[OSM-talk] Satellite for OSM

[Matt Amos]

On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 9:29 AM, Peter Miller <peter.miller at itoworld.com> wrote:
>
> On 18 May 2009, at 01:38, Matt Amos wrote:
>
>> On Sun, May 17, 2009 at 11:32 PM, MP <singularita at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TopSat
>>>>  http://www.qinetiq.com/home/defence/defence_solutions/space/topsat.html
>>>>
>>>>  Apparently you can rent it for £25k a week... easily within the
>>>> ambition of
>>>>  donate.openstreetmap.org.
>>>
>>> How large part of earth could be imaged in that timeframe?
>>> Topsat have 2.5m resolution, which is quite fine for most areas,
>>> though less than aerial imagery ...
>>
>> 2.5m sounds about the same as Y!, so its even enough for rudimentary
>> building mapping. but thats the black-and-white figure, the colour
>> resolution is about 5m. :-)
>>
>> out of interest, is there a link to the £25k figure? i couldn't find
>> any pricing information on the net anywhere...
>
> Sound great, but in the mean time we can of course buy commercial
> photography including the right to derive mapping at a cost of about $17 per
> sq km which is affordable for compact European cities but not for large
> rain-forests! The Gaza strip cost £4,500

didn't you have to restrict that to a small number of signed-up
mappers though? i would have thought that, hiring topsat rather than
licensing the imagery, we wouldn't have to restrict imagery use to a
small group of people.

> and photography for the Birmingham
> conurbation would be about £5,000. A small UK town would be <£5000. The West
> Midlands are looking for sponsors at present.
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Aerial_photography_funding_appeals

but, again, sounds from that wiki page like it would be restricted to
a few users, rather than truly open.

cheers,

matt