131–140 of 171 posts
I think there’s going to be an API for everything renissance and this is just another example. As a coder being able to automate all the things and create new businesses, processes, workflows it’s a great time to be a coder. Aka reaching beyond the cloud.
I'm... not convinced this is a decent offering. At the same time, I'm repeatedly wrong with this whole cloud computing, so maybe I'm just that person stuck with the old ways and telling everyone else they're doing it wrong. But it seems like a recipe that combines so many of the worst parts of running a groundstation. The setup can't easily be specialized enough to really milk capability (say, different ways to corre…
First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? The examples provided in the article are incredibly vague, and the linked Wikipedia articles didn't help clarify.
Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs involved? How much does it cost to manufacture and launch a small satellite? What about buying a dish and operating your own ground station? What about regulatory fees for licensing and registration? There's a few mentions of hobbyists, but I have a hard time imagining many people with enough money and interest to deal with all these challenges. Is there some secret cabal of millionaires and billionaires that are really into space?
Seems somewhat similar to what Descartes Labs is doing - a "data refinery that combines data from diverse sources, cleans it up and makes it ready for modeling - and a platform to upon which to build living, learning models" [1] [1] https://www.descarteslabs.com/
I'm the CEO of Descartes Labs. It's indeed true that we've built a data refinery that ingests lots and lots of satellite data. The data refinery can be seen as a two-sided marketplace. On one side, we form partnerships with satellite and other geospatial data companies (in addition to open source data from NASA, ESA,and others) and pull in all of that data. On the other side, scientists can run computations over huge…
Also, what's the TAM in your specific market vs the AWS product's market? How has the TAM changed in the past 5 years?
Lastly, I heard your head of engineering brews better beer than any of your competitors. Is that true? Can be provide samples?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
also x planet and x spire. what if i told you, a good rule of thumb was 1/3rd for launch 1/3 rd for launch and 1/3rd for everything else. this is a huge game changer if anyone uses this stripped down early product, which i agree is very limited. You want a lot more thought on tracking and the different options for ground to space comms
Oh, hey Newman, we chatted a couple times while you were at Planet. Sure, the needs between early testing and production are different, but I still argue that this does neither. When we were doing early work on the satellites and ground segments, being able to get right into the belly of every part of the system was super useful, as we dealt with different things acting up, weird workarounds, unsure technology direct…
I'm... not convinced this is a decent offering. At the same time, I'm repeatedly wrong with this whole cloud computing, so maybe I'm just that person stuck with the old ways and telling everyone else they're doing it wrong. But it seems like a recipe that combines so many of the worst parts of running a groundstation. The setup can't easily be specialized enough to really milk capability (say, different ways to corre…
I don't know anything about this field, so I'm hoping I could bug you with some questions because it seems really fascinating! First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? The examples provided in the article are incredibly vague, and the linked Wikipedia articles didn't help clarify. Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs invol…
Planet operates imagery satellites, and as far as I know that's the bulk of commercial data _produced_ in orbit that needs to be downlinked. Other commercial services that could include radar data (ICEYE, Capella), ship/plane monitoring (Spire, Iridium NEXT), or high-latency low-bandwidth data (think devices out in the field, on vehicles, with relatively light telemetry and/or control needs). Telecom is usually "bent pipe" (think dumb repeaters) and not any kind of store and forward setup that would use this.
In the future, I could see some broadening of the field with more tech demo/development that needs dedicated hardware, and the possibility of commercial experiments run in an automated orbiting lab downlinking data.
Of course, all of those also need what's called TT&C (Telemetry, Tracking, and Control) links, which I've nearly always seen on a separate physical radio. That tends to be a less demanding link, and more likely to be able to make use of something like this IMO.
> Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs involved?
Unfortunately, I very much cannot do more than point at what's already public; that's one thing Planet is very tight-lipped about. The idea that one spends about as much on launch as on the hardware they launch seems about right, you can go see what Rocketlab[1] and SpaceX[2] quote as prices. I'm sure you can imagine there's still a lot of negotiations once you're talking about big stickers.
Someone's already mentioned SatNOGS[3] further down in the comments. They seem neat although I haven't looked too much into them yet. Schools are spinning up a surprising number of satellite projects, and amateurs are already developing hardware, running tests, and practicing with radioing the hardware that's already up there. I'm sure it's not far from some pitching together on the group buy of a very small amount of launch space.
> Is there some secret cabal of millionaires and billionaires that are really into space?
Yes, but they're not so secret. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, off the top of my head. DFJ and Data Collective are VCs that have been fairly interested, I'm sure there are more looking to get a piece now.
[1] http://www.rocketlabusa.com/book-my-launch/ [2] https://www.spacex.com/about/capabilities [3] https://satnogs.org/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
NASA telescopes used to be governed by ITAR. They've relaxed those a lot, but you had to use software to transmit the data encrypted all the way to your science pipelines (e.g. Telescope to White Sands to Goddard to $INSTITUTION)
That’s because they’re telescopes. NASA’s telescopes are basically spy satellites pointed outwards.
It’s far cheaper to send bits to space than actual matter on a rocket.
It would also promote re-use of satellites and mitigate Kessler syndrome (unless induced demand makes it worse).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know anything about this field, so I'm hoping I could bug you with some questions because it seems really fascinating! First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? The examples provided in the article are incredibly vague, and the linked Wikipedia articles didn't help clarify. Could you give some ballpark numbers and breakdown of the costs invol…
> First of all, could you give some concrete examples of the kinds of data people using this would be handling? Planet operates imagery satellites, and as far as I know that's the bulk of commercial data _produced_ in orbit that needs to be downlinked. Other commercial services that could include radar data (ICEYE, Capella), ship/plane monitoring (Spire, Iridium NEXT), or high-latency low-bandwidth data (think device…
also, ditto what he said. This news was certainly an interesting conversation that happened at Planet HQ today, but a couple of folks knew the people doing this work in Amazon before it was announced today. There are a lot of regulatory, licensing, and construction hurdles. Not the mention, the placement of the ground stations is going to be crucial, but otherwise...I can see upstarts in the smallsat industry totally taking advantage of this should their orbits compliment the deployment sites of the ground stations.
We build and operate our own ground stations for the most part and I can understand/sympathize that we're fortunate enough to do so since much of our business depends on it. It's a costly exercise for sure...