Slashdot Mirror
Weather Balloons as Wireless Telephone Technology
Under the plan described in this article submitted by reader RoscoHead, "Space Data would use un-tethered weather balloons launched daily by the National Weather Service to carry lightweight wireless communications equipment to an altitude of 100,000 feet. There, at the 'SkySite,' they would relay voice and data signals to remote areas at a fraction of the cost of installing cell towers or launching satellites, company officials say."
On a smaller scale this could also be done with the advertising ballons. Im looking mainly networking using systems such as consume, however hills, and weather become a major problem in the highlands of Scotland. An advertising balloon, with an antenna, a bit of coax as long as the balloons hoist cable, and you have an ariel that can get nice and high for coverage, and be winched back down for gales and bad weather.
Im sure there will be many impracticality's pointed out in this idea, however, hopefully it will inspire some other ideas.
0101100101101111011101010110110101110101011100110
Clearly using free-floating weather balloons has a number of limitations and disadvantages.
Now we know that NASA has great plans for its solar-powered airplane -- including acting as a semi-permanent flying repeater-station, but I wonder if smaller, cheaper options might not be available.
For example... what about a much smaller (say 20-30 foot span) autonomous craft designed to soar thermals during the day (while charging its batteries and gaining as much altitude as it can) -- then revert to battery power and/or gradually descend during the hours of darkness.
If the energy required to keep these craft airborn in the longer nights of winter was greater than that availble to be stored during the day then they could carry a fuel-load to power a high-efficiency internal combustion engine (probably a very small diesel engine). Every week or so the craft would have to land for refueling and maintenance -- but that's not a big deal.
Just like the US military's Predator RPV, they could be programmed to land on a runway set aside specially for the purpose.
The cost of a smaller craft, particularly one that wasn't totally reliant on solar-cells, would likely be much less than NASA's efforts -- thus allowing more of them to be built for a given budget.
By using more craft, they could cruise at a much lower altititude than either the weather balloon or the NASA craft.
Using modern composites, low cost GPS, and other "affordable" technologies, such a craft could likely be built for less than US$10K.
Assuming a 50% duty cycle, a fleet of 10 craft could cover a huge area at a much lower cost than towers, and with the ability to dynamically vary the coverage area if required -- simply by repositioning the craft.
Er, sorry to actually get all serious on you - but I think on the basis of your arguments there is no option but to go with weather balloons:
You cant shoot them down!
There was a "rogue" weather balloon a while back, which two Canadian air force CF-18 fighters fired more than 1,000 rounds of cannon shells into it, and the blinking thing still wouldnt come down.
I really cant see some yokel with a blunderbuss even scratching these things.
I have worked as balloon operator at the Danish Meteorological Institute, so I can tell you how this works: The winds at higher altitudes (10km+) is rather violent, often forcing the balloon to travel 100-200 kilometers eastwards (west is the prevailing direction of the wind in Denmark) during its ascent to an altitude of 30-35km. Then, at the top, the balloon tears (at that time it has expanded to a volume of 100 cubic metres from a starting volume of 1½ cubic meter) and drops gently to the ground, the torn balloon acting as a parachute. The kit is use-and-throw-away, so there is no need to chase the descending balloons (a good thing, because 90% of the balloons I launched landed somewhere in the Baltic Sea).
78% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
I wonder what would happen to the equipment? Would it be a one time launch sort of thing? Would it be damaged when those things come down? If not, How would they recover it? Also, it seems like they would have to launch a lot more of these things than they currently do in order to provide adequate coverage. It's hard to believe that this would be cost effective, but it is a very interesting idea. It might make more sense if they were able to stay aloft for more than 24 hours...
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
That's pretty keen. One of the balloons I was trying to launch in like around 15 knot winds tore off at the parachute about 5 secs before launch. It was really scary stuff. Lucky we didn't lose the package.
I was wondering that, so I looked it up. It turns out that after reaching a certain height, the weather balloon explodes from (internal pressure) and drops its payload. Usually this is a "radiosonde", a device which radios the weather conditions back to the weather station. The radiosonde weights about .3kg and is usually packaged in styrofoam to cushion the landing. Sometimes it has a parachute too.
Inside the radiosonde package there is also a self-addressed prepaid envelope so anyone who finds it can mail it back to the weather service. No kidding!
I spent six months in a weather station and launced ~50 radio sondes up to great blue yonder. One almost full hydrogen balloon burst while I was handling it and it was really close (10-15 cm) to my face. The hydrogen didn't explode. However, I have to confess that I was pretty scared for a moment.
The wind was about 12 m/s that day, if I remember correctly.
First of all, I'll have to say that I have no experience with either the weather forecasting or the telecommunication industry. But, I just find the number weird.
About 70 launch sites would be needed to cover the continental United States.
So there would have to be more than 51,000 launches a year at an annual cost is about $15 million.
That means they will release about 140 ballons each day. Firstly, I doubt whether only 140 sites will be sufficient to cover the entire continental America. Even if that's possible, it will mean that the transmission power will be quite strong. Commnunication engineers usually talk about the reuse of comm channals. What will be the implication of this?
On the other hand, $15M/70 launch sites approx equals $210000/yr/site. It seems to be a reasonable budget for reasonably large ground based relay tower.... I really cannot see the advantage for the alternative approach.
Yeh I mean, granted theres a lot of problems with exploding baloons, aircraft, cost blah blah blah blah but what about the latency which these things'll have on data transmission? I looked into wireless broadband for my house and I read all over the place that the latency was worse than a shitty 33.6kbps connection. What would the story with these babies be?
Small Black Dog - I've for gotten my password
You'd just need a means to keep the position, don't know how the winds are up there, and if electric motors w/ propellers will be efficient at that altitude.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
why not put a 802.11b transciever in a weather balloon and run netstumbler on it?
A little more seriously, why not buy a surplus weather balloon, tether it over your house and put a passive microwave repeater on it like John Dvorak did for his "bank shot?" Might make for a nifty way to get community wireless broadband out to the suburbs.