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!"

Comments

Cost savings

[Yoweigh116]

I really hope this becomes a popular alternative for satellites as a provider of these services. This has got to cost significantly less, and hopefully these saving will be passed on to consumers.

Re:Cost savings

[dustinbarbour]

Sure sure.. but what happens as commercial jetliners begin flying at those heights? I mean, recent developments are pushing towards that height. In fact, the idea is to get higher where drag is lower thus allowing for faster travel to far-flung destinations. Aer we gonna be forced to navigate around these things and begin crowding the skys?

Re:Cost savings

[That's Unpossible!]

IANAP, but I think it's probably a lot easier to avoid hitting a blimp than it is to avoid hitting another plane.

There are hundreds or thousands of planes in the sky at all times, many at the same altitude, in the same vicinity. How many mid-air crashes have you ever heard about?

How good will this really be?

[koreaman]

I really don't think this will be all that good. First of all, I don't know a whole lot about satellite transmission, but I know it's a lot slower than standard internet technology.

Combine this lack of competitive speed with the fact that your network is relying on floating things 13 miles in the air for its reliability. Even if this is no less safe than a server sitting in a room (which I seriously doubt) someone will still have to have a physical presense sooner or later to fix something or install new hardware.

Also, how much is this going to cost? Tons and tons of anything, including helium, isn't cheap. Also, as I mentioned before, maintenance will be a real pain. Not only will it be a real pain, but it will cost a great deal of money to perform. Even if your server only needs maintenance once every two years, that still adds up. This will equate to higher costs for end users.

Furthermore, I think the reliability will be rather low. I don't know why, but I just have a bad feeling about tons of servers and equipment suspended in the air.

Maybe my misgivings are unfounded, but I really don't think this will fly. (pun not intended.) I like the idea, but I think it will be more productive, cheap, and reliable to use lots of inexpensive 802.11 equipment.

Re:How good will this really be?

[rewt66]

Well, first of all, this can be a lot faster than setellite, because you only have 13 miles of time lag, instead of 24,000 miles. Second, maintenance is a lot easier than satellite. Once you have a satellite in geostationary orbit, even the shuttle can't service it - even when the shuttle is flying. And how expensive is it? Well, it's less expensive than launching into geostationary orbit... But is it enough cheaper than cable/DSL and enough faster than dialup to matter to people? I don't know.

Re:How good will this really be?

[wronski]

>>I really don't think this will be all that good. First of all, I don't know a whole lot about
>>satellite transmission, but I know it's a lot slower than standard internet technology.
These things will be much closer (by a factor of 1000) than satelites, so they should be competitive speedwise, and use far less power to transmit. Theyll also cover a much smaller area each, and thus allow for more bandwidth

>> someone will still have to have a physical presense sooner or later to fix something or
>> install new hardware.
Satellites dont need (or are able to receive) maintenence. nd in any case these things should be able to be floated down for repairs

>>Also, how much is this going to cost?
A lot, but far less than sattelites. My guess is that it will be comparable to a 3G mobile network.

>>Furthermore, I think the reliability will be rather low. I don't know why, but I just have a
>>bad feeling about tons of servers and equipment suspended in the air.
Well, the stratosphere is a reasonably quiet place, with no changing weather. It is far above commercial planes. I thinks they can use ionic engines for station keeping. These are reliable (years of continuous use) and low consumption.

>>I think it will be more productive, cheap, and reliable to use lots of inexpensive 802.11
>>equipment.
I think covering entire cities with wi-fi (with all ensuing basing concessions and line of sigth issues) would be more unpractical than having one or two stratospheric blimps floating above.

Re:How good will this really be?

[spagetti_code]

I disagree - I think its a great idea. First - lets tackle the technology:

• Geosync orbit is 35786 km. Latency is at least 240ms one way for any packet (up and back) - higher if you are not directly under the satellite. Talk to any gamer and they would be unimpressed. With this, at 65000ft or about 20km, the latency due to distance is under 1ms.
• Its cheap - as they say you can quickly drop one anywhere, anytime you need it. e.g. place one above a ballgame to deal with all the cellphone calls (and whose to say they can't lower it if the weathers ok!)

