Loon Sets Stratospheric Sustained Flight Record With 312-Day Balloon Trip

Alphabet's Loon, the company focused on creating new networking capabilities using stratosphere-based infrastructure, has set a new world record for a continuous stratospheric flight. One of Loon's ultra high-altitude balloons flew for 312 days straight, beating the existing record of 223 days by a considerable margin, and nearly racking up a full year of sustained time aloft. From a report: The balloon in question took off from Puerto Rico in May 2019, and then made its way to Peru, where it took part in a service test for three months. It then headed south over the Pacific Ocean, and finally ended up in Baja, Mexico for a landing in March this year. Loon's CTO Sal Candido said in a blog post that the record-setting flight is the result of the company's continued work on advancing its technology and pushing both hardware and software forward in new and innovative ways. Part of that means learning as much as possible from balloons that break records like this one, and Candido points out that Loon has a unique advantage over more traditional high-altitude balloons designed for weather observation because it recovers just about all of them, and can study the best performers in extreme detail. That allows it to replicate and improve on what's going right when balloons are staying aloft for long periods.

Since M'Smash Can't M'Subtract

[BeerFartMoron]

"Nearly" = 365-312 = 53 days.

"Considerable Margin" = 312-223 = 89 days.

Love the idea but when will it work?

[vinn]

It's a great idea. Love the idea. It solves so many issues, similar to Starlink, but potentially at a fraction of the cost. However, this tech is going on a decade of development internal to Google and longer by others. And I get it, it's not easy, but c'mon, this thing needs to go somewhere. It really seems like over the past decade of (the projects formerly named) Google X that one of them would have panned out. Instead it's like a wasteland of poorly communicated ideas and meadering directions. WT

Re: Love the idea but when will it work?

[AddisonEzekiel]

This is the down side to having ad revenue that oozes cash. Hopefully, like bell labs did with AT&T, they'll invent the equivalent of the transistor, discover background radiation and invent Unix. I'm skeptical they'll do the equivalent one of these.

Isn't that kinda insulting?

[Chris Mattern]

Granted, staying up 312 days is a bit extreme, but calling him a loon...

So SLOW

[Hodr]

What's funny is that in the time they have been pre-Alpha testing Loon Starlink has gone from a gleam in Papa Elon's eye to a beta product.

Starlink will probably have 10 million subscribers before Loon even gets to a public beta.

And I had high hopes that Loon would be the end-all solution a few years back. A single service provider for phone and home broadband that works everywhere.

Re: So SLOW

[spinitch]

Iridium went up quick and likewise bankrupt. Engineers succeeded, MBAs well they snookered some gullible investors and got paid. Rest collateral damage. Loon is far behind Starlink in capability but might lose less money. There are varying degrees to success.

Re:

[DaChesserCat]

Pretty sure Loon has been providing emergency coverage in many areas where the traditional infrastructure is either damaged (natural disaster) or non-existent. As such, I don't know that they're even planning on subscription service (as with StarLink). They've talked about it in the past but ... it's kinda hard to predict quite where the balloon will go (the winds aloft are still not that predictable). The only way to maneuver is to move up / down and try to get into winds that go the direction you want.

S

Loon's little brother you can build in your garage

[GoRK]

Leo Bodnar scratch builds small balloons like this with tracking payloads. Here is one of his more successful flights: http://leobodnar.com/balloons/... [leobodnar.com] About 8 times around the world? Not so bad for a balloon seamed together on a workbench.

I believe he sells the beacons and things as products or kits.

Loon?

[MooseTick]

Did anyone originally read the headline as a crackpot ("loon") doing some daredevil stunt like the guy who built and rode his own rocket to his death?

Got stuck in the doldrums

[silicon dad]

This article's map shows lots of the days spent stuck in the doldrums out beyond the Galapagos Islands. Still impressive. https://pressfrom.info/us/news... [pressfrom.info]