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Technology

Weather Balloons as Wireless Telephone Technology 153

Posted by timothy from the or-is-that-a-trial-balloon dept.
Under the plan described in this article submitted by reader RoscoHead, "Space Data would use un-tethered weather balloons launched daily by the National Weather Service to carry lightweight wireless communications equipment to an altitude of 100,000 feet. There, at the 'SkySite,' they would relay voice and data signals to remote areas at a fraction of the cost of installing cell towers or launching satellites, company officials say."
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Weather Balloons as Wireless Telephone Technology More

Weather Balloons as Wireless Telephone Technology

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  • The quicker we get rid of those ugly cell phone towers the better.

    Hope the wind doesn't pick up too much.

    • Re:Ugly towers (Score:4, Funny)

      by grammar nazi ( 197303 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @05:43AM (#3030846) Journal
      The question is... What is really cheaper?

      Sending up weather balloons to cover large rural areas rather than putting up towers?

      To answer this question, we have to look deeply into the psychie of the average rural-area yokel. Does he prefer shooting up towers with buckshot or shooting down balloons with a high-caliber rifle. Which is more economic for the redneck? Will ammunition sales at WalMart effect this decision.

      Is it cheaper for the phone companies to patch holes in balloons or replate a tower.

      I didn't see any mention of this in their story. One can only hope that they took this into account.



      • They float around, usually about rural areas. They usually dont draw much attention, and would be perfect for something like this. Besides unlike ballons they wont explode, burn up, or any other unpredictable situation which can happen with a balloon.

        Saucers could work
        • Yes, but then what do we do with the "samples" collected during cattle mutilations? I don't know about you, but I don't feel the weather service OR the phone company can provide the kind of plausible deniability required.
      • Not to mention... what is the maintenance cost of each? How many launches would it take to equal the cost of putting up a tower? (if it ever would equal out)
      • Er, sorry to actually get all serious on you - but I think on the basis of your arguments there is no option but to go with weather balloons:

        You cant shoot them down!

        There was a "rogue" weather balloon [bbc.co.uk] a while back, which two Canadian air force CF-18 fighters fired more than 1,000 rounds of cannon shells into it, and the blinking thing still wouldnt come down.
        I really cant see some yokel with a blunderbuss even scratching these things.
    • Pretty soon remote sounding via NOAA weather satellites will replace radiosondes. Helium is not a renuable resource, and the instrument packages sent up with the balloons are expensive, so NOAA is leaning towards phasing out balloons. 10 years from now the twice-daily weather balloon will be dead.
    • The solution is simple. Stuff yer forkin' cell phone up yer wazoo. Thus removing the need for "ugly [cell phone] towers".

  • Isnt this the technology our government was developing that everyone claims was a flying saucer(Including the Government)
    • Uh, no.

      These would be giant balloons (as in huff huff puff puff balloons, though in this case filled with helium, like at the circus) with some transmitters tied on to them.

      Not exactly high tech, just thinking about an old problem in a new way.

      (though the data transmitters are likely rather nifty)

  • Space Junk (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Technician ( 215283 )
    Great, more junk to track as it fails and starts to return. Hope the commercial aircraft can avoid all of it.
    • Why not just use our alien technology developed at Area51?
    • As you would have known, had you bothered yourself to read the article, the plan is to attach the transmitters to balloons already being sent up by the NWS...
  • On a smaller scale this could also be done with the advertising ballons. Im looking mainly networking using systems such as consume [consume.net], however hills, and weather become a major problem in the highlands of Scotland. An advertising balloon, with an antenna, a bit of coax as long as the balloons hoist cable, and you have an ariel that can get nice and high for coverage, and be winched back down for gales and bad weather.

    Im sure there will be many impracticality's pointed out in this idea, however, hopefully it will inspire some other ideas.
    • a bit of coax as long as the balloons hoist cable

      ...except for the losses in the coax. You'd really need to put the transceiver up in the balloon too. However, a plain vanilla wireless AP is pretty light. Perhaps you could run something like a stripped down AP in a lightweight sealed plastic box, with power provided up the same cable as ethernet? Ideally, you'd use fibre to connect it, but since the maximum length of CAT 5 runs is around 300 feet, you'd be running into air traffic control concerns. I refer you to: The CAA's leaflet on Balloon Airmanship [caa.co.uk], which states that the maximum height a tethered balloon can reach is 60 metres (195 ft) to the top of the envelope. The loss in that length of coax carrying the 2.4GHz wireless LAN signal would just nicely kill all your RF...

