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Cube sats are about to shake this business up. In the past the cost of entry was very high = few entrants, that went to fewer by predatory pricing against any n
by aurizon 6y ago
Cube sats are about to shake this business up. In the past the cost of entry was very high = few entrants, that went to fewer by predatory pricing against any new entrants.
The old birds are complex beasts that operate across many spectral bands and are task commanded. The Cubes will be single band small units with large lenses and larger sensors. They will accumulate and send data to a ground based cloud and as time goes by will cover the earth in all bands and in all seasons - all of which will be saleable at a price that will make the old commercial monopolists to crap their pants. I am sure they will lobby to limit these cubes, but many are immune to pressure. They might well agree to no military base imagery. A trip to the planetlabs web site does show that a huge acquisitive beurocracy lurks therein as there is zero mention of any sort of fee structure = high fees IMHO, it is not the solution for all mankind that cube sats might bring. Their videos seem to be staffed by summer students??
- campchase 6y agoPlanet has hundreds of cube sats in orbit already. Low and medium resolution data is not suitable for most commercial use cases. The only way to get high res data is from big lenses = big satellites = big costs. I agree that cubes sats are exciting especially for non-optical use cases like blanketing the earth with internet or GPS-RO or Synthetic Aperture Radar. But they are not a game-changer for visible-spectrum earth observation data in my opinion.
- aurizon 6y agoYes, but a crack in the monopoly edifice has appeared. It is true - the large lenses rule - for now. I anticipate larger sensors, coupled with Cassegrain reflectors(which are far lighter than glass and fold to shrink the path and can fold even more for launch - unfolding on cue) will soon be flying and will begin the cube sat's climb towards parity with the big boys as the weight saving will enable their implementation in cube sats. This will make the big boys fight back via access and price relaxations. I hope the cube sats people stay independant and do not make common cause with the big boys? Better and lower power SARs and control electronics are emerging to run within the smaller power budget of the cubes.