For a long time, public satellite imagery came from satellites flown by the US Geological Survey (USGS). They came in two flavors: geostationary and low-earth orbit.
The geostationary satellites are perched very high above the earth, and take frequent pictures of the 'full disk' of earth. This is invaluable for weather forecasting, as we can see what clouds are doing in real time. However, they are so far away that you need big, expensive satellites and big, expensive launches, and the resulting resolution is quite poor (like one pixel per 5km depending on latitude, and worse at high latitudes).
On the other hand, the low-earth orbit satellites fly just above the atmosphere, and can take pictures at much higher (spatial) resolution, but may only fly over a particular spot of land once per day. So you trade temporal resolution for spatial resolution.
With miniaturization, advances in imaging and related technology, and decreasing launch costs, it should be possible to deploy a constellation of small low-earth-orbit satellites, to provide good temporal AND spatial resolution. That enables a whole bunch of new applications.
However, I'd be a bit concerned that long-lived airborne drones flying at high altitudes might do the same thing (good spatial AND temporal resolution), but at a lower price point and in a more efficient way (since you only fly where you want to look, instead of covering the entire globe).
Satellites in LEO (including ours) travel at about 17,000 mph — drones can get nowhere close to that, which affects total coverage area possible per aircraft / spacecraft, which in turn will affect costs and operations.
Ground speed doesn't seem like a feature to me - after all, the ideal is an unblinking 'eye in the sky' that provides high-resolution video for large regions a la ARGUS. A stationary observer seems like it would provide more valuable information than an orbiting one.
With orbiting satellites, most of the time the birds are over the ocean and empty stretches of land that most people don't care about. You're wasting most of your bandwidth and storage on places that someone might be interested in one day...
Don't get me wrong, the work you're doing is very cool, and global data sets are really fun! Unfortunately, I've found that the 'value density' of these global data sets isn't great.
You cannot keep a stationary drone in the sky for long stretches of time. Their field of view is also going to be massively smaller than a satellite. You would need a lot of them just to keep the same amount of coverage.
How do you know nobody is interested in the 'ocean and empty stretches of land'? It could provide a lot of meteorological and geological data for scientists for example.
Funny you should mention meteorological use cases. At a previous startup, we built global historical weather data sets (at 5km resolution, 30+ year hourly time series), accessible via a metered API. This took HPC, storage, and engineering investment about an order of magnitude less than Planet. We also had a whole room of tapes filled with satellite imagery from the world's governmental Met offices...
Our main use case was for wind and solar renewable energy, but we also entertained other uses, like architecture and agriculture. These data sets turned out to be difficult to monetize; while the continental US data set may have broken even, the rest of the globe never recouped the cost of storage, let alone the supercomputer time. It's not that people around the world weren't interested in the data, they just couldn't justify paying for it.
Drones have to worry about airspace rules, which satellites do not.
One advantage they're keen to promote is that a 15-year lifespan sat has, by the end of its life, a 15-year-old camera. Technology marches on, and small cheap (nearly disposable!) satellites can just roll improvements into their replacement cycle in a way that the big boys can't.
If you assume UAVs will improve while space launch costs stay flat, you probably have a point. If space launch keeps getting cheaper (thanks Elon!) then the persistence of satellites will give UAV swarms a run for their money.
I hadn’t known about AAlib, that’s quite cool. Unfortunately it seems only to do greyscale output, whereas the selling point of this is that it’s in colour.
I made a pull request to picture-tube to support this, in a limited way[1]. If that gets merged, hit-that can be updated to take advantage of it.
Well, the innovation is really about storing electricity. We've been generating and transmitting electricity for over a century now.
Once we can store electricity (in batteries, for example), then intermittent power sources, like solar panels (and also wind turbines) become much more valuable.
Energy storage is a very inconsequential market right now, but if smart-grid-connected Teslas really take off, then they become important not only to the automotive industry, but also the electricity and energy industries.
Rinse is a technology-enabled dry cleaning and laundry delivery service. We've been growing our service at an exponential rate for the past two years, and our customers love us! We're expanding to westside Los Angeles, and are hiring aggressively.
