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Why not?

http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_airship

Comcast, Verizon, ATT... all could provide very affordable broadband to small remote communities and individual homes/farms, but as I said C*Os, politicians, and clerics are typically Luddites for profits/perks.

Wave-making technology, economics, social change/innovation is against their personal ethics of greed/avarice...hubris.

Is it 802.16 that might work for US re-motes?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deployed_WiMAX_networks
http://www.wimaxforum.org/technology/downloads/WiMAXNLOSgeneral-versionaug04.pdf

Antenna Towers
http://www.cellularmaps.com/3g_compare.shtml

Telecommunications Multi-Function Platform
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html

When industry/C*Os fails to work, act responsibly, and/or blocks innovation, then governance must demand and do for US!

According to a quick google search, the fastest flight-time from London to New York is 7 and a half hours. The SkyCat200 flight time should be 15 hours. I think you'd find that very many people prefer 15 hours of comfort to 7.5 hours of cramped hell followed by 7.5 hours of recovery. A lot would depend on the price difference between the airship and the airplane, though. If the price were equal, or close, I'd choose the airship if I were on vacation.

Did your "quick google search" tell you that the Skycat 220 cruises at 80 knots? It can "sprint" at 95, but that'll still mean that the trans-atlantic trip will take over 30 hours. Where'd you get 15? Reading TFA? They're liars.

Enjoy your vacation - while you're stuck hanging from a balloon over the Atlantic, I've climbed the Empire State Building, taken a ferry over to the Statue of Liberty, and had my picture taken with the Naked Cowboy. But at least you beat the passengers who decided to book passage on RMS Titanic.

The article mentions that the airship will be at 20,000 ft, or 3.4 miles, elevation. How many weapons even have that kind of range, straight up?

So why did TFA mention that they shot at it with a "Russian machine gun loaded with .22 cal armor-piercing incendiaries" (sic)? They were trying to say that the ship is "almost invincible to attack," which doesn't really help if the crew (or the automated avionics) can be blown out of the sky as it saunters by at 90 knots.

This is a possible reality.
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html

Nothing fixes everything, but the USA does not need to fall
to last place in telecommunications globally.

LOOK READ THINK ... 1GG2G2.5G3G... is dead-end marketing hype.
We need to be able to go anyplace in the USA and receive the
same GDMF QoS that can be obtained at home with an option of
multiple providers for all (or as selected) media and
communications products and services. All without swapping a GDMF
box at home/office or personal phone/PCS.

For all the BS and DisInfo US Citizens are feed, from the experts
and leaders of the USA Congress, FCC, Telcos ... businesses, we
should kick their balls so GDMF hard that they will taste their
own sperm in their mouths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_local_loop
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/wll/

Nothing fixes everything, but the USA does not need to fall
to last place in telecommunications globally.

LOOK READ THINK ... 1GG2G2.5G3G... is dead-end marketing hype.
We need to be able to go anyplace in the USA and receive the
same GDMF QoS that can be obtained at home with an option of
multiple providers for all (or as selected) media and
communications products and services. All without swapping a GDMF
box at home/office or personal phone/PCS.

For all the BS and DisInfo US Citizens are feed, from the experts
and leaders of the USA Congress, FCC, Telcos ... businesses, we
should kick their balls so GDMF hard that they will taste their
own sperm in their mouths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_local_loop
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html
http://www.iec.org/online/tutorials/wll/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.16

It appears that a few folks should read some about "802.16" [RTFC: Read The Fycking Content].

When you do not know the technology, you can always reference/consult wikipedia as a good start point.

Using spread spectrum, frequency hopping, and reasonable allocation of what should be well managed (not private/corporately controlled) public resources .... Any one of three competing telcos in the same local area (tower or HAPcom [coverage ~250SqMi] http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html) could provide (in the USA) voice, content [TV/Internet/radio/...] ... services for every home and business in the area.

From 1997 (http://www.interdigital.com) to present (IEEE and others) I have read about WLL/WiMAX/..., the technology impressed me, but our Corporate States of America (CSA) never allowed any real telecommunications competition anywhere in the USA. The proofs are many FCC giveaways. We (The USA) ranks about 25th in telecommunications infrastructure, functionality, and services in the global economy. At least telecommunications [TEK-infrastructure] is keeping pace with our collapsing bridges, dams ... (33%), exploding maned space craft (33%), health-care we're 40th, education (maybe 50th) .... It is not in the interest of the CSA-welfare economy for US to maintain/sustain leadership in anything at any cost.

The FCC, politicians ... of the CSA do not want competition. The CSA do want tax-dollar-welfare handouts, cheap labor, hostage customers (iPhone, another example), illiterate religious fervor, and strong population control defense.

!HAVEFUN! This ain't flame-troll, it is reality for US, though shit folks.

This is not the only lifting body design for an airship currently in production today. The SkyCat project by the Advanced Technologies Group in the UK has been developing a lifting body airship for several years now and is very near completion.

Unlike the Dynalifter project (which will use underslung cargo pods) the SkyCat has a hollow central section in the body into which trucks and other vehicles may be driven, kind of like the hold in a ferry.

The skycat is designed to take off and land like a conventional aircraft but it uses two concentric hovercraft cussions instead of conventional landing gear so it can land on hastily prepaired air strips or water if necessary. Once it has landed the pump on the inner hovercraft cussion is reversed creating a vacume that sucks the SkyCat to the ground so that it won't drift off

The Skycat project has had interest from the Americam military and the Chinese government.
In fact the US military has even carried out several tests on the remote controlled SkyCat prototypes and concluded that the lifting body airship design is safer for use in hostile situations than a helicopter.

For further conceptual ideas for uses of the SkyCat see World SkyCat who appear to be a company set up to market the skycat when it reaches full production.

I can't find any references to it on line but the discovery channel in the UK did a fantastic documentary on the SkyCat project a couple of years ago, where they didn't mention the Dynalifter project but they did mention the CargoLifter (German only).
CargoLifter is a massive semi rigid air ship that is designd to lift huge payloads via a winch whilst airborn, transport them to where they are needed and deploy them using the same winch mechanism.
The CargoLifter project is currently on hold due to a lack of funding.
For further information in english on the CargoLifter project see this article at aerospace-technology.com.

It reminds me of an old documentary on Discovery channel regarding the skycat http://www.worldskycat.com/ and that the US Military were looking at funding them. This bunny can (appartently) lift up to 1,000 tons!
Beats the sh*t out of 500 tons, twice.

Hmm it looks like SkyCat is still kicking

Interesting concept they use a 'reverse hovercraft' to secure the ship to the ground and the gasbag is (I recall) weighted to near neutral boynacy and it gets its lift from its airfoil shape