[evil-olive]

I work adjacent to some satellites that do visual-spectrum imaging of the earth, and even we fall under these regulations.

In addition to all the NOAA licensing for imaging the ground, you need extra licenses for taking pictures of space. (it's useful, for example, to image the moon as a way of calibrating cameras & telescopes without atmospheric interference, and tracking stars is one of the most reliable ways to determine spacecraft attitude)

One of the requirements is that if we take a picture of space and there's anything moving in the picture (presumably a near-earth satellite), we delete all copies of the picture and forget we ever took it, but only after offering it for sale to the Air Force at a commercially reasonable price.

I'm sure there are additional layers on top of it, that's just the facets of it that I've been exposed to in the mandatory company-wide regulatory training.

[Cthulhu_]

> but only after offering it for sale to the Air Force at a commercially reasonable price.

That sounds like a business model - what is a commercially reasonable price, and where do I sign up?

[dragonwriter]

> That sounds like a business model

Does it? You have one potential customer, and you have to create product on spec, offer it to them at a price you don't control, and destroy the unsold material whether or not the one customer pays for a copy.

Building a viable business model around that without corrupt influence over the single buyer seems impractical.

[closeparen]

Sure, the US has considerable leverage over the sorts of things people are allowed to launch into space, but I have a hard time believing it could maintain a similar degree of control over ground-based telescopes.