      Consider the impracticalities duly pointed out :-)

      But it would work, to an extent.
      • How about if rather than trying to get the signal down a cable from the balloon, if an avtive (or passive) repeater was shoved up the baloon.

        Though in bad weather, it qould be interesting explaining to folks that the network is "down"

    • Re:Variation on a theme (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hyrdra ( 260687 )
      What about a kite? I remember getting my nice Into The Wind kite up to the clouds (or what seemed like it) when I was younger, and leaving it there all afternoon, or overnight to find it still there in the morning. Storms often brought it down, most likely breaking the string and not the kite itself.

      However, that is really interesting. I assume a very high strength kite coupled with high strength string and a coax up the side with VERY good lightning and surge protection, and you would have a very good line of sight to 10's of miles away (limited by the curvature of the earth and your altitude?). All I would be concerned about would be lightning protection, kite stability, and signal loss from long length cable.

      Other than that, it's an interesting idea. Anyone else care to comment?
      • There are some legal issues with kites at any significant altitude. I don't recall the details as it's bee a few years since I worked in the Kite Industry, but it's an FAA thing.

      • What about somebody (me for example) who comes along and thinks it would be funny to try and climb up the rope to see what they could see...and then when said person gets up to like 30 feet a smarter but meaner buddy on the ground cuts the line and then.....sail sail away. Sail away with me.

  • NASA's Helios (Score:5, Informative)

    by Oink.NET ( 551861 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:00AM (#3030890) Homepage
    Check out NASA's Helios [nasa.gov] which uses solar power and a fuel cell concept. They expect it to fly above 50,000 ft for 96 hours. ZDNet has a story [zdnet.com.au] about using it for broadband internet connections.

    I realize both the weather balloons and Helios are just means to an end, but using these things for broadband internet would be way cooler than the US's second-rate cell technology, which is what they want to use the weather balloons for.

    • the US's second-rate cell technology, which is what they want to use the weather balloons for.

      Doh, I didn't read the article carefully enough.

      Space Data wants to operate as a "carrier's carrier," serving wireless companies that in turn provide cell phone service and other wireless communication, such as paging, to consumers.

      So the balloon folks are also planning on offering "broadband" services too, and they won't actually be the ones responsible for implementing CDMA cellular. Also, CDMA may be better suited for rural locations [mcommercetimes.com] than GSM.

    • STRATSAT.
      http://www.airship.com/prod/prod_home.h tm

  • Better alternatives? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by NewtonsLaw ( 409638 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:01AM (#3030892)
    Clearly using free-floating weather balloons has a number of limitations and disadvantages.

    Now we know that NASA has great plans for its solar-powered airplane -- including acting as a semi-permanent flying repeater-station, but I wonder if smaller, cheaper options might not be available.

    For example... what about a much smaller (say 20-30 foot span) autonomous craft designed to soar thermals during the day (while charging its batteries and gaining as much altitude as it can) -- then revert to battery power and/or gradually descend during the hours of darkness.

    If the energy required to keep these craft airborn in the longer nights of winter was greater than that availble to be stored during the day then they could carry a fuel-load to power a high-efficiency internal combustion engine (probably a very small diesel engine). Every week or so the craft would have to land for refueling and maintenance -- but that's not a big deal.

    Just like the US military's Predator RPV, they could be programmed to land on a runway set aside specially for the purpose.

    The cost of a smaller craft, particularly one that wasn't totally reliant on solar-cells, would likely be much less than NASA's efforts -- thus allowing more of them to be built for a given budget.

    By using more craft, they could cruise at a much lower altititude than either the weather balloon or the NASA craft.

    Using modern composites, low cost GPS, and other "affordable" technologies, such a craft could likely be built for less than US$10K.

    Assuming a 50% duty cycle, a fleet of 10 craft could cover a huge area at a much lower cost than towers, and with the ability to dynamically vary the coverage area if required -- simply by repositioning the craft.
  • im just wondering what the reliability would be, would things "ping out" or people get disconnected if they were not quick enough to launch another balloon? I think relibility is a big thing and with weather being incredibly unpredictable there could be major problems to overcome, balloons going off course, colliding with objects already in the sky. Its a good idea if we could predict with great accuracy the direction in which objects will travel and where they will fall (what goes up must come down), and with over 51,000 launches a year they may need to setup a "balloon traffic control center" just to keep a tag on them all.

