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…
> That use case is not one any commercial provider anywhere is going to build an ML model for. Why not? It's been a while since the west has had a war where the moral details are so clear. If I had a company like this I'd be jumping on the opportunity.
The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
131–140 of 225 posts
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That use case is not one any commercial provider anywhere is going to build an ML model for. Why not? It's been a while since the west has had a war where the moral details are so clear. If I had a company like this I'd be jumping on the opportunity.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/121.1#:~:text=Catego... https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/22/121.1#:~:text=(3)%20...
Beforehand, I mean. There are market opportunities out there, but the problem is they're impossible to see coming. Nobody thought Russia would invade Ukraine, until it did. Nobody thought Ukraine would survive for a week after Russia invaded, until it did. So there was absolutely no possibility anyone would have seen a potential market for tracking Russian tanks in Ukraine and selling that data to the Ukrainian military.
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It would risk giving away information on the capabilities of US national security assets. But the actual satellites can be seen with the naked eye, and their orbits are known. The resolution is a linear function of their height, so it can be easily inferred, or at least bounded, by that of a "hubble" at a much lower height. If they are really worried about this scalar piece of data, they can easily blur the images…
"The resolution is a linear function of their height..." Incorrect. Even in the consumer camera space, resolution is a function of distance, native sensor resolution, lens magnification, lens quality, shutter speed (because the target is moving), stability of the tripod, etc. Same thing is true of orbital imagery: your effective resolution is a function of your optics, your sensor, the ability of your attitude contro…
Hey Glen,
Is there some way to email you? There isn't any contact information on your profile.
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#134I found the argument(s) interesting although the animations hurt readability and clarity. 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., watt…
Thanks for taking the time to write this out, great info. There are two hallmarks of an application that differentiate it from a data service: 1. Earth observation is a minority of the data that it manages and maintains 2. Users are not just presented with information, they are prompted to take action I would argue that levels L3 and L4 are probably falling into the same trap as the data feeds I described in the blog…
OK, in your hallmark #1, I suppose you're distinguishing between, say, topographic or land-cover maps that come from remote sensing and that might be useful in flood risk assessment, versus property-valuation or storm-drainage infrastructure maps that don't come from remote sensing and that might also be needed for flood risk assessment?
I.e., the value is in a complete "application" solution to a given problem rather than in hoping for a "killer remote-sensing data product" that would (in theory) solve the problem?
About your question, I'm on the analysis side, not the infrastructure side, so I don't know about the download metrics - they must be tracked but a quick search didn't turn up anything accessible. The download metrics aren't super-valuable because lots of people/groups do programmatic downloads -- the cost is zero.
I think the L0-L4 distinctions is trying to illustrate these points:
-- L0, L1 data are sensor-dependent and not really useful to solving problems
-- There's a lot of value in developing calibrated data (L2+)
-- Basic visual imagery often isn't calibrated so subsequent processing will necessarily be ad hoc and thus of limited value for any consequential decision-making
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#135Me: 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…
The problem I have experienced first-hand is basically that >individual farms might want to look at relative growth rates of corn in their fields, or soil moisture levels, etc. a LOT of people want this, but they would never pay $x,xxx/month for that, ever.
Drones exist, and cost a lot less then thousands to buy. Plus a drone can be used when you want to, the satellite goes overhead every few weeks and if it is a cloudy day too bad. For farms the information from images is only valuable on a few specifc days, too early and you don't learn anything, a few days later and it is too late to do anything about it.
I work for John Deere. I can't speak for the company. I'll confirm we are intersted in imagining, but I won't comment on our plans to deal with the above issues.
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#136I'm reminded of the Simpsons episode where the government says they used satellites to look for the trillion dollar bill at Mr. Burns's mansion, but all it told them was it's not on the roof.
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#137Me: 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?
I expect the US us giving the analysis not the images. Ukraine generally shouldn't be looking at raw images, they need data to inform how and where to attack, but the us has experts to provide that thus allowing more people to go to the front.
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The resolution is a linear function of their height..." Incorrect. Even in the consumer camera space, resolution is a function of distance, native sensor resolution, lens magnification, lens quality, shutter speed (because the target is moving), stability of the tripod, etc. Same thing is true of orbital imagery: your effective resolution is a function of your optics, your sensor, the ability of your attitude contro…
Hey Glen, Is there some way to email you? There isn't any contact information on your profile.
Hi. Nice blog you have. I left a comment.
Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#139Me: 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…
> The problem with space imagery is that almost everyone who wants it has a niche use case But this is a good problem. It's like saying "the problem with motors is that everyone who uses them has a niche use case" (submarines, cars, airplanes, industrial machinery...). Or that "the problem with microscopy is that everyone who wants it has a niche use case". And indeed it does! Microscopes for biologists are different…
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Re: The satellite imagery industry still has no idea what customers want
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> like saying "the problem with motors is that everyone who uses them has a niche use case" (submarines, cars, airplanes, industrial machinery...) This is a good analogy. How many companies say “I’ll build a sweet motor and then find a customer for it”? They don’t. They build the motor for the application. (More often, they build something close to the final product.)
> They don’t. Wrong. They absolutely do. In fact I’d wager the vast majority of motors are essentially commodity goods. Even if you were thinking of just combustion engines, its really not the case, most engines get reused many times. Which makes sense, its an outsized engineering problem to optimize so you’d want to maximize your return. For example. https://www.mcmaster.com/electric-motors/
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