically before the sender does. They have a dashboard where you can see all inbound shipments as well. This requires registration and address validation, but not a UPS “account”.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#64

Post by soniman »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #46

Me: 20 years in the defense space business. Stating my own opinion. This is basically right. The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case, and those few organizations without a niche use case (the US Weather Service, various militaries, etc) generally want imagery that's so specialized to their own problem that they have to spec, buy, and operate their own orbital assets. T…

You don't think the US military is providing for all of Ukraine's satellite intelligence needs?

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#65

Post by bromuro »

campchase wrote: post #29
annoyingnoob wrote: post #3

I found the animated gifs distracting, it took away from whatever you are trying to convey (for me).

I don't mind you saying this - I think my style is very off-putting to some. The same things that disenchant you about the style are what make others love it. I try to be entertaining and informative, rather than just informative, because that's what makes it enjoyable for me. But like all entertainment, it's stylized, so it will put some people off. Hopefully you found the content valuable, at least!

Please, think about us living in poor countries with expensive and slow internet connections.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#66

Post by RosanaAnaDana »

randomluck040 wrote: post #60
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in complete agreement with this point of view, with about 22 years experience in the remote sensing space, ~10 of that in private industry. And its not just Planet that is hung-up on this same failed business model. Its also Hexagon, and a myriad of other earth-observation providers. Some are so difficult to work with its literally cheaper to go buy an airplane and a wide format camera and roll your own.

I would love to know more about the possibilities of Remote Sensing in the private industry. I‘m working in academia and have the feeling that I’m in an echo chamber all day every day and no insights at all. Any chance I can contact you or can you point me into a direction?

Sure, check my profile.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#67

Post by lmc »

teamga wrote: post #32

Weather alerts?

Weather data is usually derived from geostationary satellites which is sort of an adjacent field to the lower-orbit imagery the article is based on (i believe?)... but i know of a couple of projects doing analytics here - not sure about commercial potential though, they're early stage startups or academia.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#68

Post by mikestew »

kccqzy wrote: post #40
mikestew wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fed Ex (quite surprising) have decided that freely providing delivery dates to consumers is too value to leave to third parties... ...or to leave to the shipping endpoint customer, either. I can't tell you how many clicks it takes to determine when a particular shipment will arrive at my door. Off the top of my head: 0. Email from vendor: "your package has shipped!" 1. Log in to the Fedex account. 2. One would think…

You don't need to log in or even create an account at FedEx just to track deliveries. You just need the tracking number. It's the first thing you see when you go to the homepage of fedex.com

This is not news to me. But of the four or so commenters saying basically the same thing (you don't need to log in), it does not seem odd that the user experience sucks less if one does NOT establish at the beginning that one has an account for such things? What the hell is that whole "Manage Delivers" page for, then?

But telling me I'm doing it wrong for using an advertised feature, yeah, that's less than useful.

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#69

Post by lmc »

soniman wrote: post #64
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #46

Me: 20 years in the defense space business. Stating my own opinion. This is basically right. The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case, and those few organizations without a niche use case (the US Weather Service, various militaries, etc) generally want imagery that's so specialized to their own problem that they have to spec, buy, and operate their own orbital assets. T…

You don't think the US military is providing for all of Ukraine's satellite intelligence needs?

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/04/how-us-intel-worked-with...

Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want

#70

Post by campchase »

hammock wrote: post #62
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #46

Me: 20 years in the defense space business. Stating my own opinion. This is basically right. The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case, and those few organizations without a niche use case (the US Weather Service, various militaries, etc) generally want imagery that's so specialized to their own problem that they have to spec, buy, and operate their own orbital assets. T…

I see a similar thing in the consumer data industry. Everyone has their own niche case that they want to find (diaper buyers with 2-2.5 year olds, or Etsy merchants, or flavored whisky early adopters, or new movers in houses 20-40 years old, or whatever) and you end up building umpteen custom models with the raw data that instantly get outdated the moment you use them.

That's very interesting, I don't know anything about the consumer data industry.
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