[extropy-chat] SPACE: Microsats launching

[Emlyn]

On 04/10/05, Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The important thing with these cubesats is that for the now, we want to
> come up with ideas for cube sats that could produce product that would
> be salable. For example, a Japanese group put up one with a camera that
> snaps pictures every time the tumbling satellite rotates the earth into
> the cameras view, thus classifying as an "earth observation satellite".
>
> What sort of data collection could be done in low earth orbit which
> could be priced to pay for the satellite, plus operating costs and
> profit, that is of sufficient value for this sort of investment and is
> either ignored by the big sat operators, or undercuts them?

How about earth observation for spotting big SOS signals (as per the
"Worldwide SOS system" thread)? Surely there is a way to get people,
eg: governments, to pay for the service? They pay periodically, and
alerts about SOSs in their territory get forwarded to the relevant
government nominated contact. Surely a few major government contracts
would pay for such an operation?

Maybe you could also do custom image recognition and alerting for
people. There might be all kinds of observable things that
organisations want to be alerted about.

--
Emlyn

http://emlynoregan.com   * blogs * music * software *