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Internet-By-Airship Scheduled For Trial Next Month
Reader ScrewTivo points to this Economist article on one of my favorite potential delivery means for high-speed Net access: stratosphere-dwelling airships. This version, from Sanswire Networks, is dubbed a "Stratellite," -- and one is scheduled to launch next month. As the submitter writes, "It's basically a blimp that thinks it's a geostationary satellite floating at 65K feet!"
Wrapping a box in tin foil and sticking an umbrella on top doesn't make it a geostationary satellite ;)
Its not rocket science, everyone knows you have to add a coat hanger antenna and flashing LEDs to pull it off.
liqbase
The only reason that current satellite internet is slower (latency wise) than wiredi nternet, is that it physically takes the light a full half second to go up and back down, and then you have your tradition routing delays. This would cut that down by an order of magnitude, and therefore would be a viable alternative to the standard wires. Also, any cost is going to be an order of magnitude lower than what it would be for a satellite system, and those are still in business. I'm not saying that this is going to be a spectacular success, but it seems to be a good solution to many of the current problems.
Short answer : No Long answer: Using the dimensions of the airship (245 x 145 x 87 feet), the altitude (~65,000 ft), and some very basic trig., the airship would be 13 X 7.6 X 4.6 seconds of arc. if you were standing directly underneath it. Since the human eye has a resolution of roughly 2 mintes of arc, and this is far larger than the angular size of the airship, you wouldn't see it.
"Me fail English, that's unpossible." --Ralphie
That said, I'd have thought you'd see it.
145ft wide at 65000 ft, thats equivalent to 1/4 inch at 10 feet (or 11mm at 5m). It might well be visible in the right lighting, particularly just after sunset. And it's longer than it's wide.