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Airships Tested As Two-Way Telecom Beacons 176

Posted by timothy from the bouncing-around dept.
sgups writes "The Toronto Star (no registration required:)) is reporting about this firm which will supply spherical airships that will be used as high-flying telecommunications platforms to supply two-way Internet access across the United States and into Mexico and Canada. The article explains little of the technology though."
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Airships Tested As Two-Way Telecom Beacons More

Airships Tested As Two-Way Telecom Beacons

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  • Dynamic Zoning (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Good Sumerian ( 459878 )
    I'd like to see how they handle the dynamic zone changes as the beach balls drift around.

  • Oh lord the humanity! (Score:4, Funny)

    by netnerd.caffinated ( 473121 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:40PM (#4903213)
    the airship explodes cause it was filled with hydrogen & millions of internet weenies are left stranded with no pr0n

  • Cool! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Miroku ( 553494 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:41PM (#4903221) Homepage Journal
    High speed internet access for those of us who live out in the woods would be great, since sattelite is incredibly expensive...

    As long as they don't get shot down as UFO's....

    • Re:Cool! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by the_2nd_coming ( 444906 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:55PM (#4903345) Homepage
      who says these will be cheap?
      • It's wishful thinking. I'm an idealist. I can dream, can't I?

        Or if this isn't cheap, maybe it will make sattelite access cheaper in response. ^_~

      • Re:Cool! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Galvatron ( 115029 )
        Well, if it's not less expensive than satellite, no one would bother trying. So, while it may not be as cheap and quick as DSL, it should be better than the existing satellite options.
        • cheap for the consumer, not the company.

          the cheaper it is for the company, the bigger thier profits are even when they undercut the competition by 5 dollors.
          • Well, I can't think of any reason why a dozen companies can't each send up their own blimps, so I'd imagine that if one company does it successfully, others will follow, driving down profit margins. Even if, for whatever reason, competition doesn't set in (a patent, maybe?), they'll still have to undercut satellite enough to convince people to switch (which may mean $1 a month, or it may mean $10 a month, but either way, it's still better than nothing).

  • New UFO excuse #3462 (Score:4, Funny)

    by Asterax ( 522761 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:41PM (#4903227) Journal
    Now the government can use the airships as excuses for what you "really" saw in the sky at night, not a UFO. Good bye weather balloon excuse.

  • I thought.. (Score:2, Informative)

    by josh crawley ( 537561 )
    I thought that the .Bomb went out in 2000 or so. Why's this shit being regurgitated when I saw the same stuff in a 1998 computer magazine.

    Hint: The company who had the original idea tanked.
    • They are just hoping that everyone who invested in the last company has forgotten by now. :)

    • Re:I thought.. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 )
      You thought right, but think wrong.

      The first ones usually tank. Than somebody finds the magic pill, and voila.

      The .bomb years had a ton of people trying to sell shit that will become common place in the future. They were just too early .. technology and markets both have to hit puberty before people stop snickering.

      Christ, I can't believe how many people sound like they switched their 1998 office chair for a 2002 rocking chair ... there are huge differences between today and 1998.

      Read the article and you'll note there is a sale in there. Hard to tank when your clients actually have the money to pay up these days (or youre not being paid in stock.) .. and the news is especially interesting given how tentative companies are to spend on this sort of thing today. Must have been a dam convincing test flight.
    • sanswire is going down the tubes too AFAIK... (I dropped their service like a bad habbit)

      you can witness them losing customers as we speak [sanswire.net]

  • This won't work (Score:1, Interesting)

    by mut3 ( 634239 )
    Sure, you can put balloons up there, but there are factors such as weather, acts of God, and so on, that can ruin this whole thing.
    • Sure, you can put balloons up there, but there are factors such as weather, acts of God...

      snipers.
      • snipers

        If you dig up the various stories about the recent increases in the number of blimps in the world, you'll read that one of their minor problems is that people are always using them as targets. It's not actually all that big a problem, because even very large bullets leave only a slow leak. Part of the routine maintenance is plugging all the small holes in the fabric. Every few years they have to replace the fabric.

        It's more of a problem when the bullets miss the fabric and hit the gondola. Flight crew in one of those advertising blimps over a football game can be a risky job in some areas.

        But this wouldn't be that much of a problem for a blimp at 21 km altitude. It would take a rather high-powered rifle to hit something that far up, and your typical suburban redneck probably wouldn't have anything with that kind of power.