We're hiring a General Manager for our Los Angeles office. This is very similar to a startup CEO role, as you'll be responsible for all aspects of our Los Angeles operation, from hiring and managing a large team, to developing business relationships with our vendors, to understanding our customers and their needs. This is a huge opportunity for the right candidate! http://bit.ly/rinse_LA_GM
We're also aggressively hiring drivers for our San Francisco and Los Angeles offices. Our drivers work a few nights a week in the evening. To be eligible, you must have your own car, a smart phone, and a clean driving record. This is a good opportunity for students or anyone else looking to earn some extra money as a side gig while exploring the city and meeting people.
Interested? Email jobs <at> rinse.com or me directly at sam <at> rinse.com
I couldn't believe that the new 49ers stadium (in Santa Clara) cost a trillion dollars, so I looked it up. It cost $1.2 billion [1] - a "gigabuck" rather than a "terabuck." To put that in perspective, a single office building in nearby Palo Alto just sold for $300 million. [2]
Judging from the people driving up and down 101 with flags flying, the people wearing 49ers jerseys year-round in San Jose, the big BBQs hanging off the big trucks in the parking lot of games, and the truck commercials that litter televised football, the new car-centric location suits the football team nicely.
I'd be much more upset if the SF Giants decided to move out of the city!
RINSE - www.rinse.com - Design District, San Francisco, CA
Rinse is a technology-enabled dry cleaning and laundry delivery service. We've been growing our service at an exponential rate for the past year, and our customers love us! We have a number of open positions, and have hired a significant portion of our team via Hacker News.
Rinse is hiring Software Engineers to develop our functionality across the stack. We have hybrid mobile apps for both Android and iOS for our customers AND our drivers. We also have sophisticated web-based tools for our customer service team, internal operations staff, and vendors. Laundry is a surprisingly-complex logistical process, and so our customer-facing software is just the tip of the iceberg. We're solving problems like the Traveling Salesman and image classification, too. Our tech stack is approximately HTML5 / Backbone.js / Django / Python / Postgres / Heroku / Ubuntu, but we're a tiny tech team, so any newcomer will be able to shape architecture.
We're also hiring for a "Special Operations Associate" which is someone who may not have unique technical ability, but who has great aptitude and a willingness to work hard to improve our business. Analytical capability and attention to detail are important skills for this person. Bonus points for someone with an Industrial Engineering or Process Engineering background. This position is great for an ambitious hustler looking to join a "rocket ship" startup. Obviously, this position presents a significant growth opportunity.
Any applicant who we interview will receive $25 in free Rinse credit... If you live in San Francisco, give us a try!
Interested? I'd be happy to answer any questions at sam (at) rinse.com.
The oft-cited statistic is "97% of climate scientists believe in anthropogenic climate change" and the wikipedia article [1] is actually quite thorough. I personally do not know any scientist who doesn't believe in global warming, although I did know some skeptics a decade ago. Skepticism is healthy, but so is respecting statistical tests.
No one really knows the specifics of what's going to happen, but the latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has started focusing on 'adaptation' as some degree of climate change is inevitable (and, indeed, has already happened). The IPCC would be my choice as the closest guess as to what the next century will look like [2]
They have bunch of blends to choose from, and serve carefully-made single-drip "Third-wave" coffees. The order process is a bit chaotic, which makes the whole thing seem nice and quaint. Plus, they do little things like aerate the coffee and leave the right room for milk and sugar.
Personally, I'd prefer a nice single-origin coffee to their blends, but it definitely beats a Starbucks.
This isn't the first time Philz has received VC; according to Wikipedia, Summit invested in 2013.
The geostationary satellites are perched very high above the earth, and take frequent pictures of the 'full disk' of earth. This is invaluable for weather forecasting, as we can see what clouds are doing in real time. However, they are so far away that you need big, expensive satellites and big, expensive launches, and the resulting resolution is quite poor (like one pixel per 5km depending on latitude, and worse at high latitudes).
On the other hand, the low-earth orbit satellites fly just above the atmosphere, and can take pictures at much higher (spatial) resolution, but may only fly over a particular spot of land once per day. So you trade temporal resolution for spatial resolution.
With miniaturization, advances in imaging and related technology, and decreasing launch costs, it should be possible to deploy a constellation of small low-earth-orbit satellites, to provide good temporal AND spatial resolution. That enables a whole bunch of new applications.
However, I'd be a bit concerned that long-lived airborne drones flying at high altitudes might do the same thing (good spatial AND temporal resolution), but at a lower price point and in a more efficient way (since you only fly where you want to look, instead of covering the entire globe).
Perhaps I'm missing something?