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What's the benefit over something like a weather balloon? Pretty interesting thought, tape a few hundred micro SD cards to it and you've got some impressive ba
by GhostVII 5y ago
What's the benefit over something like a weather balloon?
Pretty interesting thought, tape a few hundred micro SD cards to it and you've got some impressive bandwidth.
- brandmeyer 5y agoGoogle's Titan project was going to deliver internet service (... before it got strangled in the womb grumble grumble ...). LTE from aircraft to client, and a dedicated point-to-point radio from aircraft to backbone.
- detritus 5y agoYou can tell this where to go - weather balloons are utterly beholden to the whim of wind patterns.
- Breza 5y agoAnd this is more than a theoretical risk... https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/23/the-runaway-surveillance-blimp-that-captivated-the-nation-is-likely-grounded-for-good/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/23/...
- runarberg 5y agoI thought that you could somewhat control a balloon by using different wind patterns in different elevations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvJ2Ei8K2DI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvJ2Ei8K2DI
- bentcorner 5y ago¿Por qué no los dos? It looks like solar-powered zeppelins are a thing, although with the brief googling I did it looks like nothing really exists just yet.
- GhostVII 5y agoYea I guess I was more thinking of a kind of blimp, where it still has some solar to allow it to maneuver around, but not to actually stay up. If the aircraft needs to stay in one place maybe that would be less efficient though, since it would be harder to fight winds.
- Breza 5y agoYou're basically describing the JLENS program, though the lighter-than-air craft was tethered, not free-flying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLENS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JLENS