Having your own mapping/sensor satellite would be interesting. You'd need a polar orbit to get really complete coverage, but more likely most of what you'd be interested in is in the lower latitudes and some orbit that is inclined from the equator some amount is all you'd need.

[edit] Here's a catalog of satellite orbits courtesy of NASA: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/OrbitsCatalog/

Thanks! I was actually (and perhaps naively) thinking only of a radio relay satellite, not one with optical sensors. Your description is much more interesting.

Once this happens -- once cheap optical survey satellites come into existence (and they will) -- governments are going to go completely nuts. Right now, governments can put pressure on the few survey satellite operators to blur out certain sensitive locations (as in a recent story posted here). But once cheap satellites come into existence, that option will evaporate.

Probably before that happens with satellites, it will happen with solar powered high altitude remote control planes, and mounted cameras. Consumer level not military spy drone level.

There's already a driver for this technology - flying the plane while wearing a head mounted display - a currently expensive niche hobby.

Depends on what you're using it for. If I'm just joining part of a crowd-sourced asteroid detection group (which would require some hardware other than what they put up), I don't need access to it 24/7, if I can batch up some photos I can collect them in batches, etc. I wouldn't use one of these for internet access or something, I've got much better options for that already.

My original post imagined only a radio relay satellite. You're talking about something that's much more interesting, a satellite with sensors and a way to relay its data to the surface. I'm sure this will happen eventually, and I agree it's a pretty exciting prospect.

In your scenario, a small number of overflights each 24 hours would be more than enough time to download the stored data.