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Broadband From On High But Not In Orbit
jw writes: "The NY Times has a story about Angel Technologies, a St. Louis company that plans to provide high- speed Internet access in an unusual way: using solar-powered, high-altitude manned aircraft built to cruise at 51,000 feet... In addition to the expense of building or acquiring three planes for each metropolitan area, Angel's complicated plan involves using huge quantities of jet fuel, hiring two pilots for each plane and making three takeoffs and landings every day for each city where its service is available..." Piloting one of these sounds like a pretty high-stress job; if this should come to pass I hope they get every other week off like Houston channel pilots do. Zeppelins, satellites, solar-powered planes ... what about kites?
*whine* oh, it costs too much
*whack* What did it cost Iridum to put up it's satellites? $2 billion +?
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*whine* Where will they get pilots?
*whack* A lot of pilots have to get a lot of hours in jets before they can fly commercial airlines. Most wind up joining the air nat'l guard or air force so they can get the hours. This is a great way to get highly experienced pilots. Takeoffs and landings are the two places where most accidents happen, and most pilots spend a lot of hime working on those. Three flights a day will give a lot of experience.
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*whine* It will use too much fuel
*whack* Probably not as much as you think. They'll be very high up, so be rather effieient. They're not hauling people or too much equipment, so those jets will be very efficient.
Hell of a way to beat latency!
The latency to low earth orbit is around 30 ms, similar to ISDN. High earth orbit is like 200 ms. I can see wanting to do something like this, but exploring dirigibles or even GLIDERS first would have made a lot of sense!
It might look like a hoax at first glance, but the latency to low earth orbit is around 30 ms, similar to ISDN. High earth orbit is like 200 ms. That makes for pretty bad lag when you're used to 3 to 5 ms on a DSL or cablemodem link.
I can see wanting to do something like this, but exploring dirigibles first, or even gliders, would have made sense!
Posted by blerki:
Very interesting. I'd have to bet that these ("Angel") guys are rushing in an attempt to beat the SkyStation folks to the market. Let's hope they don't, since the Skystation stuff looks much cleaner and better planned...
Maybe it does sound a bit far-fetched, but I have personally seen the actual aircraft flying and downlinking data to a ground station.
At the EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh in 1999 they had the Rutan Proteus aircraft circling the airfield at high altitude and sending near-live video images to a laptop in the NASA exhibit. It wasn't quite high enough resolution to see yourself waving up at the plane, but you could see the larger display aircraft moving around on the ground.
The secret to making it work is the genius of airplane designer Burt Rutan. The Proteus is a bizarre, ungainly looking beast built optimally for long endurance at high altitude. It uses a couple of small, super efficient jet engines from Williams International to power it. Compared to something like a 747, fuel consumption is miniscule.
The mission time is expected to be anywhere from 10 to 14 hours. Two pilots take turns to fly and sleep during the mission. I guess they'll will need some smart software to execute the transmission handover when an aircraft is replaced on station by the next mission. I think they are proposing 6 aircraft per station to maintain continuous coverage.
I'm not sure about the electronics/radio side of things but I guess that the frequency band will need to be one where directional antennas are not required. Having to track a moving aircraft to maintain a connection would be impractical. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't.
But I certainly do not think it is a hoax.
Check It Out!
I can see wanting to do something like this, but exploring dirigibles first, or even gliders, would have made sense!
I think both have serious problems with high winds; I think crashes did more damage to the dirigible business than the Hindenberg did. Airplanes have been known to fly into hurricanes, in comparison. And at the given altitude, the jetstream is, what, 100 mph?
However, I have read plans for unmanned flights to do this. I suppose the problem is that you need a powerful aircraft to survive a high percentage of weather and thus keep your service almost always available.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
This won't help the signals in urban centers because the aircraft will not be allowed to orbit directly overhead in tight circles.
The FAA won't allow it in the US.
IIRC, the ping to GEO and back is around half a second. The ping 102,000 feet (51,000 up and back) is somewhat less noticable.
If the service can turn a gross revenue of $50 per subscriber, and they can get 10,000 subscribers per market, then they can probably turn a operating profit after they amortize the cost of the aircraft over a few years.
