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Google's Balloons Connect Flood-hit Peru (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the good-cause dept.

An anonymous reader writes: "Tens of thousands" of Peruvians have been getting online using Project Loon, the ambitious connectivity project from Google's parent company, Alphabet. Project Loon uses tennis court-sized balloons carrying a small box of equipment to beam internet access to a wide area below. The team told the BBC they had been testing the system in Peru when serious floods hit in January, and so the technology was opened up to people living in three badly-hit cities. Until now, only small-scale tests of the technology had taken place. Project Loon is in competition with other attempts to provide internet from the skies, including Facebook's Aquila project which is being worked on in the UK. Project Loon recently announced it had figured out how to use artificial intelligence (AI) to "steer" the balloons by raising or lowering them to piggy-back weather streams. It was this discovery that enabled the company to use just a "handful" of balloons to connect people in Lima, Chimbote, and Piura. The balloons were launched from the US territory of Puerto Rico before being guided south.

16 comments

  1. It was us... by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Funny

    Project Loon is in competition with other attempts to provide internet from the skies, including Facebook's Aquila project which is being worked on in the UK.

    We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that darkened the sky beyond redemption with millions of wireless nodes.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  2. Something about this story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    sounds like a lot of hot air to me

  3. Loony idea by fnj · · Score: 2

    The concept of freely-floating out-of-control balloons serving any purpose is downright loony.

    1. Re:Loony idea by swillden · · Score: 2

      The concept of freely-floating out-of-control balloons serving any purpose is downright loony.

      I saw a presentation by the Project Loon team, and the project leader made the same point. He said that the idea was so loony it had to fail, but they kept failing to find the reason. The Loon team has spent years failing to fail.

      That is the Google X methodology, BTW, "fail fast". Find a bizarre idea, think about the reasons it can't work, starting with the most likely to fail, then test to see whether it actually fails for that reason. If it doesn't, move on to the next most-likely reason for failure, and so on. Eventually (so the theory goes) you've either proved the idea doesn't work, or you've exhausted all the reasons for failing... by succeeding.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    2. Re:Loony idea by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Yep, that's why nobody has ever managed to travel anywhere by hot air balloon.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
    3. Re:Loony idea by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Reality has a well-known loony bias.

  4. Helium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Helium is not exactly abundant here on Earth.

    1. Re:Helium by knorthern+knight · · Score: 1

      > Helium is not exactly abundant here on Earth.

      Hydrogen works very well too. It can be generated on site, on demand, using water and electricity or a controlled chemical reaction. Or it can be shipped in tanks like Helium. Hydrogen is used for radiosonde balloons http://www.srh.noaa.gov/jetstr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Given that its payload will be radio gear, there's no worry of a Hindenburg-type disaster. Radio gear is replacable.

      --

      I'm not repeating myself
      I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
    2. Re:Helium by Immerman · · Score: 1

      And, given that the Hindenburgh disaster was likely due primarily to the fact that the ship was never designed to use hydrogen in the first place*, we could hope that a high-profile project using hydrogen balloons without incident could help to recover their unjustly besmirched name.

      *they cut costs on both ends with predictable results - a cheaper helium airship design that didn't have to consider flammability, filled with cheaper hydrogen lift gas...

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  5. Balloons Connect Flood-hit by nuckfuts · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one who had trouble parsing that?

    1. Re:Balloons Connect Flood-hit by GumphMaster · · Score: 1

      Nope.

      --
      Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
    2. Re:Balloons Connect Flood-hit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Possibly...

    3. Re:Balloons Connect Flood-hit by Immerman · · Score: 1

      Seems pretty straightforward to me:
      Google's balloons connect flood-hit Peru.
      Possessive noun verb adjective noun

      In fact, I don't see any other other way to parse it. Though removing the hyphen would introduce some ambiguity.

      --
      --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
  6. Fine Candidate Surely Here by konohitowa · · Score: 1

    /r/titlegore

  7. Tennis Courts? Please use SI Football Fields! by blackbearnh · · Score: 1

    I'm always upset when I see journalists using non-standard units. No one uses tennis courts anymore. Football fields, schoolbuses and milli-Library-Of-Congresses please! (Or, if you live in the UK, Football fields (the other kind), double-decker buses, and fempto-Houses-of-Commons.

  8. Tennis Court Sized Ballons! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is it just me who thinks these ballons might be a bit oversized and lead to another roswell incident?