EDITORIAL
Source: The Space Report 2006 – Executive Summary
The writing on the wall is sharp and clear – the space and related industry is booming and will continue to do so. At present, about a third of the $180 billion business came from the US government alone. European and Asian countries, as a result of their robust economies, are shifting to top gear in all matters ‘Spatial’ including satellite development, and technology applications. Going by conservative projections, this market will more than double in the next five years and the big players too will be different.
On the Biedou – Galileo war front, I wouldn’t like to say; ‘I told you so’…but that is exactly what’s happened on the. Last week we discussed the predicament of Galileo after China’s announcement about making the Beidou service available to civilians. It is learnt that the private transport business houses in China have been indirectly pressurized by the government to use the Beidou facility. It seems Galileo’s pail of woes is about to overflow. Russia too has declared that the GLONASS signal will be made available to civilians from 2007. In this business of offering location information and location based services, the sensible way out appears to one of cooperation. It is an accepted fact among 12 channel GPS users, that it is rare to get signals on all the 12 channels simultaneously. Then why not cooperate – collaborate and share the profits by offering the end user a collective service from multiple services like NAVSTAR, GALELIO, BEIDOU, GLONASS and also the upcoming Indian GNSS.
Leica has released the M8, a digital version of it rangefinder M7. It is a roaring debate among the dyed-in-wool photographers vs. the neo about the merits of conventional film over digital sensors. The same dilemma is faced by ‘Photogrammetrists’ vs. ‘Digital Photogrammetrists’ – but let us not forget that the highest resolution available today in digital cameras is around 20 megapix while our old faith film base is around 60megapix. So, for those with a keen eye and a penchant for quality it’s still the old film cameras.
Dr. Hrishikesh Samant
hrishikesh@gisdevelopment.net
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 INTERVIEW
Our Market is not Limited to Asia Now
 Hiroshi Sanui
General Manager,
International Marketing Overseas Division,
PASCO Corp., Japan
After the Second World War, American mapping agencies decided to survey the destroyed Japanese territories. A big survey group was formed. Within subsequent years, all these people who were involved, managed to achieve the fiscal conditions to be able to make updations and perform surveying in the damaged territory and thus was formed PASCO.  |
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