Don Negro
Don Negro
Perl 6 will give you the big knob. -- Larry Wall
:)
hawk
This is expensive. THey were moving forward with a new line of blimps (though they might have been zepplins (sp), as they could put these on station for a week at a time. A beautiful solution, but then the Soviets folded and there was no point . . .
It also would have provided a use for the Strategic Helium Reserve. We keep it for the navy's blimps, even though they haven't had them for over 50 years . . .
hawk
Ok, now I'm confused. The NY Times article mentions solar powered aircraft *and* jet fuel, but the company web page doesn't mention solar power at all.
If slashdot had a "Cancel" function, I would cancel my previous post.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Read the article again. Which part of "solar-powered" didn't you understand?
I'm suprised the article mentions manned aircraft. The original proposal I read for "aerosats" was aircraft that would take off under remote control, get to cruising altitude then go autonomous until they needed to descend in a few weeks at which point they'd be taken over by remote control again.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
I WISH my job was boring enough that I could just sit and read or play with a laptop all day long.....
Hmm.. Maybe for some people, coming home to a wife and kids every night might not be ideal... But... I don't know, I just don't believe they will have a very hard time finding pilots for this, not at all...
Did someone leak out this april fools joke a bit early?
This has GOT to be a joke.
What is the quote? "Flying is three hours of absolute boredom followed by ten minuts of sheer terror," or something along those lines. And that guy was in the military. Having flown a little bit myself, I can say that most flying is boring anyways. Me personally, I stick to hang-gliding :) Much more intense.
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I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
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Check out SkyStation. Their proposed system uses a statospheric platform held aloft by helium. Electric motors powered by photovoltaic cells (and betteries for the night) are used for stationkeeping. Sort of like a satellite in very low geostationary orbit.
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Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Pyrotechnics
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
AOL fighter pilots gunning down Angel Internet ISP planes...
or... if you will..
"our server went down, and we lost 2 men."
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I post links to stuff here
And what happens during a storm?
Yes its possible. Highly unlikely. Another vaporware product from another vaporware company looking for attention.
This looks like a job for the Centurion!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The reason you can't uplink fast is transmitter power.
Geosynch is 22,500 miles away
This will be 10 miles away.
At 1/2500 the distance, you can get faster speeds because you require a LOT less power per bit. Basically, we're talking about a flying wireless transciver.
Your connection speed will be fine.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Not that I would subscribe to this kind of thing. With the rate that unique services like this are abandoned, I wouldn't want to be stuck with a $1,000 "cone-shaped antenna" that's only good for a paper weight. Just look at Iridium. Keeping a bunch of planes in the sky 24 hours a day isn't exactly low-maintenance service..
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you're not going to get signal*
Basically, you're walking down Broadway talking happily, you turn onto 52nd, and your connection is dropped.
The signal really has to rain down from above for coverage to be decent (after all, not much of Manhattan has a direct line of sight to the top of the ESB, but all of it has a direct line of sight to, say, the sun)
*no matter how many times you shout, "Main screen turn on!"
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
The pilots can surf the Net while the autopilot does the work!
Formatting got fried.. but you get the point (I tried to do it as plain old text, but it kept telling me it had junk characters in it)
In comment to your sig. Postulate 1: Knowledge is Power. Postulate 2: Time is Money. As every engineer knows... Work/Time = Power Since Knowledge = Power, and Time = Money, we have: Work/Money = Knowledge Solving for Money, we get: Work/Knowledge = Money Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity regardless of the Work done. Conclusion: The Less you Know, the more you Make
for everytime someone proposed flying a plane or using a baloon for a communications repeater. It just isn't going to happen. I would love to have a list of names of the investors on this cuz I've got a bridge for sale.
Reality: You either put a bunch of stations high up on mountains or buildings or you put one expensive station in orbit. Either way your cost for coverage is going to be less than some manned aircraft system and far more reliable.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
And the pilots will have the best ping time of everyone to the onboard FPS servers.
(Actually, in addition to high-altitude contrails are an indicator of not spraying the Earth, any concerted contrail activity would be visible in satellite photos and impossible to hide.)
