Not sure why the frantic movement of the map was necessary. Or a looping video, for that matter. Hold still for a while, let us watch stuff moving without moving the map. Reminds me of the faked Roswell "alien autopsy" video that showed a series very quick edits in succession, no way to focus on anything or get a good look at what is going on. Something seems fishy here.
Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
61–70 of 72 posts
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#62UrtheCast are working on something similar. Their camera recently made it to the ISS and the next step is a spacewalk to install it. http://www.urthecast.com
Ah yes, Uthercast
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7130768
They are owned by Longford. Longford owned perfect cover for intelligence assets in middle east (oilfields in Iraq), all of a sudden they sold those and took over spy sat startup.
CIA money laundering/cover for intelligence assets type of deal.
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#63Ask the NSA how to store data.
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#64This is childs-play compared to what the DoD are up to with WAPS, currently in the format of ARGUS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS
Simultaneous video surveillance of 8 x 8km with a single drone, at 15cm resolution.
I'm afraid to say that while this is neat, realtime video maps of the planet will be provided by drone tech, not satellites - for now. When we can stick something in geosync with amazing eyes at a low energy cost (space elevator), this picture may change - but until then... nope.
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#65This is childs-play compared to what the DoD are up to with WAPS, currently in the format of ARGUS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARGUS-IS Simultaneous video surveillance of 8 x 8km with a single drone, at 15cm resolution. I'm afraid to say that while this is neat, realtime video maps of the planet will be provided by drone tech, not satellites - for now. When we can stick something in geosync with amazing eyes at a l…
While impressive, I have a hard time believing this claim:
> As ARGUS floats overhead for months at a time, it dragnet tracks every moving person and vehicle and chronographs their movements, allowing forensic investigators to rewind the footage and watch the activities of anyone they select within the footage.
The amount of footage just one pod collects in a short span of time is monumental. They're storing what amounts to decades of footage for just one day's worth of operation. Maybe they have some criteria that trims unnecessary footage, but I can't imagine that saving all that much space as they don't want to miss anything.
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily, you still need to collect the transmission. You can still saturate a frequency no matter how focused if enough transmitters are hitting the same receiver.
Exactly. So just deploy enough receivers and focus the transmissions enough so that the frequencies don't get saturated.
Or the receivers track the satellites. This can be done electronically, no need for swivels and servos, just an array.
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#67The near-term future of disruptive spaceflight isn't sending big heavy objects into space---it's sending nano-satellites into orbit around the earth.
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#68They seem to be careful not to show a large object like a plane crossing the "seams" that appear in the video (similar to the seams in satellite imagery on maps where they've patched together data from multiple passes / satellites). When you see the cars on the freeway they seem to disappear at the seams. Does the camera have to be focused on an area the size of the blocks they show? This is still very impressive - I…
The video field of view is 1.1 by 2 km: http://skybox.com/uploads/10/08/imageryandvideospecsheet.pdf Purely speculating, not going on anything they’ve said: theoretically when they have more satellites you might be able to patch together a larger area with simultaneous video from several birds. You’d have a slightly ugly angle difference at the seam, of course. There may be technical constraints here that I’m not thi…
It looks more like the fov is 0.1 by 2 km (in this particular video).
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#69would LOVE to have a developer API to skybox. The things one could do!
Urthecast says they'll be offering one, although I don't know what they'll end up allowing: http://www.urthecast.com/developer What sort of things would you want an API for?
Oh, I was just thinking of how cool it would be to have a live satellite video to create my own mobile apps.
Urthecast seems like it provides images, what would be really awesome is if they offered some short time interval based image refreshing. (acquire new images every few minutes)
Re: Planes Landing in Beijing: Video from Space
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're still flying U-2s, which, along with certain drones, are far better observation platforms for real-time needs.
It's a mixed bag of emotions, funny, sad, amazed, that the USA is still flying the U2. Which is from the 60's, while the SR-71, the plane meant to replace it has already been decommissioned for over a decade now.
Just FYI, all the U-2s that are flying now were built in the 80s and feature numerous advances over the original generation of U-@s. I agree about the SR-71, I too have a soft spot for that plane. There is rumor of an SR-72 but AFAIK it's still on the drawing board.