  • Practical Concerns (Score:5, Insightful)

    by scrote-ma-hote ( 547370 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:17AM (#3030925)
    The article states that the balloons were launched day in, day out. What about the poor weather days where the wind is gusty and fast? Does the cell coverage on those days get lost?

    Over the summer (in the southern hemisphere), I worked to help launch ozone measuring balloons, (same idea, more equipment), and we launched them only in fairly calm conditions. A balloon full of hydrogen is a fairly scary prospect when it's getting blown around. Does this also mean a commercial company will be putting extra pressure on the NWS to launch in potentially unsafe conditions? Scary thought!

    • Re:Practical Concerns (Score:2, Informative)

      by TurboThy ( 550002 )
      The Danish Meteorological Institute [www.dmi.dk] launches weather balloons 8 places in Greenland even in winds of 60+ meters/second (35 m/s is gale force) and blizzards. The only thing that happens is that the balloons get stretched to ten times their original length, which looks quite funny - picture a guy in heavy winter clothing holding a 10 metres long light yellow sausage-formed object in snow storm conditions...
      • That's pretty keen. One of the balloons I was trying to launch in like around 15 knot winds tore off at the parachute about 5 secs before launch. It was really scary stuff. Lucky we didn't lose the package.

    • Re:Practical Concerns (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A balloon full of hydrogen is a fairly scary prospect when it's getting blown around.



      I spent six months in a weather station and launced ~50 radio sondes up to great blue yonder. One almost full hydrogen balloon burst while I was handling it and it was really close (10-15 cm) to my face. The hydrogen didn't explode. However, I have to confess that I was pretty scared for a moment.


      The wind was about 12 m/s that day, if I remember correctly.

      • The wind was about 12 m/s that day, if I remember correctly.

        So presumably the hydrogen blew away and dissipated immediately? I wouldn't worry too much about it. Just don't let anyone smoke near the launch site...

    • "The article states that the balloons were launched day in, day out. What about the poor
      weather days where the wind is gusty and fast? Does the cell coverage on those days get lost?"

      Huh? Balloons get launched at 1100 & 2300 UTC, pretty much regardless of what's going on
      at the release site. They even have balloons made with thicker material for release into thunderstorms
      or other hazardous conditions.

      Anyway, now onto the article...I won't beat around the bush here. I think
      that this company's vision is a retarded idea. These balloons rarely last longer than
      2hrs on the way up to ~100kft. They might take longer to fall due to the parachute
      (maybe 4-5hrs), but even then what are you going to do for cell coverage once your antenna is
      laying on the ground in some rancher's pasture and there's 6hrs before the next balloon goes
      up? That's not even considering the fact that the equipment could land be 150+ miles away
      from the launch site! Plus you'd have alot of explaining to do to your customers as to why their
      service is crappy when the winds are from the north or south and ok when they are from the west.

      Oh well, that's my rant for now...in the meantime check out the upper air observing
      sites around this part of the globe.

      http://www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/upper/

  • Equipment re-usage (Score:2, Interesting)

    by z_gringo ( 452163 )
    I wonder what would happen to the equipment? Would it be a one time launch sort of thing? Would it be damaged when those things come down? If not, How would they recover it? Also, it seems like they would have to launch a lot more of these things than they currently do in order to provide adequate coverage. It's hard to believe that this would be cost effective, but it is a very interesting idea. It might make more sense if they were able to stay aloft for more than 24 hours...

  • What happens to a dead weather balloon? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rufusdufus ( 450462 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @06:30AM (#3030957)
    I was wondering that, so I looked it up. It turns out that after reaching a certain height, the weather balloon explodes from (internal pressure) and drops its payload. Usually this is a "radiosonde", a device which radios the weather conditions back to the weather station. The radiosonde weights about .3kg and is usually packaged in styrofoam to cushion the landing. Sometimes it has a parachute too.

    Inside the radiosonde package there is also a self-addressed prepaid envelope so anyone who finds it can mail it back to the weather service. No kidding!

    • Yeah, fun except when you launch near the coast in a prevailing wind. Then dream on about getting them back. Where I was working gave rewards as well, but because of the proximity to the coast, most of the ones we got back were rusted to hell.
    • The problem is, what kind of damage can this thing do when it returns to earth and on it's way gets sucked into a jet engine?

