Sounds like near-realtime Google Earth is still way, way off.
“Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
51–60 of 151 posts
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can we maybe focus on the technology and not ideology?
> Can we maybe focus on the technology and not ideology? It's not ideology to see that applying certain inventions in particular domains will bring more negative consequences than in the others. Even if former are more lucrative than later. It's ideology to follow hyper-capitalistic approach and pretend that only profit matters.
This debate is as old as technology itself, and yet the naïve persist. Technological progress is inevitable and its application to war is also inevitable. All the amazing AI innovations, developed under the guise of AI-safety, are being used in surveillance cameras and weapons. And if the West doesn't develop the capability, then someone else will.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#53There were some comments yesterday on tracking subs, talking about the throughput requirements. It made me think about another bit of orbital infrastructure: in-orbit inference engines on satellites, so processing on vast gobs of data can happen without beaming the reams of data down. But yeah, seems like interoperable space protocols are starting up. BACN-Mesh works. Maybe not quite so important & I forget the name…
The problem with this is the energy required and then the heat you have to dump. I haven't penciled out the numbers but feels like at least a decade or two of model & gpu improvements to get anywhere close.
Can GPUs run reliably in an orbital radiation environment at all? The combination of extreme transistor density and zero error checking seems like the opposite of what you'd want in a space processor.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#54I figure the market for "low" resolution imagery will be destroyed when Starlink decides to add something like a fixed wide angle 100 megapixel cameras to every satellite. There are a lot of options for what to do from there, but getting continuous global imagery would suddenly be possible.
Planet Labs captures ~30 megapixel images (usually though, these are quoted in terms of pixel size, eg. 5 meters per pixel) and has hundreds of satellites on orbit. I don't know about Digital Globe's capabilities, but they are also in this business as are others. Would 100 megapixels make a big difference in availability?
RPi+ Yolo can do real time object recognition of cluster Tank, Trucks, BMP from orbit.
A service with real time streams of those objects + GPS data info directly from starlink for a select sets locations should worth a lot for DOD, NATO, Ukraine. DOD and NATO would likely flip the bill for everything need to build such system.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Can we maybe focus on the technology and not ideology? It's not ideology to see that applying certain inventions in particular domains will bring more negative consequences than in the others. Even if former are more lucrative than later. It's ideology to follow hyper-capitalistic approach and pretend that only profit matters.
This debate is as old as technology itself, and yet the naïve persist. Technological progress is inevitable and its application to war is also inevitable. All the amazing AI innovations, developed under the guise of AI-safety, are being used in surveillance cameras and weapons. And if the West doesn't develop the capability, then someone else will.
We all live on the same sphere, there is no West anymore.
There is now more ideological similarity between NYC and Shanghai than there is between NYC and rural America.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
On reflection, if my side doesn't militarize space then another side will dominate and make the rules. Might as well work with my side on it and also get scientific advancements out of it. Even in the advanced age of Star Trek we needed defensive capabilities.
Before you do that, you might want to understand the other side, and how ignorance contributes to an unnecessary arms race. We in the US have driven most provocation in space. The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined (including China). Whether it be the Strategic Defense Initiative, unilaterally leaving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Prompt Global Strike, hypersonic missiles, the US is de…
> The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined
That's because it's more expensive to pay people in a wealthy nation than a poor one. 25% of the budget just goes to paying salaries. You are totally uninformed about what you're talking about, and beyond naïve to think that the US can just stop investing in defense and somehow end up in a more peaceful world. Please stop stoking ideological arguments, we are in a forum about technology.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
On reflection, if my side doesn't militarize space then another side will dominate and make the rules. Might as well work with my side on it and also get scientific advancements out of it. Even in the advanced age of Star Trek we needed defensive capabilities.
Before you do that, you might want to understand the other side, and how ignorance contributes to an unnecessary arms race. We in the US have driven most provocation in space. The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined (including China). Whether it be the Strategic Defense Initiative, unilaterally leaving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Prompt Global Strike, hypersonic missiles, the US is de…
Russia and China have been weponizing space for decades and they already have working hypersonic missiles.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#58This guy is really drinking the space militarization Kool aid that the SDA is churning out. It's sad to see another young generation getting sucked into the military industrial complex
This kind of naive thinking is what lead to the West being caught off guard in Ukraine.
Russia and China have been weaponizing space for decades.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
On reflection, if my side doesn't militarize space then another side will dominate and make the rules. Might as well work with my side on it and also get scientific advancements out of it. Even in the advanced age of Star Trek we needed defensive capabilities.
Before you do that, you might want to understand the other side, and how ignorance contributes to an unnecessary arms race. We in the US have driven most provocation in space. The military budget is more than the next nine countries combined (including China). Whether it be the Strategic Defense Initiative, unilaterally leaving the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Prompt Global Strike, hypersonic missiles, the US is de…
So we waste money on space missiles that we probably never use except as a deterrent, and in the process some science comes out of it. It's not optimal but it's probably the best we can do in political reality.
Re: “Internet in space” will transform the satellite imagery industry
#60I figure the market for "low" resolution imagery will be destroyed when Starlink decides to add something like a fixed wide angle 100 megapixel cameras to every satellite. There are a lot of options for what to do from there, but getting continuous global imagery would suddenly be possible.
If there are significant delays in Starship and getting gen 2 satellites up in economically viable ways, you can bet Starlink will be looking for adjacent markets as a way to boost revenue. Currently, satellite imaging is about a $5B market. Nice, but telecom is, without exaggeration, 300X larger. Starlink being a global internet connectivity provider with 10s of millions of subscribers is really the only goal that matters for SpaceX.