        They could be a target during military (and terrorist) operations. Even then, though, blimps are difficult to bring down. Your typical small missile, even if it hit and exploded inside the baloon, would just leave a lot of small holes, causing a slow descent. It would take a direct hit on the gondola to put it out of action quickly, and that's not an easy target.

        --

    • Re:This won't work (Score:3, Informative)

      by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 )
      RTA: they are putting these up in the stratosphere which is above the part of the atmosphere where weather is a problem.
  • From the evil radiation of the flying tin balloins!

  • Very Cool, especially for rural areas. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ashetos ( 634147 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:43PM (#4903249)
    What about the same solution as an alternative to Cell Phone towers?

    • Re:Very Cool, especially for rural areas. (Score:4, Informative)

      by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Tuesday December 17, 2002 @01:42AM (#4905213) Journal
      A cell tower is the point where "wire" ends and "wireless" begins. As such, one end of it is tied to the cellular network, which in turn is tied to the land line network.

      With a blimp, the end going into the cellular network must also be wireless. What you've then introduced is a wireless repeater, which consumes twice the bandwidth compared to a land-based tower.

      The angles at which land-based towers transmit allows its beams to penetrate windows for indoor coverage. A blimp that flies higher would not be able to penetrate several floors (or even just ordinary roofing) to provide the same coverage, especially right underneath itself.

      If the blimp cannot be kept stationary enough for doppler sync purposes, then you'll need significantly more complex software to deal with the fact that both the blimp and the handset are moving.

      Not impossible, but there are significant obstacles.

  • Technical Hurdle (Score:5, Funny)

    by StefanJ ( 88986 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:44PM (#4903257) Homepage Journal
    They're going to need really huge Pringles(tm) cans to support wireless at that altitude.

    Of course, if they succeed, we'll have big potatoid wafers the size of dinner plates.

    Stefan

  • Great idea (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Adam9 ( 93947 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:45PM (#4903262) Journal
    In order to reach the same coverage area as the 10 Stratellites, the company would have to install wireless equipment in more than 14,000 cellular towers at a capital cost of $56 million plus annual tower lease cost of $67 million, Lively said.

    The new United States Homeland Security agency, created in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, wants telecommunications around major cities improved, and companies have been scrambling to find alternatives to cell towers and landlines, Colting said.

    Great, they want reliability in case of a disaster so they think combining 14,000 towers into 10 big balloons is going to be better. Might not be a single point of failure.. but I'd prefer 14,000 points of failure rather than 10.

    • In other news... (Score:4, Funny)

      by bobdotorg ( 598873 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:06PM (#4903443)
      GNU terrorists have hijacked the WiFi blimp and have already bounced into Microsoft's headquarters five times.
    • 10 airships is (hopefully, according to business plan) a shitload cheaper than 14,000 towers or 1 geosync satellite.

    • Re:Great idea (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MarcoAtWork ( 28889 )
      come on, if you really want to cut (or significantly degrade) internet access for people you can just get a backhoe and start digging ;)

      more seriously: if somebody took out MAE-East and MAE-West, even if you had all your 14,000 towers up, it wouldn't really make much of a difference...

  • Sad day (Score:4, Funny)

    by unterderbrucke ( 628741 ) <unterderbrucke@yahoo.com> on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:48PM (#4903289)
    "spherical airships"

    The Hindenburg and Goodyear blimps ruined the good name of blimp forever. Now were are reduced to puzzling out such obtuse synonyms as "spherical airships".
    • goodyear has a blimp, the Hindenburg was a dirigable.
      like the difference between boat and ship.

      Look, its the goodrich blimp...
      • Actually the Hindenburg was a Zepplin. A blimp uses pressure to maintain it's shape. The problem is the faster you go the more presure you have to have to keep it from squishing.
        A Zepplin uses a framework to keep it's shape. You can make them much bigger and faster than a blimp.

        When nukes where considered a good thing back in the 60s I think they where talking about atomic airships. How about that as a plot for a disaster movie?
    • If these things have circling lights around them, they will cause hundreds of UFO sightings. That would be cool!

  • Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Em Emalb ( 452530 ) <ememalb AT gmail DOT com> on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:52PM (#4903316) Homepage Journal
    "The Toronto Star (no registration required:)) "

    What? Registration not required? What am I supposed to bitch about now?