      Weatherballoons are usually let up in area's where commercial flight is scarce. If we want to use this technology for relaying radiowaves etc. this will change.. so we have to reroute all commercial airtraffic to avoid accidents?

      I don't think this idea would be viable in real life situations..

      A company will think twice if it faces possible liability suits when something bad happes during the descent of the payload.
      • Weatherballoons are usually let up in area's where commercial flight is scarce. If we want to use this technology for relaying radiowaves etc. this will change.. so we have to reroute all commercial airtraffic to avoid accidents?
        No, the ballons are usually sent up at airports! And they've been doing this since the thirties, so I think if it was problem, we would know about it by now.
      • Wow! Now I know why they want me to leave my cell phone off in the plane, they're afraid it'll get sucked into the engine. Gotta stop flying Ultra Cheapo Class, but the a/c is nice out there on the wing!

      • The problem is, what kind of damage can this thing do when it returns to earth and on it's way gets sucked into a jet engine?

        Probably very little. If the device is small enough it might even pass undamaged through the bypass turbofan engines you typically on commercial jets.
        • Don't agree; common sense says that if a few birds are capable of damaging a plane's engine, then large weather balloon + accompanying instruments will certainly pose a danger to the engine's integrity.
          • Don't agree; common sense says that if a few birds are capable of damaging a plane's engine,

            Which is why jet engines are tested to withstand bird strikes.

            then large weather balloon + accompanying instruments will certainly pose a danger to the engine's integrity.

            No way is the envelope going to be any problem for a large fan made of high strenth materials. The instraments are not that large either. The only thing which could possiblt cause a problem for a jet engine is the helium in the envelope, it would take a very big balloon to cause combustion failure for long enough to actually stall the engine though.
    • Inside the radiosonde package there is also a self-addressed prepaid envelope so anyone who finds it can mail it back to the weather service. No kidding!

      Assuming it dosn't wind up in the sea, sand dunes, pack ice, etc.
    • Actually the styrofoam has nothing to do with cushioning the landing. It is for thermal protection of the electronics and batteries. It gets REAL cold up there at 100,000ft and some radiosonde's use heaters.


      Extra tidbits:


      There are two major type of balloons. One is latex which is milky/clear and basically goes to altitude and eventually pops. The other is a aluminized mylar which RADAR tracks to get wind velocity estimates as the balloon ascends. The mylar balloon has a few hundred 'spikes' on the surface which help stabilize the balloon in flight and reduce the balloon induced 'tumbling' motion.


      AMPS is the "next generation" of weather balloons and employs GPS to track the balloon instead of RADAR. Same mylar balloon with spikes, but not aluminized (so it can receive the GPS signals better).


      Space Data is largely old Orbital employees which is also based in Phoenix (Chandler suburb actually).


      I actually have a few friends that work at Space Data (as well as Orbital).


      Someone mentioned the Helios solar flying airplane as competition for this balloon idea. Look at the numbers. The $15m a year on balloons and electronics wouldn't even by a Helios, much less maintain it. Solar cells, fuel cells, exotic lightweight materials. Nice science project that will eventually lead to something commercial, but not anytime 'real soon'.

    • My father used to do this in Coppermine Canada - they had return information inside their weather baloons - which they sent up twice a day. I asked him if they ever had any returned - and he said once - some guy found it and brought it back on his way through town.
  • First of all, I'll have to say that I have no experience with either the weather forecasting or the telecommunication industry. But, I just find the number weird.

    About 70 launch sites would be needed to cover the continental United States.
    So there would have to be more than 51,000 launches a year at an annual cost is about $15 million.

    That means they will release about 140 ballons each day. Firstly, I doubt whether only 140 sites will be sufficient to cover the entire continental America. Even if that's possible, it will mean that the transmission power will be quite strong. Commnunication engineers usually talk about the reuse of comm channals. What will be the implication of this?

    On the other hand, $15M/70 launch sites approx equals $210000/yr/site. It seems to be a reasonable budget for reasonably large ground based relay tower.... I really cannot see the advantage for the alternative approach.

  • ..nevermind, I really can't be bothered..

  • latency? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeh I mean, granted theres a lot of problems with exploding baloons, aircraft, cost blah blah blah blah but what about the latency which these things'll have on data transmission? I looked into wireless broadband for my house and I read all over the place that the latency was worse than a shitty 33.6kbps connection. What would the story with these babies be?

