Allan Doyle wrote: > NASA tends to be the lead agency in developing new satellite > platforms and sensors, then when things become operational, data > management is transferred to USGS for land and NOAA for > ocean/atmosphere.
I would guess the driving force in this is the abundance of affordable services from other countries that have civil space programs. NASA was alone in the 1960s, because you just couldn't subcontract satellite capacity from the Russians and India had none to offer. That's very different today. I don't know from where Google buys their satellite images. But if they're buying from NASA, I'm sure they have at least been comparison shopping to get the right price. Google apparently doesn't need "leading" technology (in order to beat their meak competition), but can do fine with spotty coverage and images that are many years old. The same probably goes for many other "users of space services". -- Lars Aronsson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se _______________________________________________ Geowanking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.burri.to/mailman/listinfo/geowanking