    Well, hell, guess I have to read the article now.

    *SIGH*

    • Re:Huh? (Score:1, Troll)

      by ObviousGuy ( 578567 )
      You can complain about them adding ", eh?" and ", ya hoser" to the end of each sentence.

      I thought that was pretty annoying.

  • Communication methods. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Wireless Joe ( 604314 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:53PM (#4903330) Homepage
    You can find more information on the spherical communication technology of airships at this site [cropcircleradius.com].

    Oh, wait, that was communication technology of spherical airships. That information is found here [temporaldoorway.com].
  • But you need a really long cable.

  • What kind of internet outage shall we have today? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Quaoar ( 614366 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @08:56PM (#4903356)
    1. Denial of service
    2. Fried router
    3. Blimp attack

  • Positioning? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CyNRG ( 176230 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:01PM (#4903395)
    What about power requirements? Staying in the same position requires some power. There are also other power issues I', Sure.

    Cy

    • Re:Positioning? (Score:3, Informative)

      by standards ( 461431 )
      As I understand it, solar, with fuel cells for power storage for night. Just like satellites.

      Of course, there would need to be an electric fan to keep it in position... perhaps much like electric fans used on ultra-high-flying experimental aircraft.

      Also, note the high altitude - above cloud cover... so light is plentiful (good!)... but winds are high too (bad!).

      This is, hopefully, much cheaper than geosync satellites. PLUS you can bring them down for maintenence (unlike geosync). So therefore, the machines can be less redundant (read "expensive") than satellite technology.

      Sounds like a great solution if they can successfully keep them in place. If cheap enough, this technology could replace the need for ALL large radio towers. (Those towers ain't cheap either, you know)
      • As I understand it, solar, with fuel cells for power storage for night. Just like satellites

        Fuel cells work by combining, usually, oxygen and hydrogen, releasing electricity and water. They are common on manned space flight because they provide drinking water and power, plus also a reliable energy dense form of electrical power. This ability to fullfill many roles and having no waste products makes them a good engineering solution, and they are highly robust.

        However all fuel cells need as supply of gas to continue working. Conceiveably you can capture the waste water, electrolyse it and recompress the oxygen and hydrogen produced back to thier liquid forms for storage - but that is a highly complex bit of engineering.

        As such satellites, to my knowledge, use batteries of various chemical regimes. I would expect the airships too as well - weight is not a huge problem on an airship as the envelope lifts pretty much what you want for 'free' unlike an aircraft where you have to expend energy to keep aloft, so normal chemical cell technology is a simpler engineering solution.

        If cheap enough, this technology could replace the need for ALL large radio towers

        As mentioned elsewhere these will not replace towers. Any tower that has one side connected to a landline (broadcast towers) will still have to be there. Any tower that boosts and retransmits (relay towers) could be replaced by this sort of idea, but some of those relay towers transmit at very high wattages - I question whether the solar collectors would be able to collect enough power to do the same. Especially, when accounting for daylight and losses in charging/regualtion systems on the battery bank, you probably need to achieve 3 times the rate of your energy consuption on your collection system. But certainly scenarios where you need a geographically wide coverage area at not a great power output, this idea could work very well.
    • Oh, and one more thing - these things are 1000s of times closer to you than a geosync satellite... And therefore the latency is greatly reduced.

      That's great for voice and data communications.

  • Nasa has a better idea (Score:5, Interesting)

    by UrGeek ( 577204 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:03PM (#4903412)
    http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Projects/Pathfinder/

    or search for "Nasa solar-powered Pathfinder" in your favorite search engine.

    This is a solar-powered drone that eventually will fly 24 hours (carrying batteries for night).
    • That NASA thing can carry 50lbs. Better? The balloon can carry 400 times as much telecom equipment, and maybe more if they build bigger ones. What advantages does the drone have that make it better?

      • Re:Nasa has a better idea (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Hast ( 24833 )
        I think the point with the Nasa project is that it's quite mobile. So while you can make it circle a specific area you can also make it fly around and cover a larger area.

        Note that it's primary mission doesn't seem to be telecommunication but scientific. (Though the grand-parent poster did this mistake and not the one I'm replying to.)

