Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN 311
ing to proceed now in assuming at least part of the existing land and/or weather satellite
systems. COMSAT proposes to take over both systems in their entirety. Control Data
Corporation proposes a phased take-over of the Landsat ground processing and distribution
system, while Environmental Satellite Data, Inc. suggests operating specific segments
of the GOES ground system. Although the magnitude of the private sector take-over varies
substantially among these firms, sufficient details were provided to permit an evaluation
under all four general criteria. A fourth respondent, the American Science and
Technology Corporation, proposes to take over the command and control of the Landsat
satellites. However, the thrust of this response focuses on new entrepreneurial interests
and is therefore reported under Category 2.
A. Communications Satellite Corporation, Comsat General Corporation (COMSAT)
COMSAT has submitted the only proposal advocating total commercialization of
civil remote sensing. Additionally, COMSAT emphasizes a “concern for urgency” in such
a transfer. While COMSAT presents the most detailed proposal (due to the magnitude of
the transfer), it reiterates its earlier position of requiring both the civil weather and land
remote sensing satellites to insure future commercial viability.
(1) Responsiveness to Federal Needs:
The COMSAT concept involves private sector purchase of the current assets
in the government’s land and civil weather systems. These would be enhanced in
the future by incorporating additional sensors upon identification [5] of the specific
user needs. The federal government would pay most of the incremental
costs. For example, COMSAT suggests adding sensors that would collect oceanic
data on water color, winds, ice, and wave conditions.
It is not clear that Landsat’s coarse (80 meter) multispectral scanner data,
which are used extensively for making agricultural assessments, would be included
as part of the basic data collection package that COMSAT suggests for the post-
Landsat D’ era of the late 1980’s. However, if this need is identified as a
continuing federal user requirement COMSAT would provide this capability, at
additional cost, if it were not part of the projected array of imagery collection
capabilities. Thus, from the viewpoint of system technical capabilities, this concept
would be more than fully responsive to the current and future level of federal
user requirements with reference to timeliness, extent and frequency of
coverage, imagery characteristics and data formats, and timeliness.
However, the proposal would not appear to meet another critical user
requirement—assurance of data availability at reasonable cost. The COMSAT
concept would require federal data purchases at an annual level of about
$315–330 million per year. For the government to meet this amount, it appears
that there will have to be either a substantial increase in the cost of land and/or
weather data or there will be substantial direct subsidy payments to COMSAT.
Another factor that is less significant than either of the two preceding factors is
the matter of proprietary rights. The COMSAT concept also calls for the system
owner/operator to have copyright and proprietary rights over the data that are collected.
Such rights, while desirable from the viewpoint of helping make the system
self-financing, have the disadvantage of inhibiting the use of the collected data.
[6] (2) Continuity of Service:
Implementation of the COMSAT concept would appear to satisfy the major
consideration of maintaining continuity of data flow. However, the concept does
afford the system operator a loophole for (a) restricted liability only if the “best
efforts” are not made, and (b) also for performance being contingent upon the fed-