Google Interested in Wireless Bandwidth Balloons 181
An anonymous reader writes "Google is reportedly looking into investing in or buying a company called Space Data, which provides wireless voice and data services to remote areas with a fleet of weather balloons fitted with transceivers." My mind is sorta tripping over how something like this could work, but I gotta admit that the idea is really cool.
Rural area (Score:5, Interesting)
The Internet as a Mesh Network (Score:4, Interesting)
The internet will eventually become a self propagating mesh network. (Case and point: One laptop per child)
Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Google's day of reckoning coming soon (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Rural area (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not tethered? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a Niche Business Model (Score:3, Interesting)
Cost Analysis (Score:3, Interesting)
With even the cheapest base station hardware, helium, balloon (at say, $5000 per unit), costs would exceed $14.6M/year per site.
This does not include the labor to continuously manufacturer, transport, and launch equipment.
At a rate of $50/month per subscriber, you would need about 25,000 to break even on base station--hardware alone. This does not include the uplink facility, bandwidth costs, and business administration costs.
I have seen quite a few telemetry balloon launches and return of balloon hardware has never happened even once. Balloons seem fall in the most remote areas, getting caught in trees, landing in the ocean, etc. If a human ever encounters the hardware, they certainly are not very honest about returning it. Even at a modest recovery rate of 1%-5%, it wouldnt be worth the trouble. This sounds like a major environmental hazard too.
Whoever wrote this business plan is on crack. $15 million a year for the equivalent of 14 base stations?! In a rural area? Instead of using grain silos?
The FAA has quite a few requirements for balloons, including a) payload to have a parachute apon balloon failure b) radar reflectors so ground controllers and aircraft can see them c) remote "self destruct system" to release balloon, among others.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, there remain one or two technical obstacles...
Re:Rural area (Score:5, Interesting)
* Building a balloon that could survive a three-day trip across the Pacific and then automatically drop its warload was technically challenging. Since a hydrogen balloon expands in the sunlight and rises, then contracts at night and falls, the Japanese engineers had to develop a battery-operated automatic control system to maintain altitude. When the balloon descended below 9 kilometers (29,500 feet), it electrically fired charges to cut loose sandbags. The sandbags were carried on a cast-aluminum four-spoked wheel, and discarded two at a time to keep the wheel balanced. Similarly, when the balloon rose above about 11.6 kilometers (38,000 feet), the altimeter activated a valve to vent hydrogen; the hydrogen was also vented if the balloon's pressure reached a critical level.
The balloon had to carry about 900 kilograms (1,000 pounds) of gear, which meant a hydrogen balloon with a diameter of about 10 meters (33 feet). At first, the balloons were made of conventional rubberized silk, but there was a cheaper way to make an envelope that leaked even less. An order went out for ten thousand balloons made of "washi", a paper derived from mulberry bushes that was impermeable and very tough. It was only available in squares about the size of a road map, so it was glued together in three or four laminations using paste derived from a tuber with the Japanese name of "devil's-tongue".
Balloons in warfare [vectorsite.net]
Alt:~25-30Km, Coverage:~500Km with 802.16* (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a possible reality.
http://www.worldskycat.com/markets/skycom.html [worldskycat.com]