What the company’s press release does not disclose is exactly how much scratch Gates or any of the other investors are putting into EarthNow, but Hannigan told The Wall Street Journal that the project’s total cost will be about a billion dollars. A lot of money, but when you’re dealing with investors at the level of Bill Gates or SoftBank, very achievable. The main focus of EarthNow’s HD video streaming satellites will be for “government and enterprise customers,” with an impressive cluster of possible applications put out there by the company itself. Take a look: Whew. But EarthNow also intends to give the masses access to its real-time video content of the Earth viewed from space, with smartphone and tablet apps to be developed at the same time. Stay tuned.