    Small Black Dog - I've for gotten my password
    • I doubt the latency of cellphones communicating wirelessly to a relay hanging from a balloon would be any different from them communicating wirelessly to a relay on a tower
  • It works like this: you take a ballon and put solar cells on the top. You put your radio systems, etc. in a box that hangs from the balloon. You also put a fuel cell in the box. Water is collected from the air, electrolyzed using the power from the solar cells and the resulting hydrogen put into a tank. The hydrogen can also be used to make up for the amount that the balloon always loses. During the night, the fuel cell burns the hydrogen and oxygen to power the equipment. Because this thing will float at a high altitude, the solar cells will be very efficient (no clouds, very thin atmosphere) and it could practically stay up forever. This could replace most of the satellites that are just used as radio relays, and it would be much cheaper.

    You'd just need a means to keep the position, don't know how the winds are up there, and if electric motors w/ propellers will be efficient at that altitude.

  • Not sure how common this practice is, but they have been used in the past to check out the viability of locations for land based transmitter towers like Emley Moor [mb21.co.uk] in the UK

  • Just another symptom... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Alsee ( 515537 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @07:33AM (#3031062) Homepage
    of our "disposable" society.

    -
    • Tell me about it...

      This weekend I went to get a replacement battery for my wife's cell phone. The cost? A mere $50, *or* I could buy a replacement phone for $39.95.

      Someone tell me again why the battery (that comes with the phone in the first place) should cost so much more than the phone?!?
    • Hmm, IIRC, the payloads of these balloons (called "rawinsondes") have reward notices on them, and are frequently retrieved and re-used. Not sure about all the details - it's been awhile since I learned about that stuff, but it's not like these are extremely complicated devices - I think there's a goodly number of them that use human hair to measure moisture, for example. Any NWS guys out there wanna back me up with facts? :)
    • They've been sending up weather balloons for decades now. They're a practical and environmentally benign way of gathering weather data. I hardly think that this is symptomatic of anything, except perhaps of clear thinking that gets the job done.

  • USAF is running teathered ballons (Score:3, Informative)

    by thogard ( 43403 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @08:18AM (#3031136) Homepage
    Tethered Aerostat Radar System [fas.org] does this with teathered balloons at 15,00 ft or so.

    They have 12 and tend to operate about 50% of the time. They can carry up to 3400 pounds and are costing about 2.8 million per site per year.

    One of these is sending signals TV to Cuba.

  • Not feasible...IMO (Score:3, Informative)

    by vortexf5 ( 221744 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @08:22AM (#3031150)
    I have launched numerous weather balloons, and I don't believe they stay aloft for 24 hours. They only take ~2-3 hours to ascend to 30-35 Km. I doubt they take 21 hours to descend...even when slowed by a parachute, which they all carry. Also, in response to the numerous posts about aircraft safety, pilots all over the world know that weather balloons are launched by weather agencies in most countries at 1100 and 2300 GMT. It's a big sky up there. The odds of an airplane hitting one of these relatively tiny objects are extremely small.
  • I was reading just recently about another company researching the same idea, but with solar powered lenticular semi-rigid blimp platforms in geostationary orbit.

    http://www.lvcm.com/walden/products.html#strat [lvcm.com]

    The pictures look great, they also have cargo and ecoturism lenticular blimp projects.
  • Did anyone else end up with "99 Red Baloons" running through their head after reading this article?

    "You and I in a little toy shop
    buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
    Set them free at the break of dawn
    'Til one by one, they were gone
    Back at base, bugs in the software
    Flash the message, "Something's out there"
    Floating in the summer sky
    99 red balloons go by."

  • HAPS (Score:4, Informative)

    by haunebu ( 16326 ) on Tuesday February 19, 2002 @08:47AM (#3031202) Homepage
    High-Altitude Platform Systems [thefeature.com] are one of the three different delivery mechanisms defined by the 3GPP for next-generation mobile services. The systems being designed around them go well beyond this weather baloon business.

    It's amazing how little press these systems have received so far, since it would take hundreds of well-placed terrestrial towers or thousands of miles of buried fiber to provide similar coverage and capacity.

  • watch out, it could be aliens! never forget roswell! :)

  • "..What?! Okay, I must be on a bad ballon, hold on... okay, wait, I see something. Lemme just drive closer to it... Drat, it's just a carnival. Hello?! Hello?!"