As to the market... I live in Auckland, NZ, and we have a very slow uptake of broadband due to a single provider who owns all copper to the house (read: ugly monopoly and weak government regulator). Other wireless options exist if you live close to them (e.g. if you can see the skytower). Drop one of these above the city and bingo - broadband for the price of an aerial.

I think that model is transportable - anywhere the infrastructure is too expensive or too difficult to provide broadband or telephones - simply drop in one of these. For example:

• Monopoly copper to the house
• Difficult terrain
• Sparse neighborhoods

And they are relatively cheap - its just a balloon. A nice one, sure, but still just a balloon. One that they can take down and service. Can't do that with a satellite.

Re:How good will this really be?

[aaarrrgggh]

It would also make a cool hosting environment... cheap cooling for the servers, nearly double the hours of solar exposure compared to the ground (and no temperature issues). Lots of cool applications could come of it...

And finally, weight would be a viable consideration for the Intel et al, justifying the higher density solutions...

Re:am I just a naysayer?

[UnpopularOpinion]

Yeah, I think maybe you are just a naysayer... DSL and cable work great... if you can get them. I'm not just talking about 'less metropolitan' areas, as you call them. There are plenty of places where you can't get DSL (e.g. pair-gain) or cable (houses just aren't wired). In Sydney, for example - just read one of the many despairing articles on www.whirlpool.net.au forums. Even wifi (for example www.unwired.com.au) leaves lots of black spots. This is a way of giving an entire city access in one shot. Let me also add that this kind of addition to the broadband arsenal gives more choice - and more choice is good, right? :) As for satellite, if you had RTFA then you would have seen that this idea is much less expensive and more reusable than satellites.

A problem

[jim_v2000]

I don't know if this would be an issue, but wouldn't a giant wifi network f*** over the smaller wifi networks around the city? Like those that use DHCP for client machines.

Re:am I just a naysayer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Much lower latencies. Internet access satellites are located in geostationary orbit, sharing the same machines basically as the TV satellites (that's why they're operated by the same companies). Geostationary is like hundreds of milliseconds round trip, which makes certain applications (read: games) completely useless. Low Earth orbit satellites are just a hundred or so miles up, and have much lower latencies, but are extremely expensive to launch and track (remember Teledesic? didn't think so).

The nice thing about blimps is that (1) they're easy to recover for repairs (they don't burn up when you try and "deorbit" them), and (2) they have even lower latency than LEOs. The main disadvantage is having to deal with the weather and gas leakage, but putting them up in the stratosphere eliminates weather as a problem, and gas leakage is a lot cheaper at the low pressures in the upper atmosphere than anything involving orbital launches.

Some points

[maggard]

1. Get a clue folks: The ping time on this will be from a route 2x~13 miles long. That's not at all comparable to 2x~24,000 miles like a geostationary sat. Heck, considering the cruft many DSL & cable plants foist on folks the extra ~26 miles are nothing, especially when you consider how far most of the other devices you interact with are and how they're routed.

2. Satellites are expensive 'cause you've got one chance to launch the thing at high velocity, with extreme vibrations, to a location with extreme temperature variations & vacuum welding. By contrast an aerostat is in a relatively benign environment and short of catastrophic failure can be landed & launched at need for repairs & refurbishment.

3. Furthermore at US$20 million a pop it won't be a big deal to have reserve aerostats constantly on standby, launched or unlaunched. Therefore the reliability costs go down, the insurance costs go down, and everything becomes that much more flexible & cheaper. Indeed it'll probably become SOP to deploy additional aerostats in anticipation of severe weather events, seasonal population gatherings, etc. to supply additional capacity.

4. Yes, doubtless aerostats will have no-fly buffers placed around them. However the restricted volume is rather small and at their operational altitude there's precious little traffic or possible crowding, nor much likely for the next few decades. Figuring even several hundred over a continent there's still plenty of room at their heights.

5. These are to be filled with Helium. Non-flammable inert stuff. Airships filled with He have split in half and still been able to land land (well, half did and half crashed.) Covering an airship in rocket fuel and fueling it with explosive hydrogen, that was the ill-fated and entirely dissimilar Hindenburg.

6. Anything that disrupts the mono or dual-opoly high-speed telecom services most of us have available is a good thing. Indeed aerostats will be more then competitive by offering high speed like DSL/cable but without needing extensive & expensive on-the-ground infrastructure. Even considering redundancy & replacements this is competitive.