Introducing Project Loon: Balloon-powered Internet access

[Mithrandir]

I took a screenshot of one of the videos: http://i.imgur.com/nppgVPG.jpg

Perhaps Iridium refers to the Iridium satellite constellation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_satellite_constellatio...) (Edit: or maybe one of their products http://www.iridium.com/Products.aspx) and "SBD service" refers to something like this: http://www.iridium.com/products/IridiumSBD.aspx?section=supp... ?

Edit 2: Perhaps they were tracking the balloon?

[wmf]

Iridium is the ultimate backup connectivity (for balloon control, not for data). It's very slow and very expensive, but works everywhere and requires a small antenna.

[bcn]

It looks like they're using the short burst data (SBD) service to 'control' the balloons.

  (Email) : SENT : B1 > power on rocket
  RESPONSE : B0 > SUCCESS(0)
  RESPONSE : B1 > SUCCESS(0)

[nowarninglabel]

It would likely not use the Iridium satellites, they are bandwidth constrained, quite slow (due to roundtrip distance) and very expensive. It also wouldn't be offering much advantage over connecting to the satellite directly asides from that I guess you could connect via normal wi-fi perhaps as opposed to needing a satellite receiver on the ground. Perhaps they could be using one of their products though. At least, that's what my experience working with Iridium satellite systems would lead me to believe.

[espadrine]

Looking at the solar information (on the left), power doesn't look too good.

Would these balloons still work during the night? Would they need to stay in the day? Would that even be possible, given the speed of the wind?

[jervisfm]

I am impressed with both the ambitiousness and nobleness of the project that Google is pursuing here. It's true: most of the world's population is not actually online despite how it might feel otherwise to most people who are already online.

I am glad that they are working on important issues like this and I hope the project is successful in bringing more of the world's people online.

[atirip]

What are you celebrating about? What they do is deliver advertising, nothing more, nothing less - ADVERTISING.

[salimmadjd]

If there ever was any justification of using up our limited helium is this one. However, I wish for these types of projects they would use hydrogen instead. I understand the safety concern, but a century after Hindenburg, we should be able to make these safer. At least for non-human flights. Not to mention Hydrogen is a bit better in creating lift.

[Filligree]

The solution is, of course, for Google to build lunar fusion reactors to make helium and power the Earth.

[speeq]

You know what would be awesome? If they'd open-source the technology behind these balloons - so that we could build and launch our own!

My relatives live in a tiny village on the south coast of India and whenever I visit them I have to use the extremely slow 2G network. I tether my Android phone and basically setup a little WLAN hotspot there. The next bigger city with fast internet connectivity and 3G coverage is almost an hour bus drive away.

Every student in the village now possesses a laptop with WLAN capabilities. They got them for free - basically as a bribe so that the villagers stop protesting against the construction of a nuclear power plant the government is building nearby: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koodankulam_Nuclear_Power_Plant

But that's another issue.

I would love to build a wireless mesh network using cheap routers with an open-source firmware like OpenWRT for these kids. Internet connectivity could be achieved by using a single uplink antenna to Project Loon.

Speaking for myself, I had the privilege - unlike most of my family - to grow up in Europe and believe me, having access to the Internet completely changed my life. I’ve had access to free resources, taught myself how to program and I am now making a living out of it.

I want anyone on this planet to have full, free, uncensored and fast access to the Internet.

Thank you Google for doing such a project! I really hope it will work as planned and I wish you all the best on this journey.

[bionerd]

This is, without any doubt, the most incredible thing I've seen for the past 15 years I'm the citizen of the internet. The scope of this plan and its possibilities are just amazing.

Sadly, my enthusiasm is quite clouded in the light of recent events involing the whole NSA/PRISM thing but then... it's governments that are the problem, not Google.

I sincerely hope that this will change the world for the better and not the worse.

[anigbrowl]

It's all a plot to monitor everyone all the time. Naturally, I think it's awesome.

[leoc]

It's not hard to imagine some political tensions if these things are supposed to do a full circuit of the Earth on a given latitude. It's true that balloons in the stratosphere have a lot in common with satellites in orbit, but that may not be enough to stop people getting annoyed.

[DigitalSea]

I find this to be really clever and it kind of reminds me of The Pirate Bay's plans to build servers that actually float above the ocean to prevent being taken down. People laughed at The Pirate Bay for the ridiculousness of the idea, but here Google is essentially proving it's not a pipe-dream and bandwidth capable balloons can one day be a reality.

[mh-]

their acquisition[1] of Makani and their "airborne wind turbine" tech suddenly makes more sense to me.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/22/google-x-acquires-makani-po...

[riffraff]

I may be wrong, but I believe all the high-altitude-wind-energy thingies work by having the flying bit tethered to the ground, while this baloons seem to fly much higher, making the two seem incompatible to me.

[mdturnerphys]

I thought the same thing a few weeks ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5776908

[yalogin]

Another cool part about this is the balloons will be floating at twice the height of commercial flights. That would mean commercial flights could get internet through these as well.

Commercial airliners travel at 30-40k feet. Twice that would be very high. Won't the service be sluggish and slow because of that?

[unwind]

Google says:

(80 000 feet) / the speed of light = 81.336269 microseconds

So no, that's not a very big amount of latency. Not to be confused with the latency you get to satellites, which is much much larger due to them being way further out.

[gvb]

Anyone know (and able to tell) what radios, frequencies, and antennas are being used for the experiments? The antenna balls on the houses are interesting - I'm guessing there is an actively pointed directional antenna inside.

[confluence]

Obviously very cool (but not without precedent). The things I'm wondering about is cost and resilience. What do they cost? And could bad actors bring them down with lasers?

[Sven7]

As long as they cost less than putting up cell phone towers in the middle of nowhere, its all good. Idk but I don't imagine cell phone towers cover a 40km radius. Telco's have no great incentive to do this so kudos to Google.

And as Larry Page said, stop already with the obvious negativity. Bad actors can bring down cell phone towers too. And who cares about precedents.

[throwaway10001]

Google bought them? They have been doing it since 2008, at least http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB120347353988378955.ht...

[cclogg]

Is New Zealand now the test-zone for everything? App betas, and now this project lol.

[steveh73]

It's a small, english-speaking country, relatively isolated in space and time from the primary markets.

[pstuart]

This combined with Tor could be interesting....

[jedanbik]

Why don't they focus their energy on making satellite access more affordable? Looks like Google is trying to make its own emerging niche demographic to profit from. You've got to be kidding yourself if you think a floating balloon has anything to do with sustainable, lasting infrastructure. Balloons are cheap, and that's the end of the story.

Another thing: satellites don’t pop.

[Ecko]

So will satellite things will get blocked due to these balloon s ??

[wmf]

I would guess not. They're on a different frequency and their cross-section is almost nothing. It's probably no worse than a large bird flying in front of your dish.

[kayoone]

April 1st? Hm no, awesome!

[melloclello]

I think it would be nice for there to be some reserved places on the Earth's surface which can remain undisturbed by the internet. Soon, you're going to need a boat just to escape its corrupting influence.

PS If I was a Cantabrian farmer and I saw one of these above my property I'd have my shotgun out, quick as.

[veemjeem]

You'd probably need a missile to shoot it down. The balloons are probably 80,000ft above ground. I'm not sure if there's anything that can shoot a bullet that high. Maybe a high powered railgun?

[aptwebapps]

You don't own the airspace over your land in most countries. I doubt NZ is that different.