1. Cell phones from 30,000 ft are going to produce incredibly low resolution images, especially when taken through the window of an airliner. They're also all going to be oblique.
2. If you use real camera rigs, you're going to have to pay a fortune to outfit enough planes. Given that you don't control where the asset goes, this seems really inefficient.
3. Does the entire US actually get covered by all those flights? While ATC tries to give direct routing a lot more than they used to it still seems like you're going to end up with areas where planes hardly ever fly. I'd be really curious to see for a given swath what revisit rate you could get with what confidence from historical ADS-B data.
Please don't take this negatively. I previously cofounded an aerial imagery company and have designed aerial camera systems for a large aerospace company. I came up with an idea like yours, but wrote it off for the reasons I mentioned. It's really cool to see someone pursuing it. Feel free to reach out if you'd like. My email is cornell at cgw3 dot org.
1. Cell phones from 30,000 ft are going to produce incredibly low resolution images, especially when taken through the window of an airliner. They're also all going to be oblique.
2. If you use real camera rigs, you're going to have to pay a fortune to outfit enough planes. Given that you don't control where the asset goes, this seems really inefficient.
3. Does the entire US actually get covered by all those flights? While ATC tries to give direct routing a lot more than they used to it still seems like you're going to end up with areas where planes hardly ever fly. I'd be really curious to see for a given swath what revisit rate you could get with what confidence from historical ADS-B data.
Please don't take this negatively. I previously cofounded an aerial imagery company and have designed aerial camera systems for a large aerospace company. I came up with an idea like yours, but wrote it off for the reasons I mentioned. It's really cool to see someone pursuing it. Feel free to reach out if you'd like. My email is cornell at cgw3 dot org.