In 2008 Landsat 7 became free to the public. Due to this change from costing $600 per scene to being free there has been enormous amounts of research that has been able to develop at a rapid rate. Scientists, both in research and academic fields have been able to utilize it to explore areas that might never otherwise be able to develop fully without large amounts of funding.

What I'm getting at is that I think that privatizing is going to lead towards profit making not research. I agree with Malcolm. Industries bottom line is money even when they are paid to do a job by the government. I think many research opportunities will be overlook as they are not profitable.I think we need to maintain at least some governmental run satellite earth observations else run the risk of stifling research.

good

I guess I would have to say good and bad.

Good

1) Private companies usually have the funding to champion research projects and keep them up-to-date. We've seen what budget cuts can do.

2) Competition between commercial vendors could lead to reduced cost of final products.

3) Greater privatization could lead to improvements in data standards by way of data formats and processing operations.

Bad

1) Research could be directed towards a business vision where what makes money sells and those that are although important are overlooked

2) Control by private sector which leads to less involvement by the public sector.

Solution:

A middle ground between both entities

I agree with Ron Mahabir.

You have to add that in a private sector all is a duty of the private, I mean, the god or bad quality of the improvements and of the observations is due to the efficiency of the team selected.

Another problem is the cost of the datas, they can raise a lot the datas realizing that those are really required ones and so creating a sort of loss in medium-low utilizers.

In the other way insteas they can make datas cheaper so that it will open really a lot more functions and collaborations to develop and utilizations of those datas.

Surely is a great question to deal with because satellite datas are the base of a really various amount of applications so the grade of privatization and the aproach to it can change really greatly the perception of this choice.

It has to be combination of state and privet, as it was with the topographic maps

Had AstroVision International's commercial Earth observng System been supported by the private investment sought prior to 2003, hundreds of lives would have almost certainly been saved by the geatly enhanced early tornado warning that would have become available. The US government (NOAA/NASA) is heavily invested in competitive, but less effective, doppler RADAR technology and has been slow to recognize or implement the AstroVision technologies applied to the Tornado warning problem. GOES R, scheduled for launch in 2016 is to be the first to actually implement somethng like what we and others have proposed.

To their undying discredit, the very companies that should have supported the AstroVision system were betting on actuarial tables of death rates which the system would probably have invalidated, and/or that the government would eventually provide the same data and coverage for free, as it has always done. Nearly 10 years later, nothing like the AstroVision system has been flown and 991 victims have died as a consequence. data from: http://www.norman.noaa.gov/2009/03/us-annual-tornado-death-tolls-1875-present/

But of course, in the corporate boardrooms of the world, these are just numbers on a spread sheet and not real lives.

Conclusion: government is risk averse to implementing new technologies while the private sector is reliant on a fiscal bottom line that may be heavly subsidized by government programs or heavily invested in the status quo making it averse to disruptive technological advances.

In 2008 Landsat 7 became free to the public. Due to this change from costing $600 per scene to being free there has been enormous amounts of research that has been able to develop at a rapid rate. Scientists, both in research and academic fields have been able to utilize it to explore areas that might never otherwise be able to develop fully without large amounts of funding.

What I'm getting at is that I think that privatizing is going to lead towards profit making not research. I agree with Malcolm. Industries bottom line is money even when they are paid to do a job by the government. I think many research opportunities will be overlook as they are not profitable.I think we need to maintain at least some governmental run satellite earth observations else run the risk of stifling research.

I would like to have some comments on this topic.

- 1 st: I'm from Vietnam and Vietnam doesn't have private company doing business of satellite. Therefore, government will be the only one could decide anything on what related to satellite.

- 2nd: the cost/fee for rent a channel by private company or fee people pay for is quite higher than other. We don't know exactly how to calculate the fee while government only give a always-answer reason "the price is lower other countries nearby"

For only the 2 above reasons, I would love to tell you that satellite Earth observation should manage by both privatization/commercialization.

Regards.

The good or bad of the privatization/commercialization of satellite Earth Observations in the question centers on whether and how research may be affected by a shift from a public-funded system with freely available data to a for-profit system with privately-owned data.

Firstly, Earth and Space Observation data not captured today is lost for tomorrow. That is why scientists, researchers and/or value-adding service providers should not solely rely on data captured by large, institutional missions [sponsored or funded by governments and their agencies], which too often take too much time [to develop] for too high costs. Note also that this data may be freely available, but sometimes not quite free, not to all and/or not immediately.

Once data is captured, it will only come to value if and when it is useful for scientists, researchers and/or value-adding service providers. These stakeholders [or customers] should be at all times in the driver seat when defining space missions for their projects. It would be folly for a privately funded satellite system, or for that matter for a institutionally funded system, to capture [and own] data that nobody is interested in.

Why should universities, science and research organizations embark on privately funded space missions?

