Landsat and other satellites are returning ever-increasing amounts of data, with the eventual possibility of building a total data base of the order of 1018 bits. The data, from a multiplicity of sources, must be validated, calibrated, and accurately geographically located to be of highest value. Because increasing amounts of data are digital, the correlation of digital to non-digital data is required. Formats and cataloguing philosophy must be formulated soon to maximize compatibility of the data archives. The data are being used operationally, requiring of the system timely data delivery (both upon initial acquisition and upon retrieval from an archive), data in formats which are easy to use, and at reasonable cost. The various sources are essentially uncoordinated and diverse, resulting in archives which will require additional operations to accomplish the required formatting. Decisions on a number of issues must be made, some of them quickly; what type(s) of data are to be handled, expected customer base and data traffic (quantity and timeliness), geographic referencing schemes, formats, archive locations, pre-processing and data services to be provided, validation philosophy, cataloguing techniques, storage media, pricing policy, policy on conversion of existing data, technique of system build-up. Propositions for some of these are advanced.