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Broadband from Airships
rustbear writes "The BBC reports that researchers looking to the skies to provide super-fast internet access via airships have proved it can successfully operate a data rate link of 11Mbps. Trials were conducted using a 12,000 cubic metre balloon, flying at an altitude of around 24 kilometres for nine hours. 'Proving the ability to operate a high data rate link from a moving stratospheric balloon is a critical step in moving towards the longer term aim of providing data rates of 120Mbps,' said Dr David Grace, the project's principal scientific officer. 'Balloons hovering in the stratosphere could become an attractive alternative as consumers demand ever higher bandwidth", said Alan Gobbi, the acting manager of the York Electronic Centre. With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres, there would only need to be "a handful" to offer complete coverage in the UK, he added. Trials of the technology will continue in Japan next year.'"
Wonder what the public reception (pun intended) and reaction will be to the number of airships necessary to provide complete coverage.
Also, it's not clear since both the slashdot post (quoting accurately from the article) and the article mention coverage at "..., With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres...". Ignoring the fact that kilometres is a measurement of distance not area, what does this mean? Since the article claims at that coverage they would only need a "handful" or airships to provide complete coverage I'm going to infer:
Regardless, I would still be curious if that many craft in the air would be an eyesore, or something we adapt to. There is anecdotal evidence resistance to these kinds of things can be quite strong even with benefits to the population (case in point -- wind farms). (And there is STILL resistance to and legal activity around where and how cell-towers can be erected.)
(I guess someone's going to have to fill me in on how large a 12,000 cubic meter balloon appears at 24 kilometers.... let's see, if it were a cube, that would be about 23 meters each side... which is about 65 ft. per side... okay, never mind... smaller than a jet liner at 78,000 ft... sigh)
Storms...At 24 kilometers in the air? Not going to happen. That's in the stratosphere, well above even commerical airline flightpaths.
The winds up there are more sedate, though they do exist, especially toward the tropics.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
With each airship being able to support an area of 60 kilometres, there would only need to be "a handful" to offer complete coverage in the UK, he added.
60 Kilometers is a distance, not an area. Maybe they meant 60km^2? or a 60km radius? There's a really big difference, watch your units guys.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I am not sure that anyone would care during war if end user wireless access goes. They aren't talking about replacing copper and fibre infrastructure with this. Those will remain.
I'll bet its easier/faster/cheaper to launch a backup balloon than it is to splice a fibre optic that was cut by a backhoe (the natural preditor of LANS.)
Think global, act loco
The issue is when there's a stormcloud between you and the stratosphere. Water is very good at blocking wireless signals.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
At 24km it will be above the weather.
However, I wonder if they may still be susceptible to Sprites, Elves and Jets.
The figures on the Wikipedia page seem to suggest that 24km would be in the gap above the weather we experience and below where these occur.
I assumed he meant 60km^2, but even then, the UK is 244,820 square kilometers big. Dividing 244,820 by 60 gets you 4,081 airships to cover all of the UK. That's hardly a handful.
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RumorsDaily
Yes, it's a corporate site, but scroll down the site for some good links to follow to learn about HAPs and their use as communications infrastructure.
http://www.elec.york.ac.uk/comms/haps.html
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Columbia will use 5 Stratellites to provide a wireless broadband network. This seems like the same thing. Nothing new under the sun? Not from this story anyway.
Think Deeply.
...some balloon that can get blown, and harmed by the weather
24km high is in the stratosphere. Most weather resides in the troposphere, which ends at 14.5km.
I think they meant 60Km radius which would equate to 120Km diameter.
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If I remember circular area as Pi * r(squared) , then it is roughly 11,300 sq Km.
One over a Metropolis could cover it all.
22 would cover the Sq Km of the UK except the patterns are circular, and thus would
have to partially overlap to provide total coverage.
Thus most likely doable with less than 33 of them .
And it is alot cheaper than some satellite projects that have been posited .
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,12464
Teledesic, Iridium, and others cannot compete with this on a cost to repair basis alone.
The balloons by www.21stcenturyairships.com can be launched and landed by remote control.
Serviced by a field tech with a pick-up, No rockets, no astronomical budget.
They might even be cheaper than building towers just due to topographical terrain signal outage reasons.
Ex-MislTech
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
This is an easy one... your approximation of the sides is OK, but I'll use the volume of a sphere (4/3 * pi * r ^ 3 =~ 4.5 * r^3), so it's about 12000/4.5 =~ 3000, then take the cube root - about 14 meters radius. Now, the visual size of it is a simple proportion. If you want to know how big it will look at 10 meters (across the street), then just figure the proportion from 24 km to 10 m, which is 24000 / 10 = 2400, so at 24 km away it will look like an object 1/2400th its size across the street. 14/2400 =~ 1/170, so it will look like something 1/170th of a meter across the street. A meter is about 40 inches, so 40/170 = less than 1/4 of an inch. Since we were dealing with radius, it's 1/2 an inch in diameter.
These balloons will look like something 1/2 inch across will look from across the street. They'll be difficult to see at all.
Satelite communications work fine through stormclouds. Ditto all manner of ground-based communications passing horizontally trough many times as much storm as these signals will need to pass trough vertically. Water is mediocre (but sufficient) at disrupting a narrow band of frequencies. Engineers who can figure out how to keep a stratospheric communications balloon on station can figure out how to pick a frequency outside this band.