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A VLEO satellite orbits the earth in under two hours, giving it visual coverage of the planet along the satellite ground track for a dozen or more orbits per da

A VLEO satellite orbits the earth in under two hours, giving it visual coverage of the planet along the satellite ground track for a dozen or more orbits per day. Launching enough balloons to get that kind of coverage, especially without the ability to control their position would cost an astronomical amount. You're not going to get anywhere near the same coverage and they'll probably all end up blown by the same wind system into a vortex and get stuck there anyway. Weather balloons are inexpensive because the radiosonde payload is very cheap and light, not requiring much power or other infrastructure. Putting a proper surveillance payload on it would dramatically increase the price mostly because it'd then have to power the payload. That role is currently mostly done by UAVs.

BalloonsInVLEO 2y ago
Nope! Weirdly, I'm probably the one person who's worked extensively with both paradigms... There are several players in the balloon market spinning up. It's becoming very hot very fast. The balloons in question are much smarter that radiosondes now. They are fully capable of autonomous navigation within certain limits and can even orbit a point for days at a time via some clever weather mechanics. They're also very easy to launch. Two guys and a truck can launch over a dozen in a day and they're all aggregated and flown remotely via various links. On the payload side it's actually much easier to do optics on a balloon, you have all the same pressure and thermal issues as space but you can iterate much faster when your cost to first pixels is thousands instead of tens of millions for the same ground resolution (GSD, drives necessary aperture size). I'm not going to spell out the details on either because that's the secret sauce that pays my mortgage but it suffices to say, if you're 10x lower, you need a lens that weights a little less. It's also worth noting that a VLEO sat will only be overhead for a few minutes, balloons can stream live video as long as you want, right now (no future tech or constellations needed). The class of UAV that can begin to compete with a balloon is two to three orders of magnitude more expensive and still has nowhere near the endurance. There are also other sensors and phenomenologies that are wildly more capable on a balloon platform than any type of satellite or UAV but I'll get yelled at if I spell any of those out...
- eigart 2y ago
  Are you in Europe? Are there any promising European companies in this space? I’ve been thinking that something like this would be perfect in Europe going forward. Could help de-risk both reliance on subsea comms cables, US constellations and addresses the (comparative) lack of capital.
  - lnsru 2y ago
    I don’t think he’s in Europe. Who will fund such risky venture or buy services from a company in there. Ballons however are very good for transport of cigarettes over the border of Belarus into EU. Cigarettes are light and the balloons from China cheap.
  - BalloonsInVLEO 2y ago
    All the companies I know of are US based. That said if you know what you're doing it's much lower risk than a satellite venture
- tomaskafka 2y ago
  Saving this for another round of 'UFO sightings' panic. There was recently an article about the 'UFOs' actually being 'just' Chinese balloons designed to record everything about the radars poking them to learn about capabilities of US defense systems (including F-35 in action). Guess we'll see more of them soon.
  - BalloonsInVLEO 2y ago
    I've seen various balloons more or less constantly spook the UFO people. There are a few designs that don't look like a traditional balloon so everyone thinks they're some sort of cloaking field or something
    - tomaskafka 2y ago
      Found it - this one is worse. Army pilots fear being accused of 'seeing UFO', so they underreport Chinese spy balloons, which then probe US defense systems: https://www.twz.com/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos https://www.twz.com/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the...

BalloonsInVLEO 2y ago

Nope! Weirdly, I'm probably the one person who's worked extensively with both paradigms... There are several players in the balloon market spinning up. It's becoming very hot very fast. The balloons in question are much smarter that radiosondes now. They are fully capable of autonomous navigation within certain limits and can even orbit a point for days at a time via some clever weather mechanics. They're also very easy to launch. Two guys and a truck can launch over a dozen in a day and they're all aggregated and flown remotely via various links. On the payload side it's actually much easier to do optics on a balloon, you have all the same pressure and thermal issues as space but you can iterate much faster when your cost to first pixels is thousands instead of tens of millions for the same ground resolution (GSD, drives necessary aperture size). I'm not going to spell out the details on either because that's the secret sauce that pays my mortgage but it suffices to say, if you're 10x lower, you need a lens that weights a little less. It's also worth noting that a VLEO sat will only be overhead for a few minutes, balloons can stream live video as long as you want, right now (no future tech or constellations needed). The class of UAV that can begin to compete with a balloon is two to three orders of magnitude more expensive and still has nowhere near the endurance. There are also other sensors and phenomenologies that are wildly more capable on a balloon platform than any type of satellite or UAV but I'll get yelled at if I spell any of those out...

eigart 2y ago
Are you in Europe? Are there any promising European companies in this space? I’ve been thinking that something like this would be perfect in Europe going forward. Could help de-risk both reliance on subsea comms cables, US constellations and addresses the (comparative) lack of capital.
- lnsru 2y ago
  I don’t think he’s in Europe. Who will fund such risky venture or buy services from a company in there. Ballons however are very good for transport of cigarettes over the border of Belarus into EU. Cigarettes are light and the balloons from China cheap.
- BalloonsInVLEO 2y ago
  All the companies I know of are US based. That said if you know what you're doing it's much lower risk than a satellite venture
tomaskafka 2y ago
Saving this for another round of 'UFO sightings' panic. There was recently an article about the 'UFOs' actually being 'just' Chinese balloons designed to record everything about the radars poking them to learn about capabilities of US defense systems (including F-35 in action). Guess we'll see more of them soon.
- BalloonsInVLEO 2y ago
  I've seen various balloons more or less constantly spook the UFO people. There are a few designs that don't look like a traditional balloon so everyone thinks they're some sort of cloaking field or something
  - tomaskafka 2y ago
    Found it - this one is worse. Army pilots fear being accused of 'seeing UFO', so they underreport Chinese spy balloons, which then probe US defense systems: https://www.twz.com/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the-u-s-and-the-pentagon-acts-like-theyre-ufos https://www.twz.com/40054/adversary-drones-are-spying-on-the...