71–80 of 225 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, full disclosure, I work for a satellite imagery provider ( https://umbra.space/ ) where we're executing on the "just sell data" strategy, so I'm fully corrupted as far as seeing the Truth when my own ego and self interest is inextricably wrapped up in this debate.
Do yall have any plan to do work in the vis/IR space?
> 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…
I don't know your situation but it always seemed to be streamline for me to be:
0. Email with tracking number 123456789
1. https://www.fedex.com/fedextrack/?trknbr=123456789 into address bar
I've watched the area of commercialized remote sensing products with some interest, because I'm in the non-commercial remote sensing line.
The way NASA handles derived data products is (broadly) through "levels":
L0: measurement, still in instrument native units (e.g., DN's)
L1: calibrated and put into physical units (e.g., watts/cm2)
L2: scientifically-useful product (surface reflectance at 450nm, CO2 concentration)
L3: L2 that has been aggregated into a map, possibly also across time or instrument
L4: data has been filtered through a time-stepped physics-based model
One advantage of the above decomposition is that L2-L4 data can be validated with in-situ measurements. They are not just indexes -- they are targeted at a certain physically-measurable quantity.
This allows judgement whether the intermediate products (L2 CO2) are actually good, or improving. It also allows combining intermediate products from different sources (which is a hard problem). This is because both sources are trying to measure the same thing by design.
It is true that (for example) current spectroscopic remote sensing allows retrieval of a lot of L2 products for diverse communities -- scores of products, from mineral abundance to urban land use to agriculture to snow/ice to algae.
I do agree with OP that it will be impossible for any company to "cover the waterfront" of even half of these products. The measurement and each individual product take a lot of effort to get right.
But it also seems like there are commercial opportunities for some specific such products -- e.g., methane concentration/fluxes, or Evapotranspiration/soil moisture.
Wouldn't a subscription-based service to these products allow for continuous improvement of the underlying product, either through new measurements or through better algorithms?
So, in a nut, in the context of OP, what's the difference between:
-- an always-improving subscription-based "vertical service" for a L2 product like I just described,
vs.
-- a "problem-solving application" like the OP is advocating?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is, indeed, exactly what I am arguing. Either: * Just sell data or; * Just sell applications powered by your proprietary source of data Do not: * Sell derived/refined data as a half-measure * Sell both applications and wholesale data at the same time If you feel like that doesn't make sense, you are not alone. Almost everyone in the industry disagrees with my views on this topic based on how they run their busin…
> Sell both applications and wholesale data at the same time Bloomberg comes to mind since they offer wholesale access to data in addition to all the terminal functions.
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?
Plus, it doesn’t appear to be needed. The Russian military is proving to be god-awful at even basic field ops like camouflaging their vehicles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who are you to tell a company what they can sell. If they want to sell the raw data so people can do whatever they want with it, then sound reasonable. If they also want to sell data with some analysis already applied so that other people can buy that data because they don't have in-house for it and just want pretty pictures to put in the deck, then why not sell that too? You don't always have to order the biggie fri…
You can do anything you want. The OPs point is that it won’t be profitable/effective, that’s all.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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?