Commercial High-Resolution Imagery From Space as a New Information Service to Humanity: A Video Address

Abstract

I am honored to be on the same program as Dr. Arthur C. Clarke and to address this prestigious institution. Few have Dr. Clarke’s vision of the potential of space to serve mankind. In 1945, as World War II was ending and the Cold War beginning, Dr. Clarke envisaged a world connected by geosynchronous communications satellites. As soon as World War II ended, the Race to Space began. The United States and the former Soviet Union entered the Space Age in 1957. Concurrent with this dawn of the Space Age was the foundation of both global communication and reconnaissance. The world has witnessed a remarkable transformation over the past four decades. National boundaries have disappeared and the physical and political walls separating one country from the other have come down. Thanks to visionaries such as Dr. Clarke and industrial pioneers such as Dr. Harold Rosen, individuals are now able to hear their neighbor’s heartbeat in real time, no matter where in the world they may live. From yesterday’s satellites, which weighed less than 40 kg and communicated with Earth antennae 30 m in diameter, to today’s 4000 kg high-power satellites which communicate with hand-held telephones, advances in space communications technology have resulted in greater service to humanity by promoting the open exchange of information among all inhabitants of a shrinking world.