Well you got conclusion right but your facts wrong.
>Planes can use cheaper components for the solar power supply.
The planes will us generators running off of the jet engines just like airlines. It will take less fuel than lifting lots of heavy high drag solarcells.
>Planes can use standard issue servers.
Most likely not. They will use have aviation speced computers on board. Still cheaper then space speced computers. But not standard issue.
>Planes don't require nuclear backup for when it gets dark.
Very few sattilites do. If they have nuclear power they do not need solar cells. I am pretty sure all modern earth orbiting sattilties use batterys.
>Planes don't crash into earth once every 5 years and need to be releaunched.
GEO orbit stattilites take thousands of years to fall to earth. LEO Sattilites take much less. The GEOs then to break, have there Batteries get fried, or run out of fuel long before then.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Actually for someone that is trying to move up to the airlines this would be a great job. You could build your jet time 8 hours a day. In one year figureing a 40 hour work week you would have 2000 hours. Lots of young pilots will love this.
And the cost of running it will not be to bad. The only real question is will they get enough customers.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
1. Actually the engines on the plane are super efficent. It burns jetfuel which is a byproduct of gasoline production and is actually cheaper than gasoline. At 51,000 ft it will be in such thin air that it will probably have a lower fuel burn rate than a semitruck.
2. At 51k there is little weather or air traffic. That is above where most fighters can operate much less airliners.
3. The pilots will be low paid by airline standards. Mostlikly they will be low time pilots that want to work for the airlines and will be in it to build their hours.
4. It would not be a bad gig for someone that loves to fly. Bring a book and you and the co trade off. Plus you would have a spectacular view.
It could work and work well. It could also be used to supply emergence communications in event of a natural disaster and mobile networks. The only thing is there enought users to payfor it.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I can only imagine how much you'd have to pay for access to support this kind of infrastructure.
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The is another company Platforms Wireless that has a better system: they tether a lighter-than-air craft at 15,000 feet. It covers a 70-mile radius. Sounds a lot cheaper than paying for 24/7 pilots.
Also, I thought there was a slashdot story awhile back about an unmanned airplane that would use solar power to generate hydrogen during the daytime, and then run on fuel cells during the night. It could stay up indefinitely.
My roommate who is a Hamm told me about how Hamm radio operators are using large delta wing kites to take up antennas super high up. If the antennae was high enough and powerful enough it could provide packet radio access to a fairly wide range of people, and hence, internet service. Too bad it's slow 9600 baud max I believe, and you can't use encryption.
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
Los Angeles (AP) -- AOL Time-Warner announced today that it would aquire the Los Angeles ISP startup CrazyFarm, which began service to customers over its moonbounce-laser high speed data connection last week. Steve Case had this to say about the recent aquisition: "All your base are belong to us. Ha ha ha ha."
Problem is your conclusion is wrong. The origional equation says, for a given amount of work, the less time you have to do it in, the more power it takes. So you revised equation means that for a given amount of work, the less knowledge you have(the dumber you are) the more money it takes to finish the work. This almost sounds true, perhaps this is a grand unifying theroy between physics and economics?
Spencer Ogden
Agreed. But not for the reasons just listed.
Pilots being productive? Come on. To a pilot, as long as you're flying, all else is irrelevant. Noise pollution? Not from 50,000 feet. Occupies air traffic lanes? There is no law that saws you must fly on and only on the Victor airways. With an Air Traffic Control clearance, you can orbit in one spot, out of everybody else's way, all day long.
Nope, this won't work out because of simple technical issues like getting a set of frequencies that can blanket one or more areas without trashing out existing services. Like you can't use low-power transmitters and high-gain antennas when your high-station is in motion. Your ground station will have to use omni-directional antennas (little discones, maybe) and then higher power transmitters to punch a signal up to the airborne receiver. And how to deal with the "cone of silence"; that area of non-radiation that every antenna has. If the airborne set is orbiting, at some point in the orbit, some part of the service area will be in the "shadow" of the antenna.
