Hi Supertramp et al,Apologies for some spelling in prior post; a...

Hi Supertramp et al,

Apologies for some spelling in prior post; a side effect of a few great reds (or alfluence of incahol).

I really believe it will be some time...maybe 5-8 years before satellite based platforms will be able compete with NEA aerial on a cost * resolution basis. NEA are rightly trying to commoditise imagry data and place it within easy reach of everyday users. Satellite data time is still way too prohibitive for all but the big users. I dont yet have any pricing info for access to new providers such as Skybox but I'd suggest we're still looking at many $10,000s.

Theres no doubt that satellites would be able to compete in large scale medium definition, remote geospatial contracts. But thats not NEAs market.

What I found really interesting was the algorithmic analysis that these sat providers are promoting which can work very well from high frequency fligh-overs and differentiation of pixel data. EG, can analyse traffic flow into a shopping center car park and hence extrapolate center revenue of a competitor. Or monitor the real time progess of the US winter wheat crop and get the inside running on the wheat report (= killing on futures markets)Spooky stuff. This is real-time, high end intel data that large corporations will pay a lot for and will not be 'commoditised' soon.

And it still costs a lot to put one of these up ($20m est) and they need a minimum of 28. So with ground stations and data bases, there's probably little change from $1b which wont be easy to amortise in the early years.

And lets not forget the paranoia of the US. It still has a ban on satellite imagry with resolution sub 50cm/pixel. This may change but I could see a few republican senators demanding such data remain within NSA hands and not 'others'.

So I think it'll be quite a while before they really p*ss in NEAs patch. But still fascinating nevertheless.

Cheers,