30cm?
>Happily, you need not worry about being captured in your full glory.
Speak for yourself, I'm keeping my trunks on while out sunbathing.
An American firm is preparing to launch a satellite which will map the world in a higher resolution than the public has ever seen before. Tomorrow, DigitalGlobe expects to send its WorldView-3 satellite into orbit, where it will begin sending images of objects as small as 30cm in size. It will zoom up to space from Vandenberg …
On a plus side the trunks keep the UV light out that's (probably) more dangerous than the reflected visible light resulting in sub-30cm imagery.
On a flip side I wonder about the infamous zoom/enhance technology and if that would allow those sub-30cm full glory members to be visible.
"Speak for yourself, I'm keeping my trunks on while out sunbathing."
I'm sorry, but if yours is visible from space, then you've actually got a trunk in your trunks and you need to go and see a urologist.
Alternatively, you could make a small fortune as a novelty act with your nearest travelling circus...
obligatory and applicable trunk reference. Mildly NSFW language.
"It is expected to launch on Wednesday 12 August or Thursday 13 August, depending on the weather."
Round these parts its Tuesday 12th, Wednesday 13th, Thursday 14th... This year at least...
Or will the higher resolution be able to break the time dimensions...
Mines the one with the sonic screwdriver and the tin hat on a string..
I'm struggling to think of uses for this resolution, apart from military ones. There's also the refresh rate to specify. And who will pay for a licence to use it?
I've found something by the Earth Imaging Journal: oil, gas or mineral exploration will pay good money for images, and the higher resolution is good for the required detailed analysis. But otherwise, who will pay lots of money for these:
Geological studies, cliff erosion. 1m, monthly or less frequent
Geological studies, glacier movement. >1m, yearly
Animal population distribution. 1m but possibly less, monthly or yearly
Weather. >10m, daily
Policing (environmental): mining, settlement, building, deforestation. 1m, yearly or more frequent
Policing safety concerns: oil spills, toxic waste, fires. <10m, weekly (or more frequent?)
Policing: mass graves/genocide. <1m, monthly
Enlighten me!
As for the Big Data Prophets, whereas I can see they want some Big Data to play with, I don't know how they will afford that much data. Perhaps it's all Wizard of Oz, smoke and mirrors, the Big Data TV Evangelists asking for investment, but for ill-specified returns.
(I think the storage vendors will be among those who are hoping for sales of satellite images, rather than those paying for the images themselves.)
"I'm struggling to think of uses for this resolution, apart from military ones. "
I use Google Earth very often to track down places where good x-country hiking can be found. Really sharp images will better reveal the condition of road and trail surfaces (or lack of same), vegetation types, and many other little features that could make a difference. I'm looking forward to it!
We now need to work out how to encrypt the contents of a subway sandwich. I dont want the government to gather data on my favourite sub...it could be used to bribe me.
Gov: TELL US TEH SEKRITZ
You: Do you expect me to talk?
Gov: No Mr Jones, I expect you to dine. Agent Ramsay retrieve...the sandwich.
Agent R: F****** c***! Yes sir! B*******!
You: Oh dear god nooooooo!
Agent R: Eat the f****** sandwich you f****** s*** eating t***. Give us the f****** codes you w*****. B*******!. *force feeds Italian BMT*
Me: Mmff nom ummf nom no! Mmff nom ill numph-ver speak nom. *wretch*.
Ladies and gentleman enter the Guantanamo Bistro. Where you get a 3 course interrogation. A light starter of heavy rope contacting balls through a seatless chair with your choice of knot on the end, followed by a generous helping of solitary closely followed up with a traditional cheese boarding and finished with a cuban cyanide cigar with a polonium libre cocktail served with a gratutious beating.
Invite only. Contact details unavailable. A spokesman at launch refused to acknowledge or deny its existence but was quoted as saying "I have nothing to add".
Soldier of Fortune rated this establishment as 4 grenades out of 5. The most challenging meal they never remembered.
Previously removed from Ramsays Kitchen Nightmares for actually being a nightmare.
If the government admits/allows a 30cm resolution then it's a reasonable certainty that the mil-spec equipment can deliver at least four times better resolution.
Oh, and by they way - wearing your swimming trunks while sunbathing will not help - they also scan in the IR band.
"The non-military firm is only allowed to do this following Washington's decision to relax rules governing the maximum resolution of satellite images."
So, the merkins think they can give permission for someone to take photos of the entire world... who made them the boss of the world?
Given DigitalGlobe are a U.S. based firm and that they are launching for a polar orbit from a U.S. military base I think it is perfectly reasonable for the U.S. government to limit what they are doing.
Want to set up a company outside the U.S.A., build your satellite outside the U.S.A. and using components that are not under U.S.A. export restrictions and then launch using none U.S.A. launch vehicles outside the U.S.A. you would be good to go selling what ever resolution imagery you want. That is presuming other governments don't also put restrictions on what you want to sell...
No they dont own it...but they will attempt to police it.
The RIAA is already preparing itself to retrospectively sue everyone that has broadcasted anything, ever. The further out into space our radio leakage gets the larger the number of possible extraterrestrials there are to sue.
I for one cant wait for the massive influx of tax from UK TV licensing. We've been broadcasting for decades thats a lot of free TV the aliens have had...its an outrage. On the flipside they will have trouble when the digital switchover happens for them...
Is 30cm the resolution limit, the pixel size or the size of an arbitrary object that can be recognised in the image?
Resolution limit means the ability to resolve a pair of high contrast lines not less than that wide, pixel size is typically a quarter to a ninth of the area of the minimum resolvable dot. Neither mean that objects of this size could be recognised from the images. I would guess that the size of a minimum recognisable object is more likely to be in the order of 1.5-3 meters.