I would imagine the problem with this model is that there isn't actually a whole lot you can do if you rent time on a satellite. Given an orbiting sensor suite,

I would imagine the problem with this model is that there isn't actually a whole lot you can do if you rent time on a satellite. Given an orbiting sensor suite, all you can do is log the sensor data and send it back to earth - you can't really run experiments or anything. So the company that owns the satellites can do that, and then try to . . . sell the data? That's basically the business model. That works for satellite imaging companies, but what other sensors might that work for? And how many paying customers could you reasonably have?