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"Google Satellite" To Be Launched This Week
Lord Satri writes "Well, almost. Google signed an exclusivity deal with GeoEye regarding GeoEye-1, the most advanced high-resolution, civil, remote-sensing satellite to date. This must be annoying for other high-resolution, remote-sensing data users since Google already has an exclusivity deal in place with DigitalGlobe, the other major civil satellite imagery provider. From the CNet article: 'Under the deal, Google is the exclusive online mapping site that may use the imagery... in its Google Maps and Google Earth product. And as a little icing on the cake, Google's logo is on the side of the rocket set to launch the 4,300-pound satellite in six days from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. GeoEye-1 will orbit 423 miles above Earth, but it will be able to gather imagery with details the size of 41 centimeters... Google, though, is permitted to use data only with a resolution of 50 cm because of the terms of GeoEye's license with the US government.'"
50cm restriction? do they have something to hide??
Within 1-2 years other countries will have civilian spy satellites that break 50cm, putting American companies at a disadvantage.
The USA will have 3 choices:
Shoot the birds down, literally.
Shoot the birds down, politically - bully the other countries into imposing similar limits.
Lower or eliminate the artificial limit.
Anyone remember when encryption software was considered a munition? Apple and other companies had to go through hoops to export it, putting them at a distinct disadvantage over non-American companies.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Exclusivity agreements like this one are definitely quite nastily anti-competitive, which I would say is evil.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
Though at the time.. it was just a April Fools joke..
Exclusivity doesn't make Google's mapping products any better, it just makes their competitors' products worse. Sounds anti-competitive and "evil" to me.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
My understanding is that at 50cm resolution, an object that is 50cm across would appear as a single pixel on the image. So, a manhole cover in the street might show up as a single pixel at that resolution. A car's hood might be four pixels, etc. Objects that are smaller than 50cm should not be detectible, especially if they are close to the same color as the background. However, if you zoom in on almost any American city to maximum resolution on google maps's satellite view, you will clearly see traffic lines. Traffic lines are roughly 10cm wide. Often these resolve to two pixels.
So, either my understanding of satellite photo resolution is wrong, or Google can already go to 10cm, and possibly even 5cm resolution.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I keep hoping that Google will start releaseing some of their data into the public domain/GPL/Creative Commons.
That Google spy van must be gathering data like speed limits, which streets are one way. Maybe even which are paved and not.
One place missing GPL application is a really good navigation system.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I did RTFA but nowhere did I see any information about which orbit they're going to use.
It can't be geosynchronous because that wouldn't allow them to photograph all of the country at once. In order to cover the whole US, they'll need to have an orbit that passes the satellite over different parts of the country at different times.
The interesting thing is that in order to get such an orbit, it has to pass over other countries. Will Google take footage of other countries? If so, will it use that footage? That would probably require some intense international negotiations.
Shouldn't You expect more from your DJ?
all myspace is belong to you.
If you charge an insane price for satellite photos, your customer will just launch their own damn satellite. Btw I think what they mean is the size of one pixel is 50cm on the ground. That kinda sounds about right for a high res satellite pic. And finally, I can realistically say that it uses "pixels the size of cats!" Sorry SNES emulator graphics, but they get the title.
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
When is Google going to learn that we want Open Source Data? Bad Google.
How weird will that be, if 50 years from now people associate the word Google, like they associate the word Nazi?
Then we can all say "back in my day Google was just a search engine, not a military force that had every bit of information on each human on earth. All hail Page Brin."
Can I bum a sig?
Most satellites for earth observation use sun-synchronous orbits. These orbits let the satellite's cameras take pictures ob objects at the same solar time. This means that it will pass overhead at the same local time every day ... so the images will have the same shadow characteristics.
You accomplish this by making the orbit precess exactly 360 degrees per solar year.
These orbits are typically nearly circular, but needn't be; you can put a spy satellite into a sun-synchronous elliptical orbit, so it'll swoops down and photograph near perigee, then waste a lot of time around apogee.
Since this orbit is around 684 Km, it can be shown that it must be pretty close to circular, has an orbital period of around 100 minutes, and its inclination is probably about 96 to 100 degrees (meaning that the satellite is slightly retrograde - 90 degrees inclination is polar, zero degrees is equatorial) In turn, this means that pretty much all of earth will be seen by the satellite, except for 8 degree circles around the poles.
A 96 minute period means that each successive orbit will look down on a place 15 degrees west ... one time zone to the west.
Geosynchronous orbits are pretty useless for this type of work, since they're so far away (you need really big telescopes to get much resolution). Also, you'd only see one hemisphere, and half the year it'd be nighttime over the areas you want to see.
I wish they'd provide a bit more focus. I can get more information about naruto than anyone could wish for, great. But I can't get access to primary sources with which to evaluate medical or scientific issues. I know there's a lot of problems involved with getting the public free access to journals, but google has a lot of clout and coudl make a big difference there.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I know there's a lot of problems involved with getting the public free access to journals, but google has a lot of clout and coudl make a big difference there.
The publishing of scientific journals is a business. No amount of "clout" is sufficient to convince the folks that run these journals that they should give it all away free and go make money working at a hot dog stand or something.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.