Posted on 02/24/2008 3:24:06 PM PST by Radix
Space Data Corp. has brought a brilliant idea into actuality. It operates 10 cheap, high-soaring balloons carrying electronics that turns them into the equivalent of 65,000-foot cell-phone antenna towers in the thinly populated American Southwest.
Something like this just might make the task of bringing broadband Internet service to the 95 towns of rural Massachusetts that have little or none of it a lot cheaper than the $25 million for which Gov. Deval Patrick is seeking legislative authority to borrow.
The balloons only last about a day, so Space Data launches 10 every day to provide cell phone service to trucking companies across Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and part of Texas, and deploys teams that recover the six-pound electronics capsules that are parachuted to earth before the $50 balloons break up.
In the account of the operation in The Wall Street Journal, environmentalists are quoted worrying about the attractiveness of latex from the balloons for fish and turtles that mistake sheets of the stuff for jellyfish. This is a plausible worry, but not a lot of latex will fall into lakes and rivers and it may be possible to show that the risk is trivial. One or two balloons might be enough for western Massachusetts.
If latex is a real risk, it might be possible to make balloons out of something other than latex. In World War II, the Japanese sent paper balloons carrying incendiary devices across the Pacific Ocean to start forest fires in Oregon.
Or this could be an ideal job for solar-powered drone airplanes. The Pathfinder-Plus (now in a NASA museum) flew at 80,000 feet 10 years ago and could carry 750 pounds, but its batteries were quickly exhausted at night. A six-pound payload would leave plenty of room for more batteries to make long-duration flights (in a tight circle) possible. The European Space Agency hopes to sponsor a piloted trans-Atlantic flight this year and a round-the-world flight next year. One of these agencies just might be looking for a spot to demonstrate capability.
I’m hoping they’re thinking outside the box up in the Corner Office.
But you can buy a lot more votes with $25 million.
I wounder what the service costs a customer?
I’m in a cell hole right here in Michigan. I can’t use my phone in the house at all and it’s hit or miss unless I walk out on the lake (well it works for the winter).
If I could get a decent signal here I would dump the land line altogether.
There are other companies looking to park helium airships in stationary locations at 65,000 ft for cell phone communications. They should be able to stay there for weeks at a time. This seems less wasteful and less of a nuisance than having a constant rain of expendable balloons coming down all over.
Wonder if these would be allowed over the Kennedy estate?
It's a very interesting post. Thank you. What a shame that FR's duplicate-post Nazis have brought us to the point that you felt compelled to even write that.
tech ping
Maybe the disposable balloons would be a nuisance — but, there don't seem to be many complaints about the 50,000 weather balloons released by the U.S. national weather service each year.
Balloons are unlikely to be a useful option in Massachusetts due to the local weather conditions and upper air flow patterns, but satellite internet is readily available, and not even that expensive. But for some reason Gov. Patrick wants to spend the taxpayers money instead of just letting the residents of those rural towns buy their internet service like everybody else does.
Right now satellite internet companies are offering broadband 1Mbit/sec service for $69.95 per month. Seems like a reasonable deal to me.
But if the private sector supplies it for a price, there's no politicians to receive credit and be rewarded.
They were going to try the balloon idea in North Dakota as well. Anyone know how that is going?
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