        The vehicle could be used for a variety of monitoring purposes. NASA is especially interested in the vehicle for its ability to study the upper atmosphere without disturbing it. [... It] could spend long periods of time over the ocean monitoring storm developments to provide more accurate predictions of hurricanes. The same capability could be used to monitor forests and other large remote expanses to provide early warning of crop damage or fires for example. Another use for this kind of capability is to serve as a surrogate satellite when coverage is not available.

        Since it's Nasa I wouldn't be surprised if they intend to use the technique for creating more durable machines for remote monitoring eg for other planets. (But other than Mars and the inner planets I don't think a solar powered flyer is going to be much use.)

  • Now that's what I call: 'getting high' (Score:4, Funny)

    by Newer Guy ( 520108 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:05PM (#4903433)
    Spherical airships running on Volkswagen engines for the transmission of spam and pr0n. Hmmmmm...I've had ideas like this before. Usually after several bong hits....

  • Liability (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ad0gg ( 594412 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:06PM (#4903436)
    Whats the liability if one these ships crashes? They are going to be over heavily popullated areas. Seems like a big disaster waiting to happen.

    • Re:Liability (Score:5, Funny)

      by WolfWithoutAClause ( 162946 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:20PM (#4903549) Homepage
      Yeah, right. Emotional trauma caused by being hit by an 18 meter beach ball moving at a few feet a minute- you'd get laughed out of court.

      "And then it popped see, and my voice went all squeaky. My friends looked at me and they all laughed. I was so ashamed. I'm asking for 90 billion dollars in damages."

    • Re:Liability (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Door-opening Fascist ( 534466 ) <skylar@cs.earlham.edu> on Monday December 16, 2002 @10:26PM (#4904068) Homepage
      You're worried about 18-meter 4-ton helium filled balloons over heavily-populated areas? We already have 80-meter 40-ton airplanes flying over heavily-populated areas, and they're filled with highly flammable jet fuel to boot.
      • But the crucial thing is that the airplanes have pilots, who by and large are able to react to any unusual state of affairs very quickly and effectively.

        An autonomous system like the airships would need would not do that, even if there was some form of active monitoring by a ground based 'pilot' who could take over in the event of an emergency they are not physically there so may not be able to assess the emergency as well or as quickly as a pilot in an airplane. After all if there is a problem with the control surfaces on an airplane you have the chance of going into the cabin and actually seeing what is wrong rather than relying on instruments.

        Additionally air flight paths are by and large routed away from major centers of popluation for that very reason, unless there is no alternative. The airships would require to be over populated areas to achieve thier tasks. Of course this leads to some interesting thoughts on exactly how the FAA(US)/CAA(UK) would view piloted and autonomous aircraft sharing airspace - would air traffic control be able to override the autonomous aircraft directly in an emergency, or would a ground based operator need to do it?

        And my final thought is people are worried, probably rightly, by the safety of autonomous aircraft. We value life highly, so the level of safety engineering that goes into a piloted aircraft is much higher. If the aim is to provide cheap as possible autonomous systems, where all you lose is some money covered by insurance, then rightly we need to question if the safety engineering will be as high.

  • OK, I can see this. (Score:2, Informative)

    by MsWillow ( 17812 )
    It'd be rather like a large helium-filled balloon, tethered, with a 5-watt 2M rig and a TNC, possibly powered by a battery/solar cell combination. Put a bunch of these up, and you've got it (albeit slow as heck).

    Now, make it a dual-band unit, and run it much faster than a normal TNC. Have the up and downlinks to the subscribers on one channel, and the "between units" link on another one. That should help the speed, and allow for greater coverage as well.

    I think it'd be fun :) Just like Field Day, all year long.

  • visibility (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tekunokurato ( 531385 )
    I'm curious: will people on the ground be able to see these, or are they too high and small to be noticeable? Obviously they won't eclipse out the sun, but will they make a noticable blotch on it?

    • Re:visibility (Score:4, Informative)

      by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Monday December 16, 2002 @10:00PM (#4903874) Homepage Journal
      You wont be able to see them. Even the giant airships of the '3os were invisible when flying at altitude.

      As to casting a shadow the brightness of the sky (much less the sun) quickly fades out any shadow; the same as high-flying planes don't cast visible shadows (unlike low-altitude ones near airports.)

      Any environmental effects of these would be very minimal, far less then those of a conventional plane or helicopter.

      • You wont be able to see them. Even the giant airships of the '3os were invisible when flying at altitude.

