Thats fourty years of technology multiplied by whatever the average advancement is…. so now we can view bacteria from space making little babies. No more privacy.

Let me tell you something.
In approx 1973-74, Reader’s Digest had an article about US satellite capability (AT THAT TIME). The article indicated that the US had the ability to identify the numbers of a vehicle license plate & the person driving it from miles up in space from that satellite.
That was 34 years ago!!
Do you really think that was there best capability back then? Or was it only what they were willing to admit to at that time.
Since it has been 30+ years since then don’t you think that what we are allowed to see on the internet does not even come close to what our government is capable of doing?

Currenty the entire world wide internet only runs at few terebytes per second. And most of that is wired.

There doesn’t currently exist a wireless technology that would be capable of streaming that much data down from the satellite in real time. Especially if the satellites are in geo-synch orbit, where you need a lot of power to punch a signal all the way to earth. I’m not a signal expert, but you may end up needing to flood the earth of RF spectrum signals just to try and keep up with the stream. We would need to look at other transmission technologies to get it to work (Lasers?).

As an aside, you might be able to just store the data on the satellite’s themselves, and only download pics that are requested. So most of the data is overwitten after a few days or weeks. Not perfect but more practical.

Also, satellite images aren’t that perfect, and are often blocked by clouds. (Ever notice how it’s always sunny everwhere on Google Earth shots?)

However if security is your goal, then you may want to try and reduce your image to just major urban areas (which make up most of the crime in the US). That might slash your image size down to about 15-20% of the size (why waste all those expensive pixels on empty deserts and mountain ranges?)

Also LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites would probably be preferred, since they are more likely to take an “overhead” shot, unlike Geo-Synch which would always take a “angled” shot and deal with more tree and building obstructions. But LEO’s move, and aren’t over the same spot at any one moment, so you need multiple satellites to get it to work (Siruis radio uses 3 LEOs, XM uses 1 GeoSynch). But LEOs are also closer to the earth, so they are capable of higher bandwidth transmission using the same power strength.

There is some cool effort going on trying to create blimps that run on auto-pilot and fly very high (Higher than all the commercial aircraft) and could have all sorts of transmission and survielence technology. They can stay flying for weeks without landing. You could just hang one of those over every major urban area and get something very close to what you are talking about.

Damn. I’ve become the lapdog of big brother.

It’s funny, I was thinking about this just this morning. It seems like InPhase Technologies has built a Holographic Video Storage system (link via Brainfuel). I first saw this tech on 3-2-1 Contact over 10 years ago. At the time the media they we…

I’m pretty sure that a lot of real-time satellite video is being shot as we speak, though I don’t know if the USA is the primary target. However, what with 9/11 and all, there’s probably some domestic video coverage going on too.

Great post BTW, lots of fun to read!

I was just smarting off with a bit of sarcastic, dry wit that was apparently lost in translation.

If 8 shot of expresso motivates you boys to tackle heady issues like trillions of pixels and petabytes, then maybe 10 shots would boost your brain power to figure out string theory or some such issue.

In fact, when we had the 8 shots the other day I dared Tom that I could do twelve but he declined. I’ll tell you, I was asleep and in bed by 10 pm. It had almost no effect except to make me really bad at Battlefield 2.

You should go for 10 shots and see if you can prove Fermat’s last theorem.

Having a slow day there at Tornado, huh?

; )