Such missions will be smaller and cheaper and faster in execution than large institutional missions, as well as offer data continuity and consistency with a series of missions.

For the funding of small-scale space missions, universities, science and research organizations, as well as value-adding service providers, should embrace close collaboration on common or complementing project objectives, effectively crowd-funding of a kind.

What would be the business case? Either the collaborating organizations fund the space missions up-front and own the data, which they can make available or sell to others. Execution of the space missions, including design, development, integration and operations [including data processing], is contracted to a private enterprise for a fixed price.

Or, a private enterprise funds and executes the space missions, at their risk, but with a contractual commitment of the collaborating organizations to buy the data [licence] for a fixed price. The private enterprise owns the data, which they can sell to others.

Both business cases are win-win for universities, science and research organizations, as stakeholders in the space missions, and the private enterprise. The private enterprise would make a profit on the contract in both cases, as would companies executing large, institutional missions [often on a cost-plus basis], and may earn more with selling data licences in the second case.

Landsat 7 provides a very interesting case study in illuminating the issues relevant to the original question. Landsat 7 is indeed a remarkable tool whose degradation in May 2003 was a research tragedy of great significance. In the intervening ten years a comparable system was not orbited by NOAA until this past February. resulting in a roughly 10 year data gap. In contrast, when the commercial remote sensing satellite Quickbird 1 failed to reach orbit in November 2000, a replacement was launched the following year October 18, 2001 with an 11 month gap.

The main interest is that will provide acces to maps to country without satellite....

but private sector aim to make profit, when public sector just want to provide public service (and then usually make non profitable budget)

so if the satelitte switch from public to private sector, the private sector will want to cover expenses trought selling acces to their assets, so finaly it will raise the price of research for all users (which doesn't had to paid before) so i will be harder for research without good funding support (so usually private sector research)

so this will empeach the developpement of independent and public research to the profit of private sector

I think Ruut Neubauer's observations on this topic are spot-on, especially with regard to the temporal factors in data valuation and the importance of scale enconomy in the cost of missions direcly affecting the data valuation. To increase their profit margns, commercial ventures are fundamentally disposed to stage less expensive missions to collect the specific data deemed commercially viable. The push to reduce start up and operating costs provides a model in stark contrast to large goverment programs whose private contractors may simply see opportunities to feed at the public trough. If I am remembering my history correctly, NASA's circa-1990's infatuation with "smaller, cheaper, faster (so-called discovery-class) missions" was, at least in part, motivated by the paradigm shift provided by commercial ventures in space based remote sensing.

Thanks to everyone who posted an answer. I appreciate the varied point of views. Data availability is among the most important issue if scientific progress is to continue. However data availability begins with having sensors/satellites built, deployed in space and taking measurements! I am however concerned with a "for-profit" approach that would restrict data availability, creating a two-tier research environment, for those who can afford data and those who can't.

As a user I share your concerns about data accessibility. But as a provider, I am motivated by the desire to see data capabilities developed that are not limited by government endorsement. High resolution imagery is a case in point. The government had no motivation to make high spatial or temporal resoluton imagery (better than Landsat's 15-30 meter/pixel or GOES image/15 minutes) available to the general public but an 'approved' researcher could probably gain access to the data at little to no cost. Access remains limited and somewhat restricted even to professionals for a variety of reasons including politics.

In the case of commercial high resolution imagery, data that would not be seen by the general public has become more available despite its high cost. News media and other entities both private and public obtain it and distribute it widely because these information providers have paid the up-front cost determined by the transiency of its value. If the government sees no reason to build a sensor than it won't get built. The data will not exist for anyone to use. In contrast, if a commercial entity can create the means to collect it, data that would otherwis not exist will eventually become readily available to a wider user community. High temporal resolution data remains unavalable because the government either doesn't want to share what it has or sees no justfication for developing a capability that might be of use to the general public. I should say the benefiits are not seen to justify the cost.

This is an issue that is related with economical perspection not with scientific one. Actually, all scientific institutions have been challenging for getting funds for sustaining their activities. Usually the words "privatization/commercialization" are today pronounced when an attractive market potential becomes visible. I personally omit the complaints of governmental bodies who stress insufficiency of budgets allocated, because governments always review and revise their priorities beased on the previaling political conjunctures. They are always able to create funds for these priorities, if not they loose the elections. The data quality and availability may well be improved by competative private companies, however I do not expect that same improvement do reflect on the prices, since there will be quite few companies that they can adopt unwritten monopolic attitudes. They will also have good excuse to increase their own costs by referring the licensing fees of each countries which may or may not permit the release of imaginaries of their jurisdiction areas. What I expect about the ongoing process is expresed by the following words "Rivers find their paths as they flow", so will can feel the bad and good, then the merit will be to find out the ways that reduce the bad.