        Huh? These things were several times longer than a 747 and had a cruising altitude of only about 1000 feet. The Hindenburg flying right over you would not only be visible, but it would blot out much of the sky.

        Even the high-altitude Zeppelin bombers of WWI were unpressurized and maxed out around 17000 feet; they were certainly not invisible.

        • I was intrigued so googled for some info. Two good reports of the Hindenburg I found here: www.hindenburg.net(google cache) [google.co.uk]
          www.thirdreichforum.com(full accident report) [thirdreichforum.com]

          Both these suggest the length of the Hindeburgh (apparently a development of the Zeppelin type) was 804 feet, and cruised at around 1000 feet - although it appears to be able to fly at a few thousand to avoid weather systems.

          Now using 2 * pi * r to calculate the circumfrence of a circle with the radius as the altitude, and then divide by the length of the airframe, we can deduce that the arc of the length on the airship is:

          2 * pi * 1000 = 6283
          (804 / 6283) * 360 = 46 degrees

          So turning that into a more accessable figure that would be the same as 72 metre long object at a range of 100 metres - definately visable!!
          [ sin 46 * 100 = 72 ]

          Even if the bombers fly at 17000 feet the figures still suggest it would be potentailly visable:
          2 * pi * 17000 = 106814
          (804 / 106814) * 360 = 2.7 degrees
          sin 2.7 * 100 = 4.7

          So same as a 5 metre object at a range of 100m. That would still be visable to careful observation, although use of a disruption colour scheme would help it evade detection. Certainly not invisible.

          For these Statolites, the figures would be:
          18 metres is approx 60 feet
          2 * pi * 18000 = 113097
          (60 / 113097) * 360 = 5.3e-4 degrees
          sin 5.3e-4 * 100 = 9.25e-4

          Thats equivalent to an object of 1mm length at 100m - invisible to all intents and purposes.

  • How is geosync accomplished? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wideBlueSkies ( 618979 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:12PM (#4903492) Journal
    >>The Stratellite, which will be about 80 metres in diameter, is similar to a satellite, but it is stationed in the stratosphere at 19,000 metres rather than in orbit.

    Maybe this sounds like a dumb question, but how do they plan on keeping one of these things in place? With an 18,000 foot cable? With some type of gyroscope mechanism?

    Wouldn't the wind(and changes in air pressure) move the thing around like a, uh, baloon?

    Forgive me, but I don't know that much about high altitude baloons. But I know that if the wind down here on the surface can rock my 2 ton truck around like a lego toy, it would probably do a number on a baloon in the upper atmosphere.
    • They quote the maker saying that They are highly maneuverable and capable of extended-duration flights". Probably they just move them around like they usually move zeppelines. (With propellers or something that is.)

      Too bad the article didn't have a figure or picture.
    • That would be what the solar powered motors would be there for. These are also flying above the jetstream. It's not perfectly calm up there, but at that height you can get blown a few miles off course and noone should suffer an interupt in services, just as long as you can fly back to the center of your zone. they're also designed to stay up there for only a year at a time, before coming down for servicing. most of the equiplent can be recycled, but for saftey reasons they would want to replace the parts that take the most wear and tear. Oh, and being round helps too -- remember the payload rides Inside the sphere. being a near-perfect sphere they have the least possible wind drag from any direction in a lighter-than-airship. remember wind is unpredictable, which is why a cigar shaped airship has such a hard time in wind -- it can only handle winds head or tail on. any other direction and it's causing more turbulence than can be handled for precise handling.
      Yes these will work, and they're a great idea.
      the millitary is also interested in these for deploying the benefits of a satelite over the battlefield without the cost, and with 365 times the flight duration of strotospheric planes.
      • The jetstream stops at about 150k ft. This is about 1/2 that. Its going to get blown far away unless its attached to a cable. The "above the weather" is a joke. It may be above the rain but theres plenty of other weather like 200 mph winds to push things around.

  • More Balloons and AUVs (Score:4, Informative)

    by dailywireless ( 624587 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:13PM (#4903496) Journal
    Daily Wireless has more on Sky High Wi-Fi [dailywireless.org] including Skytower [skytowerglobal.com] which uses a solar-powered airplane [dailywireless.org]. It has been used for 802.11b-enabled aerial photography [dailywireless.org]. Skytower is designed to circle overhead, unmanned, for as long as six months [business2.com], drawing power from the sun by day and from fuel cells by night.