Or, the project (as described) could get clobbered by the idea that the high-station will be above 50,000 ft. That altitude rules out most of the smaller (and most economical) business jets and moves us up into the used airliner class. With bigger cost-per-hour to operate due to older, non-fuel-efficient engines. Oh, and just for kicks, tune into rec.aviation.military for a recent thread about flight above 50,000 feet. It's not the same up there.
So let's all resume a state of low alert and wait for the same scheme to resurface using dirigibles.
That is the stupidest thing that I've ever seen, and I've read through MFC :-)
I can't see any way that a labour intensive, energy consuming and inherently dangerous technology can possibly compete against the other options available.
Best of luck to this guy...I think I'd sink my money into the paper cell phone project before something as "pie in the sky" (no pun intended) as this.
Los Angeles, CA - In what seems like another completely ludicrous way to get the 'net' into homes, Los Angeles based CrazyFarm has announced that it will install a laser-based internet service, where each connection will have a laser pointed at... the moon! The moon will house a large facility that will communicate via lasers, providing 1.5MB/s of service, to users on the Earth's surface. "The major problem we haven't solved yet," said the CTO, "is that the moon is only visible to half the earth at once, and since we need a direct line of site for our service, we are planning to blow up the moon into 2, possibly 3, fragments, each of which will host our ISP moon bases."
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
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crazy dynamite monkey
This sounds like a job for super heroes in their downtime. If superman can fly fast enough to reverse the spin of the earth, he surely can cover this type of broadband service. Jason
I can see it now.. You get fragged, and you blame it on your ISP-jet which mosied its way over to the south side of your city, increasing your ping by a few ms.
CMGI owns the patent on that.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I live within the city limits of the 16th largest city in America, Baltimore, and the best I can do is 144k/144k IDSL. Its this or my old 56k modem.
I think....therefore I am
I reject your reality
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
This sounds like a terribly bad idea. Not only does it use up a large number of pilots who could be doing other, more productive activities, but it generates great heaping loads of pollution (air and noise), consumes mass quantities of jet fuel, and occupies air traffic lanes. I can't see how this can be more economically viable than low earth orbit or geosynchronous satellites.
I'm not convinced about fuel efficiency. Once your satellite is in orbit it requires only nominal fuel to correct its orbit for the life of the satellite. The airplane has to spend fuel continuously to maintain airspeed or crash. The energy requires to orbit a plane in atmosphere at 20,000 feet has to be magnitudes more than the energy required to orbit an object at 20,000 feet -- or 100,000 feet --- in the absence of an atmosphere, after all. Sounds like a comparison between fruits and vegetables.
I don't offhand know what the fuel consumption to boost a satellite to orbit vs. orbiting a plane for three years, but I'd really be surprised if it takes more for the satellite.
The market must be ready for a rally!!!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It's like we turned the clock back a year+... I thought crazy ideas were out, in favor of profitable ideas?
Oh well, the crazy ideas were a lot of fun.
It does sound like it would be economical to replace all those cell phone towers with one high-flying antenna... but a baloon sounds more efficient than a plane.
The article said "Solar powered" -- I don't read any mention of Solar Powered on their web page.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Gives a whole new meaning to uptime too...
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
If they're solar-powered, what do you need jet fuel for?
Speaking of getting data around,you ever heard that theory about there being only one electron? The idea is that this universal electron moves both ways in time so the singular appears multiple. So my idea is this: can we put a signal on the "universal electron" that could be recieved by anyone observing the electron *anywhere*? (and is it wiggling with strange vibes (spin?) already? I mean, is it in use?) Our universe may already have a "universal bus" built right in.
Hmmm I'm sure this will do just as well as say police planes wielding radar guns. In most cases the cost was just way to prohibitive for the concept to fly. But if they're willing to try more power to 'em.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Ummm.. anyone notice this? http://www.angelhalo.com/banner.htm
The Broadband.com Company doesn't own the domain name Broadband.com.
It's for sale.
Hrmphp
This is absolutely stupid. What a waste of fuel. Having internet access is not THAT important....
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It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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or...if your ISP crashes, it takes out more than just the net: like your house, your kid's school, your place of work, the local hospital...this almost makes me think April Fool's day came early this year.
