Re: Why am I not surprised?
move around on their own randomly
The "clever" part of Loon, as I understand it, was the little compressor mentioned in the article. Using this to take Helium out of the envelope, compress it for storage and release it back into the envelope later, the system was able to control its buoyancy, In other words, it could ascend and descend at will.
Combining this ability with knowledge and forecasts of the wind at different altitudes, it was possible to keep a balloon more-or-less on station long-term.
Better than the "blimps" I was peripherally involved with at Magna in the early 2000s, powered by small motors and batteries, barely buoyant enough for their own weight and couldn't even fly against the draughts present in the shed,
Still, not cheap and it sort of makes some kind of disappointing sense that the project joins the growing pile of Google Abandonware. Could possibly have been taken up by a government, but likely easier and cheaper to deploy standard mobile networks.
Disaster relief was also mentioned as a possible use-case I seem to remember - bringing communications networks back to life much more quickly than rebuilding dozens or hundreds of cellular sites. Shame that won't now be possible.
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