    The new homeland security department will require a massive global network. But transoceanic fiber is easily cut and the $800 million TDRS replenishment program [spacedaily.com] with three satellites doesn't have the bandwidth. Intercepted SIGINT data is reportedly transmitted to Earth on a 24 GHz downlink [globalsecurity.org] using narrow-beam antennas. But the frequency swaths allocated for links are less than consumers can get on cable television. More bandwidth is needed.

    One might speculate that a secret optical/IR satellite network downlinked in Hawaii [dailywireless.org] might be developed. The European Space Agency, not to be outdone, says they're thinking of building miniaturised optical systems that fit onto a microchip [spaceref.com]. These optical networks might use optical CDMA which encodes each pulse,across a segment of wavelengths [com.com].

  • "will supply spherical airships"

    If they're spherical, are they still airships?
    • Airships refer to any lighter-than-air vehicle.

      Given it's spherical, it may not have an internal structure (think weather baloon), but it would have to be under its own power. IIRC, that would make it a dirigible. Blimps have internal cells of gas along with an internal structure (think hindenberg and goodyear).

      Thank you R. Lee Ermey.

  • Cool Picture (Score:5, Informative)

    by WeekendKruzr ( 562383 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:21PM (#4903551)
    Although I hesitate due to the high liklihood of it being Slashdotted, the company's homepage [21stcenturyairships.com] has a pretty cool picture of the device in question. While the most of the comm gear is hidden within, you can see some antennae's and solar panels on the side. The rest of the site has lots of other interesting pics, but like the article is unfortunately very short of any tech detail. :-/
  • It's good that airships are beginning to come back into favor. With the large selection of materials that have been developed in the years since we last seriously pursued dirgibles as a viable transportation option, producing a super-strong, super-light, fireproof dirgible should be no problem. I still await the day when I can purchase quarters on an airship, and tour the world in relaxed comfort. I'd like a large wardroom, but I'm realistic. So long as there are comfortable open spaces, I'd settle for a berth.

  • interesting tangent (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:36PM (#4903646) Homepage Journal
    --I've seen several slashdot threads now on starting your own business, moaning about the company you are in, etc. The two recent were the tech trends thread and the hilarious wobbly headed CEO doll "bonus". Anyway, I found the most fascinating thing in the article was that, to the owner, balloons were just fun! That's how he got into it, doing what he thought was fun and cool! Fun can translate into enthusiasm which leads to making some radical but maybe cool decisions. More power to the guy, and hope he figures out how to keep them in place! And is this a new job title, certified stratonaut network administrator*? CSNA* What a job!

    *copylefted, have fun!
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion


  • It really doesn't sound that profound. It's a repeater with an embeded power supply possible solor attached to a helium weather type balloon. I have been hearing different versions of this story for a while now, High flying planes circling cities, baloons high rise buildings. but I am yet to see a working implimentation. My main concerns are no one address the inherant problems, like weather

  • competition (Score:5, Informative)

    by anonymous loser ( 58627 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @09:49PM (#4903767)
    There is already another project called SkyStation [skystation.com] that has a significant business advantage IMHO. It's already been in development for several years, and is backed by some rather large corporations such as Lockheed Martin (where some of the development is taking place).

    However, given the current state of the telecom industry, I find it hard to believe that *any* of these projects will get off the ground (no pun intended) in the near future.

  • So the big spherical floating metallic objects in the sky really are trying to beam messages to me...

  • And in other news about the news (Score:3, Funny)

    by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @10:02PM (#4903884) Homepage
    The article explains little of the technology though

    Well, it is the Toronto Star.

    The Globe and Mail [globeandmail.com] is read by the people who own the country. (It's Toronto's national newspaper, except for the National [canada.com] which is Toronto's other national newspaper.) The Toronto Star [thestar.com] is read by the people who whine when they don't run the country. The Toronto Sun [canoe.ca] is read by the people who don't care who runs the country, so long as she has big tits on page 3. Weeklies like NOW [nowtoronto.com] offer insight into: politics or performance art? (With the establishment's hand up their sock-puppet bum.)
    -- Adapted from Yes, Prime Minister

  • picture (Score:3, Interesting)

    by h4x0r-3l337 ( 219532 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @10:19PM (#4904013)
    A (small) picture of one of these ships can be found here [sanswire.net].
    • As a former Sanswire/Tsunami customer I have personal reservations as to their ability to pull it off.