/. story ever garnered? Has the Cof$ story won that honor yet?
Check this out....Calvin and Hobbes have all their base owned by her.
and on another offtopic note...what is the max number of comments a
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Unfortunately, when most ISPs crash, they don't take a city block with them.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Supposedly the ancient Egyptians used kites to pick up those massive blocks and build the pyramids... I'd say broadband would be easier with them than with massive planes...
Does this plan seem overly complicated to you instead of kiss? Does it remind you of Iridium?
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
But if your ISP crashes, it really crashes.
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
As if wireless services weren't plagued enough by weather. Not only will there be weak signal on shitty days, but the planes could (should) be grounded.
Not if you could connect to the 'net... E2 from a few miles up... YES
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Burt Rutan, aerodynamics god, of Scaled Composites was talking about this back in 1998. Apparently, Angel Technologies will be using his Proteus reconfigurable aircraft, which apparently designed with the telecomm purpose in mind long before Angel came along.
Sorry about no direct line to Proteus. The site's all gussied up with frames.
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Yo soy El Fontosaurus Grande!
blog |
Teledesic, this "high altitude aircraft, and the "giant high altitude stationary blimp" internet access scheme have appeared in dozens of publications for nearly two years now. For God's sake people, let's drop it until one of these is actually lifting off, and bouncing packets back to people in a usable manner.
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
What, me worry?
I thought about this. I don't care how much you want to build flight time or pad your log book, this would be a good deal for someone who was extremely dedicated or almost dead and likes reading cereal boxes for days at a time.
Would be a good deal for a young pilot, but I'd bet they don't fly 3,001 hours as they will find someone else at three thousand.
DanH
Cavalry Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
and this looks like the most god-awful BORING thing on Earth. Sounds like Guard Rail flights. Eight hours of mind numbing boredom.
I would like to see the turn over rate of their pilots. Bet it's higher than the dot coms at the height of the stock market boom.
DanH
Cavalry Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
lizard
Fly long flight commercial or work for the government. 'nuff said.
Dunno about the wife and kids part, but hey, you heard about the guy who had 5 wives in 5 cities, and went through them once each week?
I bet he was in good physical condition
I have a shotgun, a shovel and 30 acres behind the barn.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
I didn't realize we were discriminating against glider pilots....
Man, ping times are gonna SUCK on that network. I'll take my Q3 elsewhere....
I ain' that dumb :p
Is it me or is this just an obviously bad idea? What's happens when the plan has to land? You service dies? I can just imagine being in the middle of a D/L. "ERROR 408 Plane has crashed. Page cannot be found" Speaking of which are they going to host web servers on the plane?
The story did say they would have 3 planes over metropolitan areas. I would think that would be redundant enough to allow to take-offs and landing for refueling, swithcing out pilots, ect. puck
For some reason, this reminds me of a university professor who found it faster to store all his projects on tape and drive across state to the other university for unpacking into the 'remote' computer than trying to use FTP.
Or maybe I'm not quite understanding this business model.
And so it goes.
So when we say high speed internet, is that the speed of the plane or the internet connection.
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml lists the stories with the most comments. The #1 story seems to be mostly automated junk comments, but the Co$ story is in the top ten.
Lasers Controlled Games!
This does not sound like the greatest business plan ...And they are willing to burn so much fuel? What happens to your on-line tarrif's should the Arabs decide to limit supply even more, or we should run low? I'd imagine the cost of this being placed straight onto the customer within a shorter amount of notice than would otherwise be the case.
I am sure others will find faults too...And maybe some good points, although I am hard pressed to see any.
It is wasteful of a lot of fuel...They need to burn fuel just to get the gliders in place, then they need to be "turned" arund every 8 hours or so with a new replacement glider and crew.
I'd imagine you would need a skilled glider pilot to maintain the altitude, last thing we need is a "glider kiddie" flying above commercial traffic.
Is it me or is this just an obviously bad idea? What's happens when the plan has to land? You service dies? I can just imagine being in the middle of a D/L. "ERROR 408 Plane has crashed. Page cannot be found" Speaking of which are they going to host web servers on the plane?