Kemal: You said: "This is an issue that is related with economical perspection not with scientific one." I must disagree. I believe the two to be intimately linked. Let me give you examples drawn from my own research and experience:

In concert with my university, I am working with archaeologists doing research on a pre-colonial site in North America. Very high spatial resolution multispectral imagery was desirable to do our research. This data is not something the government easily releases to scientists or for research. To support our research, we obtained the required image data from a readily available alternate source: the commercial WorldView 2 satellite. The data cost us a modest fee of about $600 for data covering the 25 sq km area of greatest interest. The effort and cost of the data was less than if we jumped through the government hoops to justify our request for similar image data; assuming we could get it at all.

As a second example, From 1997 through 2003, my company, AstroVision International, attempted to obtain private investment and government support to build and launch a relatively inexpensive satellite remote sensing system that would have provided auperior severe weather warning than currently available with existing government sponsored systems. Even with government endorsemant and a contract to buy our data, the effort failed for a variety of reasons. While the technology proposed was sound, (endorsed by NASA and colleagues) the primary stumbling block and common response from potential investors was "the government will ultimately do this and the data will be made available for free." It is now approaching late 2013 and the similar technology planned for the anticipated governmemt launch is still years away. Thousands of lives and much property could have been saved if the data had been available during the last 10 years, as originally planned. The public would have had the benefit of the vital data through existing government and commercial entities that provide such information while scientists would have had unprecedented access to data sets that remain unavailable because it just doesn't exist. And yes, the system would almost cerrtainly have made a profit. Useful to pay for the costs involved in creating the system and to maintain the data stream's availability to end users as well as to pay back investors, those evil capitalists, who took the risk.

By way of disclosure, I'm a member of the Landsat Science Team, so I'm probably a bit bias, but I'd add the following perspectives.

1. There are parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that are not systematically covered by commercial platforms, especially the SWIR and TIR, both of these inform a diverse range of critical scientific/resource management including cryosphere, carbon dynamics, evapotranspiration and water accounting, but are not commercially viable due to the cost of adding the sensors that cover these parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to a satellite/sensor system.

2. The long term acquisition plan (LTAP) adapted by the Landsat program is in stark contrast to the 'pay per view' model adopted by many commercial sensors. Many multi-temporal applications require deep temporaly-rich archives of data to identify when and what sort of changes are occurring. However the 'collect now and maybe someone will be interested later' model does not synch with the cost of maintaining ground segments and orbital systems from a commercial point of view.

With this in mind, I would suggest that it is logical that a hybrid of commercial platforms and public good/government sponsored platforms will continue to persist.

Malcolm, my intention by using "economical perception" was to emphasize on what type of major criteria are utilised by the governmental decision maker's while the allocate budget's for science. I have no intention to accuse private enterprises for they try to maksimize their profit, simply because this is the main cause of thier existience and there is nothing to critisize. Actually, your suggestion as hybrid of commercial platforms and public good/governmental sponsored platfoms" is the main evidence that points out the "river is flowing and seeking its ideal path" under concurrent circumstances.

Kemal: I appreciated your river analogy and was really just responding to your initial sentence. I probably have a knee-jerk reaction ito any suggestion that there is not an intimate connection between science and economics. As Kenneth has observed, there is NO free data.

Realistically speaking, it seems as though the paradigm for successful commercial remote sensing has been the hybrid model. It also seems the initial competition for relatively small markets in the private sector and those in the somewhat larger public sector may have been harmful to the survival of the orignal set of commericial remote sensing companies and ultimately motivated their cooperation in what seems to have evolved into a RS product bazaar (although, as Leo pointed out, unlike a bazaar, the real range of available commercial products remains small). It seems to me, with respect to commercial data options, we remain in a "make do" research environment rather than one in which commericial remote sensing products are optimally designed for specific applications. Despite chronic cost issues and programmatic delays, the government has a better track record in providing useful data products whether for research or applications. I believe the hybrid model is not perfect because, to some extent, the success of expensive, governent programs contributes to diminishing commercial opportunities by establishing high business start-up costs and by its perceived abilty to preempt applications.

Contrasting the commercial satellite communications industry with that of commercial remote sensing provides an interesting, if far-from-perfect analogy. The former established itself as viable by its ability to redirect bits of existing information around the planet. These bits have a characteristic value to their recipients that is relatively easy to establish because there were preexisting price-for-product models. The kinds of bits that were redirected grew tremendously over time so both the private and publc sectors of the industry have expanded accordingly. In contrast, both the goverment and commercial remote sensing industry is built upon its ability to collect new bits of information whose value la bit more difficult to quantify. Data can be of immense value to researchers and users concerned with various aspects of public welfare and national security, but more like luxuries with less apparent and difficult-to-establish value to commercial users, in part because similar prior market-models did not exist. Hopefully as time goes on, RS product utility will broaden and value will become more quantifiable. Most of all, (stealing Kemal's eloquent imagery), I hope that the data-rivers will continue to flow and seek an optimal path to an ultimate destination.