      They're having enough trouble with the merger maintaining services (down for 3 weeks, won't be up until the new year) and making stupid decisions (like disabing outgoing SSH at a university!!!!!).

      Witness the carnage here: at their support forum [sanswire.net]
  • That just means more Bullet Bills and Cannons and Koopas to avoid!

  • Old Hat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by A non moose cow ( 610391 ) <slashdot@rilo.org> on Monday December 16, 2002 @10:32PM (#4904104) Journal
    Oil field trash from Africa's equitorial west coast might remember this being done over 20 years ago (by Conoco? I can't remember). The company needed communications into the jungle, and the anchored dirgibles solved two problems...

    1. They didn't have to cut a path for wires
    2. They could avoid the natives stealing the wire.

    The problem came in the first monsoon season when , although very heavily anchored, the coastal one was blown hard enough to snap the dirgible from the cable. The cable bounded back like a rubber band, and completely demolished the base station. Tons of thick steel cable flying out of the sky. I wish I could have seen it.

    (My dad, now retired from Mobil, told me this story some years ago.)
    • That wind problem has intrigued me for the longest time....

      It makes no sense to me why they would not have a wind sensor and winch the balloon down as the wind gets stronger. Have a concrete holding area with no top, and winch the balloon into it. It won't get damaged or lost this way. As soon as the wind has died down to a reasonable level, release it back into the air.

  • High on Helium (Score:3, Funny)

    by Cheese Cracker ( 615402 ) on Monday December 16, 2002 @11:12PM (#4904313)
    The spherical airship is filled with non-flammable helium and has no external gondola for crew. Instead, the pilots sit in an igloo-like cabin inside the sphere.

    If it leaks, the pilot will get a rather squeeky voice. :)
  • Several years ago I thought of using airplanes as a continuously moving, reconfigurable network.

    Glad to see I'm not a lunatic, after all.

  • Remember this story [angeltechnologies.com] posted on /. about a year ago, about having using jets as flying antenna platforms for broadband? I remember reading that and thinking, "Jets? Jets??? What a dumb-ass idea. All you need is a blimp." Huzzah!!!

    Plus, the look is straight out of Star Wars. Cool!

  • Wait a minute . . . (Score:2, Interesting)

    by kwik_mart ( 577118 )
    I hope they gave this guy [geocities.com] some credit for the idea!

    (I discovered this site about a year ago, and even called him to comment on how "brilliant" all of his ideas are. Check out the rest of it here [geocities.com]!
    • He he, yeah that was a pretty funny link. I like his hovership ideas the first one using firing guns [geocities.com] the second a hoolahoop [geocities.com].

      I don't think the "ideas" are intended to be serious though. As the second I linked to there was written two years after he finished a postgrad in physics. And you only need a small helping of common sense to see that they wouldn't work.

      OTOH he might want to apply for a US patent. It'd probably get granted if he just wrote it up in legaleze and made it span a 100 pages or so. ;-)
  • Was down in Eloy, AZ last weekend checking out the 300 way skydiving world record [300-way.com] and there was this large white sphere tied down in the desert. Thought it might be some kind of portable radar setup for the event 'till I get closer. It had two transparent "windows" near the bottom and two dinky propellers about 3/4 of the way up on opposite sides. The crew was loading stuff right into the spherical shape of it and were too busy to explain much other than to say that they were going to launch the thing soon. So, anyway, was later talking to somebody who had stuck around, he said they had in the air and were successfully maneuvering it.

    But here's where it gets interesting. Later, when they were finished and had the ship tied down when a sudden wind storm blew in. Wouldn't you know it, he said the last thing he saw was the thing BLOWING AWAY into the sky "going going gone...". Hopefully they had some crew on board, though there's no way those tiny props could've fought any serious wind. We were guessing 1/4 mil was GONE (and we didn't know then that there might be comm. equipment aboard). Tough work being a pioneer in your field...

  • Communication blimp is not a problem, but powering it is. You need a lot of power for all transmitters. Solar power would not be enough -- you can't have many batteries on board because of their weight and i doubt that it's enough to power everything at the day. So... there are only two choices:
    • Every day or two dirigible flies towards comm blimp and refuels it. No big deal, but a lot of fuel. And the tanker has to be manned. And blimp engines must be exceptionally durable. And...
    • Nuclear plant. Greens? Osama?

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