Exclusive: How Google Will Use Balloons to Deliver Internet to the Hinterlands Project Loon sails through the stratosphere, where there are different wind layers. Using wind data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the balloons are maneuvered by identifying the wind layer with the desired speed and direction and then adjusting altitude to float in that layer. Photo: Jon Shenk The Project Loon team prepared for launch in the pre-dawn frost near Lake Tekapo, New Zealand. Solar panels and insulated electronics packages, prepared for launch. It takes 4 hours for the solar panels to charge the battery during the day, and that power is sufficient to keep all the flight systems working 24 hours a day. A fully-inflated balloon envelope at Moffett Field, California. Bill Rogers inflates the balloon envelope with helium. Project Loon sails through the stratosphere, where there are different wind layers. Not much happens in Geraldine, a small farming community in the interior of the South Island of New Zealand, about 85 miles from Christchurch.
lapse: Landsat Satellite Images of Climate Change, via Google Earth Engine TIME and Space | By Jeffrey Kluger Editors note:On Nov. 29, 2016, Google released a major update expanding the data from 2012 to 2016. Read about the update here. Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. That changed when NASA created the Landsat program, a series of satellites that would perpetually orbit our planet, looking not out but down. Over here is Dubai, growing from sparse desert metropolis to modern, sprawling megalopolis. It took the folks at Google to upgrade these choppy visual sequences from crude flip-book quality to true video footage. These Timelapse pictures tell the pretty and not-so-pretty story of a finite planet and how its residents are treating it — razing even as we build, destroying even as we preserve. Chapter 1: Satellite Story | By Jeffrey Kluger But in 1966, Udall and his staff had an idea. 1 of 20 Aaron Vincent Elkaim / Boreal Collective
Project Loon in Puerto Rico serving 100,000 customers Navigation In a Medium post, Alphabet-owned X has thanked its partners for helping Project Loon execute its shortest roll-out in Puerto Rico. Since turning on service, #ProjectLoon has delivered basic internet connectivity to more than 100K people in Puerto Rico. The Team at X (@Theteamatx) November 9, 2017 An accompanying tweet indicates that the experimental balloon-based internet distribution system has 100,000 customers in the storm-ravaged island. AT&T and T-Mobile users are able to connect to the balloons, which are circulating around the region by machine-taught navigation. The FCC granted Project Loon an experimental license on the Band 8 frequencies for LTE. About The Author Jules Wang Jules Wang is News Editor for Pocketnow and one of the hosts of the Pocketnow Weekly Podcast.
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Google's Project Loon to float the internet on balloons - tech - 18 June 2013 Twenty kilometres up, slung under balloons from the same company that helped Felix Baumgartner jump from the edge of space last year, a payload of solar panels and wireless antennas is helping Google's Project Loon bring wireless internet access to the most remote parts of the world. The ultimate goal is to connect the two-thirds of the world's population that currently has no internet access. Currently being trialled in New Zealand, each balloon delivers a coverage area of 1250 square kilometres as it floats overhead. New Zealanders who want to access the service must have a special antenna fitted to their house that connects to the closest balloon. Mariya Zheleva, who works on wireless networks for remote developing regions, says the project is inspiring: "I get very excited about solutions like this one that try to escape the conventional understanding for communication infrastructure." Basic bottlenecks Kooky stuff Flight time is another issue. More From New Scientist Promoted Stories
Microsoft is interesting again — very Microsoft has been largely dead to Silicon Valley because for the past decade they struggled in — or completely missed — the last five major technology movements. Those five movements, and who they lost to are: 1/open source (to Linux, MySQL, etc.) 2/search (to Google) 3/mobile (to Apple) 4/social (to Facebook) 5/cloud (to Amazon) In this piece: why MSFT failed (dividends), why they’re back (Satya) & what 7 things they can do to be as important to the future as Apple, Google, and Facebook. [ Click to Tweet (can edit before sending): ] Why Microsoft “Failed” When I came into the industry in 1990, Microsoft was Apple and Bill Gates was Elon Musk. Steve lost the 80s and 90s to Gates, but he won the new century — before losing his life. [ Total aside, how much do we miss that guy? Microsoft failed to be a major player in social, open source, search, mobile, and cloud because Steve Ballmer optimized Microsoft around sales and a bizarre financial innovation called ‘a dividend.’
Project Loon You climb 170 steps up a series of dusty wooden ladders to reach the top of Hangar Two at Moffett Federal Airfield near Mountain View, California. The vast, dimly lit shed was built in 1942 to house airships during a war that saw the U.S. grow into a technological superpower. A perch high in the rafters is the best way to appreciate the strangeness of something in the works at Google—a part of the latest incarnation of American technical dominance. Project Loon Breakthrough A reliable and cost-effective way to beam Internet service from the sky to places lacking it. Why It Matters Internet access could expand educational and economic opportunities for the 4.3 billion people who are offline. On the floor far below are Google employees who look tiny as they tend to a pair of balloons, 15 meters across, that resemble giant white pumpkins. It is odd for a large public company to build out infrastructure aimed at helping the world’s poorest people. Balloon revolution Good signals
African Entrepreneurs Deflate Google’s Internet Balloon Idea Google’s latest pet project, called Loon, is meant to deliver the Internet to new parts of the world via solar-powered balloons soaring through the stratosphere. Yet some technologists in Africa say the project may be unrealistic as a competitive networking solution for their continent. For one thing, the service would only provide 3G connectivity, meaning that it would need to compete with cellular networks that are expanding and becoming ever cheaper to use. “In Kenya, most parts of the country have 3G access,” says Phares Kariuki, previously a technology consultant to the World Bank, who now leads an effort to build a supercomputing cluster at iHub, the tech startup space in Nairobi. And even if Google managed to deliver faster speeds from future balloon fleets, they’d be solving the wrong problem, Kariuki adds: “The barrier to Internet adoption is not so much the lack of connectivity. In a blog post published on Friday, Google said it was testing the concept in New Zealand.