    This will be great fun until the anti-cellphone nazis figure out they can shoot the balloons down.

  • Check out StratSat (Score:2, Informative)

    by mikerich ( 120257 )
    This sounds like an alternative to the British StratSat [airship.com] airship which is under construction just down the road at Cardington in Bedforshire.

    StratSat is from Advanced Technologies Group [airship.com] and will sit at 20km altitude for up to 5 years, using photovoltaics for power.

    Hopefully it will be a bit more successful than the last big British airship... [btinternet.com]

  • Check out the HABP [und.edu] page for more details, but this group and many others have been doing long range HAM radio communications for years using balloons. Stick some electronics on a balloon, along with a repeater, and you can get several hundred miles out of radios that would previously give you 20 miles.
  • Wired this month is carrying an article about a similar idea using blimps. From the article the blimp stays aloft for like 3 years and carries a moderate amount of wireless equipment which can provide coverage for an area about 72km in diameter. I forget the exact altitude at which they hover but it is somewhere above regular air traffic and high enough to be safe from most weather patterns. Way back when Popular Mechanics had an article about high altitude airplanes (which has been posted several times on slashdot) that would also carry high speed communications equipment. I always thought it would be rather efficient to use airborne but not quite orbital space stations to relay radio traffic. You get the coverage or a space borne satellite without the inherent cost of lighting an explosion under its ass and launching it into orbit.

  • WarFlying (Score:2, Interesting)

    by technoCon ( 18339 )
    why not put a 802.11b transciever in a weather balloon and run netstumbler on it?

    A little more seriously, why not buy a surplus weather balloon, tether it over your house and put a passive microwave repeater on it like John Dvorak did for his "bank shot?" Might make for a nifty way to get community wireless broadband out to the suburbs.
    • I thought about this myself - where I currently lived I am hemmed in by two mountains, one to the south of me and one to the west of me - both are about a half-mile away. I was thinking what it would take to establish a wireless link to a friend who lives to the southwest of me.

      Fortunately, there is a nearby freeway, which passes between the mountains - and a cell phone tower is nearly in my back yard. I gave thought to a repeater on the mountain, but forest service is rampant in the area due to motorcross bikers using the desert for fun, so getting to the top might be hard and dangerous (rocks, snakes, scorpions, you name it). I thought maybe bouncing the signal off the cell phone tower - but thought that might not be nice - it would be too easy to pinpoint me and my friend. So, I gave thought to a tethered balloon platform - unfortunately, even that has problems - keeping it filled, in position, tethered, high winds off the mountain - and, one other thing - we live right under a flight path for a nearby (like, three miles away) airport.

      So, wireless to my friend's house from here isn't likely to happen soon (not that it matters much - it was more a "what-if" experiment)...
  • Sure, some folks will get better, clearer calls, but I see danger written all over this. Knowing that "what goes up, must come down", I see the landscape being littered over time with broken and deflated balloons and rusting communications equiptment.

    Nader and the rest of the Green Party will have a field day with this one.

    Goran
    • Just this many balloons are launched every day by the National Weather Service already. Most often they land in farm fields. For more info, try this page : http://205.156.54.206/er/gyx/weather_balloons.htm
  • For some reason, when I first saw the headline I thought it said "water balloons." Doh!
    ---
  • This project sounds similar to the SkyStation [skystation.com] project. I saw some conceptual designs of the airships for this project at Skunkworks.
  • This concept reminds me of American Flagg, an early 80's comic by Howard Chaykin. That comic had huge numbers of balloons covering Chicago. They were acting as a huge antenna array for satellite TV though.
  • This map [unisys.com] gives the current locations of upper air ballon releases. It also gives the winds and weather conditions at about 32,000 feet. You can see the strong winds that yank a balloon around. Two flights a day are launched from each fo these locations (00 UTC and 12 UTC).

    The balloons pop around 100,000 feet, 2.5 to 3 hours after launch. The styrofoam radiosonde (weather instrument) take awhile to float to the ground, but are not in the air for 12 hours.

    There are reliablility problems, balloons every so often ice up or pop prematurely... so they don't reach full height. However, I have yet to hear of a plane running into a weather balloon and crashing.

    btw, here's me [clublard.com] releasing a weather balloon back in 1992.

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