Site requirements
What a location needs before a pod can be deployed there, and what the approval process involves.
What a location needs before a pod can be deployed there, and what the approval process involves.
A pod is a fixed installation. Deciding where it goes is a one-time decision with a long lead time, so it is worth getting right.
A suitable position for the dock. Clear of obstructions, with the ground or structure able to take the installation, and positioned so the assets you care about fall within reach.
Power and connectivity. Persistent, not intermittent. The pod is not useful if it can only be reached some of the time.
Access for maintenance. Someone has to be able to get to it.
Control of the ground. You need the standing to authorise a permanent aviation installation at the location, and to consent to what will be flown and captured there.
Regulatory approval is obtained for the location before the pod is deployed, and it covers the flight radius around that fixed position. This is the single most important thing to understand about the model, and the most commonly misunderstood: the approval work happens once, up front, at the site level.
It is substantial. Approval for a location is measured in months and in hundreds of hours of work, which is precisely why pods are fixed rather than moved around, and why coverage grows deliberately.
The consequence for everyone who uses the site afterwards is that there is no regulatory step between requesting a mission and receiving the data. See Regulatory and airspace.
Approval does not produce unlimited permission. It establishes the operating envelope for that site: the radius, the conditions, and the limits within which missions can be flown. Those constraints are then applied automatically to every request during validation, which is why some requests are not possible at some sites. See Weather and constraints.
If you are evaluating a site, the useful information to bring is where it is, what you want inspected, how often, and what you control. Whether the location is approvable is the first question answered, before anything else is discussed.