Airships Tested As Two-Way Telecom Beacons

sgups writes "The Toronto Star (no registration required:)) is reporting about this firm which will supply spherical airships that will be used as high-flying telecommunications platforms to supply two-way Internet access across the United States and into Mexico and Canada. The article explains little of the technology though."

Comments

Dynamic Zoning

[Good Sumerian]

I'd like to see how they handle the dynamic zone changes as the beach balls drift around.

Cool!

[Miroku]

High speed internet access for those of us who live out in the woods would be great, since sattelite is incredibly expensive...

As long as they don't get shot down as UFO's....

This won't work

[mut3]

Sure, you can put balloons up there, but there are factors such as weather, acts of God, and so on, that can ruin this whole thing.

Very Cool, especially for rural areas.

[Ashetos]

What about the same solution as an alternative to Cell Phone towers?

Positioning?

[CyNRG]

What about power requirements? Staying in the same position requires some power. There are also other power issues I', Sure.

Cy

Nasa has a better idea

[UrGeek]

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Projects/Pathfinder/

or search for "Nasa solar-powered Pathfinder" in your favorite search engine.

This is a solar-powered drone that eventually will fly 24 hours (carrying batteries for night).

visibility

[tekunokurato]

I'm curious: will people on the ground be able to see these, or are they too high and small to be noticeable? Obviously they won't eclipse out the sun, but will they make a noticable blotch on it?

How is geosync accomplished?

[wideBlueSkies]

>>The Stratellite, which will be about 80 metres in diameter, is similar to a satellite, but it is stationed in the stratosphere at 19,000 metres rather than in orbit.

Maybe this sounds like a dumb question, but how do they plan on keeping one of these things in place? With an 18,000 foot cable? With some type of gyroscope mechanism?

Wouldn't the wind(and changes in air pressure) move the thing around like a, uh, baloon?

Forgive me, but I don't know that much about high altitude baloons. But I know that if the wind down here on the surface can rock my 2 ton truck around like a lego toy, it would probably do a number on a baloon in the upper atmosphere.

interesting tangent

[zogger]

--I've seen several slashdot threads now on starting your own business, moaning about the company you are in, etc. The two recent were the tech trends thread and the hilarious wobbly headed CEO doll "bonus". Anyway, I found the most fascinating thing in the article was that, to the owner, balloons were just fun! That's how he got into it, doing what he thought was fun and cool! Fun can translate into enthusiasm which leads to making some radical but maybe cool decisions. More power to the guy, and hope he figures out how to keep them in place! And is this a new job title, certified stratonaut network administrator*? CSNA* What a job!

*copylefted, have fun!

picture

[h4x0r-3l337]

A (small) picture of one of these ships can be found here.

Old Hat

[A non moose cow]

Oil field trash from Africa's equitorial west coast might remember this being done over 20 years ago (by Conoco? I can't remember). The company needed communications into the jungle, and the anchored dirgibles solved two problems...

1. They didn't have to cut a path for wires
2. They could avoid the natives stealing the wire.

The problem came in the first monsoon season when , although very heavily anchored, the coastal one was blown hard enough to snap the dirgible from the cable. The cable bounded back like a rubber band, and completely demolished the base station. Tons of thick steel cable flying out of the sky. I wish I could have seen it.

(My dad, now retired from Mobil, told me this story some years ago.)

Wait a minute . . .

[kwik_mart]

I hope they gave this guy some credit for the idea!

(I discovered this site about a year ago, and even called him to comment on how "brilliant" all of his ideas are. Check out the rest of it here!

Blown Away...literally

[matt_martin]

Was down in Eloy, AZ last weekend checking out the 300 way skydiving world record and there was this large white sphere tied down in the desert. Thought it might be some kind of portable radar setup for the event 'till I get closer. It had two transparent "windows" near the bottom and two dinky propellers about 3/4 of the way up on opposite sides. The crew was loading stuff right into the spherical shape of it and were too busy to explain much other than to say that they were going to launch the thing soon. So, anyway, was later talking to somebody who had stuck around, he said they had in the air and were successfully maneuvering it.

But here's where it gets interesting. Later, when they were finished and had the ship tied down when a sudden wind storm blew in. Wouldn't you know it, he said the last thing he saw was the thing BLOWING AWAY into the sky "going going gone...". Hopefully they had some crew on board, though there's no way those tiny props could've fought any serious wind. We were guessing 1/4 mil was GONE (and we didn't know then that there might be comm. equipment aboard). Tough work being a pioneer in your field...

Powering communication equipment

[burbilog]

Communication blimp is not a problem, but powering it is. You need a lot of power for all transmitters. Solar power would not be enough -- you can't have many batteries on board because of their weight and i doubt that it's enough to power everything at the day. So... there are only two choices:

• Every day or two dirigible flies towards comm blimp and refuels it. No big deal, but a lot of fuel. And the tanker has to be manned. And blimp engines must be exceptionally durable. And...
• Nuclear plant. Greens? Osama?