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.'"

Comments

this is great but...

[tehwebguy]

it doesn't seem like something you should always rely on, what about storms? i know in florida relying on something like this would be a disaster (i mean heck, my landline cable will likely be out after this 'cane hits this weekend!)

Re:this is great but...

[markana]

But the Midwest will suddenly gain a whole lot of bandwidth when the wind finally stops blowing the balloons...

Re:this is great but...

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

Re:this is great but...

[FooAtWFU]

The issue is when there's a stormcloud between you and the stratosphere. Water is very good at blocking wireless signals.

need more info, just for curiosity's sake

[yagu]

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:

• by 60 km, they mean either a radius, or diameter, in which case the coverage of a single aircraft would be either 11,300 sq km, or 2800 sq km respectively. (BTW, they're going to have to come up with a coverage in the United States that can cover square miles!)
• exactly (or even approximately) how do they quantify a "handful"?

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)

Re:need more info, just for curiosity's sake

[MoonBuggy]

To give a very basic idea of what constitutes a 'handful', Wikipedia says the UK has an area of 244,820 km^2. That means that you're talking around 25 or around 100 airships (depending on whether the quoted coverage was diameter or radius), allowing for a little overlap. Assuming the former, it could be a pretty good idea - infrastructure upgrades don't cost too much when there's no cable to lay and only 25 or so units to update. Only being 24km up also means you avoid the nasty ping times you get with satellite.

I'm hoping...

[saskboy]

I'm hoping that they don't coat the balloons with a flamable doping, so that there's no chance of flaming zeplins of doom from falling out of the skies. It would bring a new meaning to the "Internet being down" though, wouldn't it?

Oh the Humanity! My wireless quit!

But...

[rob_squared]

But war ballooning doesn't sound quite right.

Vulnerability

[Tiberius_Fel]

So theoretically, if a country switched to a few of these, they would be a few anti-aircraft missiles away from being without internet access? Seems that centralizing them in the air like that kind of makes them vulnerable to being quickly and easily destroyed...

Re:Vulnerability

[topham]

And when the war was over they would have the infrastructure back up in a few weeks.

As a primary communications system for emergency services this isn't the way to go.

As a secondary source of internet access this would rock.

Re:Vulnerability

[Michael Woodhams]

They're talking about an altitude of 24000 metres (79000 feet.) This would require a serious missile - something launched from a truck or aircraft, not from a shoulder. Wikipaedia says the Stinger can attack aircraft at altitudes between 180m and 3800m. If terrorists are able to drive a truck-based missile launcher into your country, your porn conduit probably isn't going to be high on their list of targets.*
    But yes, if there is a war on and enemy aircraft are overflying your country, you may loose broadband internet, significantly impacting your ability to download recent TV shows.

* But if the missile is labeled something like "National Committee for the Enforcement of Community Standards", perhaps you should start worrying.

Area?

[Hatta]

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.

A new first

[confused philosopher]

Is this the first time that "super-fast", "airships", and "successfully" have been used together in the same sentence?

Let's Improve Current Technology

[RUFFyamahaRYDER]

I don't want my Internet access floating around on some balloon that can get blown, and harmed by the weather. How about we spend money on improving our current wireless grounded technology so we can go through buildings and other things that get in our way instead of trying to float balloons over them.

Re:Let's Improve Current Technology

[greg_barton]

...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.

Emergency Internet / Comm Service

[rlp]

Would be handy for supplying communications for emergency services. For instance, in the aftermath of a hurricane, or earthquake, this could be brought in to connect emergency service providers on the ground using battery or generator powered laptops / handhelds or VOIP phones. One of the problems during the aftermath of Katrina was landlines were down, almost all wireless phones were down (except for one or two spots) and the NOPD emergency comm system had failed.

Redundancy

[shis-ka-bob]

If I set up the electric grid so that everyone in town used the same transformer, a single terrorist with a TOW rocket could leave everyone without electricity. We cannot prevent all terrorists from ever getting a TOW rocket. How on Earth can we provide reliable electricity? We have redundancy in the grid.

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.)

Hasn't this idea....

[philipmather]

Hasn't this idea... been floating around for a while?

Maybe they'll replace satellite TV.

[FooAtWFU]

I saw something in the Wall Street Journal about using very-high-altitude airships to replace satellites. If the technology were developed some, they'd be a lot easier to replace than a satellite, and you don't need to worry about NASA (and other space agencies') help putting them up all the way in geosynchronous orbit, so there's a lot more potential for neat stuff on the platform. And you can move another one up there, and then take the original down for upgrades. Less risk from micrometeorites, too.

SSID

[nm0n]

SSID = LedZeppelin

Why not use planes instead of blimps?

[Alwin Henseler]

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.)

You can be pretty sure that a mostly transparent balloon, flying at these altitudes, is as good as invisible to the naked eye. And a tiny dot in the sky is much less an eyesore than a large windfarm just off the coast. Not that I think that's an eyesore, BTW.

I wonder whether planes aren't more practical than ballons for this purpose. A balloon slowly leaks out gas, so how long it can stay up there is limited by that leakage.

How long a plane can stay up there, is limited by fuel. Now if you use a solar cell powered plane (NASA built one some time ago), the time it can stay up there is mostly limited by wear and tear of mechanical parts. That might be much longer than a leaking balloon.

I'm not sure how this balloon is kept in the same place, for a plane that would be easy. And you'll probably need some additional energy to power the communication equipment. A solar-powered plane would already have solar cells for that.

Looks nice either way. One of the problems with satellite communication is high latency (due to the sheer height of geo-stationary orbit). A 'satellite' in the stratosphere makes that problem go away.

C'mon, it's simple math!

[wurp]

I guess someone's going to have to fill me in on how large a 12,000 cubic meter balloon appears at 24 kilometers..

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.

It's the British contribution to the space race.

[FishandChips]

It's the British contribution to the space race.

I don't image the broadband bit will work for very long. As soon as the thing gets to any altitude, a UK space expert who looks like Worzel Gummidge will appear on TV and announce that the experiment has proved a world-beating success and one in the eye for the ambitions of America, China, Russia, etc., to explore the solar system.

We will be assured that the crew have an ample supply of Eccles cake and liquorice allsorts. Presumably an airship is needed because only something that size can hoist aloft a passenger cabin containing an Aga and a flush lavatory, thus allowing unlimited quantities of tea and toast to be consumed. There is talk of a Nobel Prize for the mission designer.

At this stage the truth will emerge - having sent the airship aloft a mysterious technical error prevents the controllers from ever getting it down again. The airship will probably last be heard of careering around somewhere over the Indian Ocean, beaming down the Des O'Connor Show and the racing results from Epsom to a baffled audience in Tamil Nadu.

They need unit testing...

[fireboy1919]

No, its right. They plan to implement the plan in a few light years. At that time, you should expect download rates of up to 10 kilopascals - available of a low, low price of only 30 monies. The only problem is that this technology uses more energy - you may have to pay for as much as fifty more watts than you're paying for now.

-1 Misinformative

[2short]

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.