alastair@geovision.uucp (Alastair Mayer) (01/20/89)
In article <1989Jan17.044038.5474@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >In article <246900002@cdp> jordankatz@cdp.UUCP writes: >>This week in Washington D.C. negotiations will begin between the >>NOAA and CNES, the French national space agency, which may result >>in a break through merger of the U.S. Landsat and French Spot >>remote sensing satellite system. The merge's aim is to form an >>international commercial remote-sensing system... > >I note with some amusement that this is two government agencies talking >about forming a commercial system. The amusement gets stronger when you >consider that Landsat theoretically has been privatized already and thus >they should be talking to Eosat instead. Even stronger when you consider Yeah, and shouldn't that be Spot Image Corp talking to Eosat? (Meanwhile, Space Commerce Co. of Houston will be glad to sell you Soviet satellite imagery from Soyuzkarta.) >how pitiful the Landsat system is today (and how much worse it will be >in a couple of years when the old satellites die) compared to Spot. > >"Well, we appreciate your offer to help with our Mars mission, comrade, >but... what can you do that we need?" >-- >"God willing, we will return." | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology >-Eugene Cernan, the Moon, 1972 | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu -- "The problem is not that spaceflight is expensive, | Alastair J.W. Mayer therefore only the government can do it, but that | alastair@geovision.UUCP only the government is doing spaceflight, therefore | al@BIX it is expensive." |