You can get this now if you are military or have plenty of spare cash lying around. The problem is that to get this level of resolution your sensor needs to be nearer the earth, and thus your platform has a shorter lifespan because it will be subject to greater atmospheric drag, and thus its per-picture cost will be comparatively very high. This might prompt the question, why not put it farther away with a bigger lens? Well, there is an upper limit on the size/weight of the lens that you can lob up to any given orbit, and thus it's less feasible to get this level of resolution from a higher orbit. You also have the issue of swath width to think about - generally the higher your resolution the smaller your imaging area, which might limit the usefulness and thus the price you can charge for your imagery.
I think drone aerial imagery holds more promise than satellite imagery. Who knows though, perhaps with fancy new image processing algorithms and sensors we will get the level of resolution you are talking about from satellite imagery at reasonable cost over time.
Boothroid|8 years ago
I think drone aerial imagery holds more promise than satellite imagery. Who knows though, perhaps with fancy new image processing algorithms and sensors we will get the level of resolution you are talking about from satellite imagery at reasonable cost over time.
Edit: or with bigger cheaper rockets.