Hacker News

38 points by marklit 2 hours ago | 9 comments

I wish Planet had better pricing for nonprofits. I co-run a conservation nonprofit focused on deforestation in Latin America, and our affordable choices are between 2 year old Google Earth imagery, 10m resolution Nimbo imagery (ok, but not sufficiently detailed to evidentiary), and Sentinel 1 SAR data, which is useful but very noisy. Planet quoted us something like $30k per year for a strip of coastline that represents something like 5% of the territory we're monitoring, so it's just not a viable option under their current pricing model.

marklit 14 minutes ago

What sort of budget does your org support?

I had to look into ~19 imagery firms for some telco work in Canada last year.

There are private jets that can capture 10cm imagery and can pick the ideal weather window to fly in.

There are also firms that fly balloons 20 - 80 KM off the ground that can capture 4cm imagery.

The space is pretty busy.

smallerfish 5 minutes ago

We're volunteer driven and currently rely on personal donations, so we're scrappy. We could probably justify somewhere in the region of $10k/yr. The jets/balloon angle is interesting, thanks - hadn't occurred to me, and I'll search through what's out there.

Avicebron 2 hours ago

Refreshingly doesn't feel like AI. If someone asked me "what does software engineering look like", I would point to this.

ricardobeat 26 minutes ago

Are most of their currently operating satellites servicing Flock - the US surveillance company? Or is it just a naming accident?

hangonhn 6 minutes ago

The latter I would think. I can see how you can confuse the two. The reason I think otherwise is because you don't name the satellite after one client, especially if you're in the business of selling images/data, not satellites. And a flock of satellites make sense for a name.

mandevil 18 minutes ago

Flock is Planet Labs name for the mega-constellation of imaging satellites made up of 3U cubesats known as Doves- hence the name for the full constellation. It has nothing to do with the automated license plate reader company.

marklit 18 minutes ago

Their satellites have nothing to do with the street-level surveillance camera firm.

ge96 42 minutes ago

This is cool, learned of two new file extensions: .tle and .parquet