The cost for launching and maintaining a Satalite can't be that much that this solution is more reasonable.
But on a birghter note this has to speak well for the economy. I mean the fact that there are venture capitalist out there putting money into such an idea has to say something
from http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/press/1996/uavproto.h tml
"A prototype for a potential fleet of solar-powered autonomous aircraft that fly at high altitude in "V" formations like geese and serve as wireless communications hubs or sensing platforms will be displayed June 5 at UCLA in Westwood. The aircraft was designed and built by UCLA and Rockwell engineers in partnership with NASA."
these people really ought to read slashdot more often... =)
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
Well, from what I understood about satellite service, is you have very fast downloads, but you also have to be connected via dialup or some other method for any kind of upload, since there's not enough power for each person to have a dish to beam transmisions to a satellite. That dialup has to be used for every single packet acknowledgement. So, this crazy idea would be good ONLY for people who do nothing but surf and download. Forget trying to send a big file to a friend, forget trying to serve web pages. Talk about useless....
Weather Diversions. Angel will pursue a certificate under FAR23 regulations and will be authorized to operate in the full range of normal instrument flight conditions. Angel's operational plan will be conservative for it will allows the HALO aircraft to avoid significant weather by diverting to alternate municipal airports with current and forecast conditions approaching visual flight rules. Even the largest storm systems, a few hundred miles across, can be avoided, since such a distance will be readily traversed with the flight speed and fuel margin offered by the airplane.
And while we're at it, why not unmanned? Regulations, apparently:
Piloted Aircraft. In order to streamline the aircraft development and FAA certification processes, the HALO aircraft will be manned with two pilots. Over time, Angel may decide to transition to single pilot operation, to be followed by unmanned operations, if the regulatory climate becomes more favorable.
Hey, maybe it is in fact a stupid idea. It's just not stupid in that simplistic a way.
Actually the engines on the plane are super efficent. It burns jetfuel which is a byproduct of gasoline production and is actually cheaper than gasoline. You mean kerosene, right? Like every other plane in the sky burns? As for "super-efficient" ALL planes are "super-efficient". Planes benefit from less drag thus greater power to thrust ratios. 2. At 51k there is little weather or air traffic. That is above where most fighters can operate much less airliners. Unless they're using powerful microwave signals, rain and storms will disrupt the connection due to the user being on the ground. 3. The pilots will be low paid by airline standards. Mostlikly they will be low time pilots that want to work for the airlines and will be in it to build their hours. That makes me feel much better. Remind me to take out insurance on planes crashing into my home. 4. It would not be a bad gig for someone that loves to fly. Bring a book and you and the co trade off. Plus you would have a spectacular view. Ok, I could see that being the case. But wouldn't it get repetative? It could work and work well. Have you seen those new CitiBank commercials? You know, the ones that say "just because you have the power, doesn't mean you should." It could also be used to supply emergence communications in event of a natural disaster and mobile networks. Yes, it could. Hasn't the military had something like this in the past? Actually, scratch that. I believe that still have flying radar stations that double as radio relays. Can anyone confirm that?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Actually the engines on the plane are super efficent. It burns jetfuel which is a byproduct of gasoline production and is actually cheaper than gasoline.
You mean kerosene, right? Like every other plane in the sky burns? As for "super-efficient" ALL planes are "super-efficient". Planes benefit from less drag thus greater power to thrust ratios.
2. At 51k there is little weather or air traffic. That is above where most fighters can operate much less airliners.
Unless they're using powerful microwave signals, rain and storms will disrupt the connection due to the user being on the ground.
3. The pilots will be low paid by airline standards. Mostlikly they will be low time pilots that want to work for the airlines and will be in it to build their hours.
That makes me feel much better. Remind me to take out insurance on planes crashing into my home.
4. It would not be a bad gig for someone that loves to fly. Bring a book and you and the co trade off. Plus you would have a spectacular view.
Ok, I could see that being the case. But wouldn't it get repetative?
It could work and work well.
Have you seen those new CitiBank commercials? You know, the ones that say "just because you have the power, doesn't mean you should."
It could also be used to supply emergence communications in event of a natural disaster and mobile networks.
