Sanswire Demonstrates First Stratellite

Sterling D. Allan writes "Pure Energy Systems News (PESN) reports that GlobeTel Communications Corp. debuted their Sanswire Stratellite last week to over 300 people, including members of the media, personnel from the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. and international commercial interests, as well as investors and shareholders. Stationed in the stratosphere, well above the jet stream, powered by film solar photovoltaic units, the device will make wireless communications available anywhere in the U.S., including on airline flights. One Stratellite will have a payload capacity of several thousand pounds and clear line-of-sight to approximately 300,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of Texas."

Comments

Re:wow

[mikael]

65,000 feet is above the jet stream. All the bad stuff is below 50,000 feet.

Now, if they get a whole network of these (50+), they could cover the entire USA.

JP Aerospace, anyone?

[pyth]

http://jpaerospace.com/

They're planning to use such airships to launch ships into space, by slowly achieving orbital speed!

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE...

[Anonymous Coward]

change the parent post to Funny rather than Informative or Insightful. The AC post was a joke, made up by the AC, me. Any resemblance to factual matters is purely coincidental.

Re:"utilizing proprietary lifting gas technology"

[Spad]

It's called Helium

Re:Great googlie wooglie!

[yotto]

It's 65,000 feet in the air, and is (From TFA) 245 feet on the long diameter.

That's about .00006 (if I did the math right) degrees across. In case I did, it would be the same relative size as a 6 foot guy 1600 feet (About a quarter mile) away.

IOW, if its shadow covers your house, you should be more concerned about your house than the shadow :D

Re:Wireless capability is a lot less than 300,000s

[fungus]

Read this if you are sceptical about Sanswire claims.

It *is* still vaporware

[billstewart]

It sounds like it's more advanced vaporware than in the past, but it's still vaporware. One of the news articles has a bit more information: "Wisconsin communications company Sanswire unveiled its almost-finished prototype of a hard-framed, unmanned airship designed to fly in the stratosphere 21 km above the earth and send broadband and mobile phone signals to an area the size of Texas." and quotes them discussing FAA certification as "We don't have a test date, but we're hoping for midsummer," "But we're still years ahead of any other program doing anything like this."

They've been hyping this for years, and while the telecom crash of the early 2000s kicked the chair out from under their business plans, they'd still be really really cool if they ever deployed the bloody things.

By the way, their PR mockup picture of the Stratellite looks amazingly like the whale in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.