Yes, it could. Hasn't the military had something like this in the past? Actually, scratch that. I believe that still have flying radar stations that double as radio relays. Can anyone confirm that?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What do you think will happen when you have a major weather pattern between you and the aircraft? That's riiiight! NO CARRIER....
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What about unmanned aerial vehicles? I'm guessing the flying would be limited to circling over the city (so you'd be in a predictable place for the receivers on the ground to find and point to). Not only would it save a lot in personnel costs (dear God would it be boring to be this thing's pilot) but by removing the weight of all the systems to keep the crew alive at 50,000+ feet, you could save a lot on fuel costs.
The idea isn't a terrible one (the military is already playing with stuff like this for different missions), but manned aircraft don't seem to make any sense.
Despite the insanely high cost of jet-fuel, what I am really concerned about here is the eventual strain on the environment should this prove popular.
Think about it. Most of the fuel in jet engines burns away. Most of the exhaust is in the form of water and CO2, but there is a small amount of hydrocarbon exhaust.
I would think that multiple 'around the clock' flights would start putting out non-negligable amounts of greenhouse-gas and hyrdrocarbon pollution. This is not a good thing, because there are better, cheaper ways to do this.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Correct?
Unless they don't use that power to fly with.
Anyways, this is hardly something that's new. I remewmber reading about it in wired and pop sci years back. But I can't remember too much about it.
Karma...Police...
Arrest this man...
He speaks in numbers,
He buzzes like a fridge..
01101001 01100001 01101101 01101110 01101111 01110100 01100001 01101100 01100001 01110111 01111001 01100101 01110010
It has always been said that there's more than one way to skin a cat -- but nobody ever said that every way that works is a good way. How rediculous can these people be? I thought the startup costs for a traditional isp would be high...can you imagine...the cost of the aircraft alone would likely go well above all of the costs for a traditional 'land based' ISP...gimme a break.
terradot, growing awareness
Now if they would only look into unmanned solutions. This might become cost effective.
Dancin Santa
My internet connection just went down over Minneapolis!
Dancin Santa
What about Mir :)
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
Hell, even the company and business plan mentioned here has been talking about it since at least August 2000. (Search that page for "Angel" or "Raytheon".) Does anyone even bother to check if this stuff is new before posting it? Oh yeah, nevermind.
Nope, no sig
This is too much! We need government regulation to decide the best course of action, and to tax it too.
Actually, with balloons, you could easily have several up at once, and they could be unmanned, too (not to mention ground-controlled via fiber optic thru the cable. Problem with one? Reel 'er in!)
What I really want to know is what happened to the impossibility of broadband-for-everyone-via-wireless? That there was physically not enough radio spectrum, even if it was all devoted, to give high speed to everyone in a given area, and the larger the area covered by the same transponder, the worse it was. Certainly covering a 70-mile radius over a large city would involve several million x the bandwidth of a cable modem.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Go to Canada (since 99.999% of Canadians live within 50 miles of the US, the reverse must be true), buy a Hulkster 3000 Turdswallower, DECLARE it at the border (no need to hide it; besides, it was more likely than not manufactured in America and will be happy to be going home) and take it home and install it.
I HATE these little girly-man toilets! My GF's 'rents have one, and I have, PRIOR to the insertion of any toilet paper, had to actually remove the choking poop, place it on a hastily-created toilet paper workstation prepared on the floor, and physically disassemble it into smaller pieces for reinsertion into the toilet for swallowing over multiple flushes. Then I was able to wipe myself clean, over several more flushings.
Some idiot engineers thought that by narrowing the opening, they could make it use less water. Either that, or the opening just was never man enough to accept all that without 5 gallons of water weight pushing it through.
Anyway, none of the states near the CA border have any water shortage problems whatsoever, so we hate the concrete canyon dwellers of NY and CA2 for forcing this idiot legislation down our throats. Well, them and the idiot environmentalists who get the states to individually pass such lame, needless (even in California) laws.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
Do any of you people bother to read the article? The plain cruises at 51,000 feet, in the stratosphere far above the weather patterns. Not only does it provide high speed internet it will also provide cellular access. As for cost effectiveness, there are no polls to put in the ground, no building permits or towers, and can cover several hundred miles, all without the problems of typical cellular towers, such as losing connection in areas with varying terrain. blah blah blah, read the flippin article.
it sounds too expensive to go anywhere, and I cna't imagine the best bandwidth for what u pay.
This concept is only relevant would the company get some $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ to make it happen (and judging by the look of their website, they're far from that). There is a snowflake's chance in hell of funding coming to this company right now and in the near and far future. I'm surprised Taco didn't post this. Perhaps because the airplanes don't run Liinux?
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$ chown -R us:us yourbase
This seems like a fairly efficient way of providing this service - certainly more so than irridiumizing would be.
1. Fuel efficiency
If you spend a couple of minutes thinking about it, and get out your trusty college physics textbook, you'd soon realize that on an equivalent energy basis you can keep an object at 20,000 feet for three years for the same energy budget as a geosync orbit.
2. Space efficiency
Yeah, it's over used, but geosync orbital space over the us and europe is pretty crowded. Do we need to fit more up there?
3. Technological efficiency
When you launch a satelite, you lose the ability to upgrade the hardware. Not so with a plane.
The real question, however, is the safety of the plane - I mean, they do make you turn your cell phone off when the cabin doors are closed, and while there's no scientific evidence, I thought that the statistical coorelation was undeniable, unless of course I am mistaken and it's acutally just a scam to get you to use those airphones.
I want one.
I'm the best IRC client ever.
No kidding. This would be an ideal application for the NASA balloon project (if they could get it to stop leaking). Fly at a lower altitude to get more lifting capacity (denser air), add solar panels for power, modify it to be more of a blimp shape instead of a pumpkin and use some of its power for station-keeping, and it wouldn't require any fuel to speak of. Nor would it require pilots (six pilots at $75,000/yr each plus bennies... I make that at least $600,000/yr/city).
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Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
The AC is right. Nothing flies at FL51 except the occasional Lear jet and the military, and the latter presumably avoid the vicinity of cities when flying maneuvers.
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- Your minimum drag is roughly a constant fraction of your weight.
- Accordingly, the thrust you need to stay in the air is just about a constant fraction of your weight, so long as you stick to the best L/D speed.
- On the other hand, your speed keeps going up as you go to higher altitudes. THEREFORE,
- Your power requirements (thrust times speed) increase with increasing altitude.
It's true that a higher-altitude flight is generally more efficient per unit distance, but that's because you're typically flying at better than the best L/D airspeed (and taking a greater drag penalty). If you are just trying to stay in the air, and ignoring the inefficiencies of engines designed for high altitude operating at low altitude, you are much better off flying at lower speed in the thicker air where you can achieve the same drag at lower airspeed.--
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I have heard of this a long time ago, on the order of years. I suppose it never came to fruition because it's just as silly as it ever was.
Now, if Angel partnered with @Home, they could ensure the lowest QOS ever! Imagine, no more "Your cable is out because (insert variation of 'we are incompetent here')!" now its, "Your service is out because the plane is down for refueling!" Now they would have a real excuse. It's beautiful.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
I'm a pilot, don't have my license quite yet, but I have done a lot of flying. Problem #1 - This is very impractical. Metro areas have more air traffic than they can handle to begin with. Problem #2 - This is very expensive. For one thing, solar power as a means of powering manned aircraft has never been practical. Right now the one's that are available can lift MAYBE 300 pounds, and we're already talking large biz jet sizes. To carry 2 pilots and loads of telcom gear? Now you're talking probably at least a 200ft wingspan. Even using composites and the like out the ying yang, this bird is gonna be a real ostrich, that is very big and it won't fly real well. The main reason is that the only way to get power from solar energy with an airplane is with propellars. Even the most powerful prop plane in the world, the Russian TU-95 Bear, which has 8 17ft propellors, driven by almost 31,000HP, stuggles above 40,000ft. Okay, enough rambling, basically, if these guys even make a 1/4 scale flying model of one of these beasts, my hats off to 'em, but I'll still think they're looney.....
TODO: Something witty here...