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Is it a bird, is it a plane..??

News broke on the weekend that Google had launched a bunch of weather-type balloons from a place in the South Island as part of its Project Loon.

By now, these balloons will have reached an altitude of around 20,000m where they are well above commercial airline traffic but remain well below the path of orbiting satellites.

Each balloon becomes part of what is effectively an aerial mesh network of internet access points and creates a coverage zone on the surface below which is specifically designed to reach areas that might otherwise not be reached by broadband services.

Right now you won't be able to fire up your WiFi adapter and hook into this network, indeed the gear that Google is presently using seems quite different to to the WiFi USB stick you can throw in an average PC -- however they are using ISM-band technology to deliver this connectivity.

Perhaps the trickiest part of the whole proposed Loon system is the positional management of each individual balloon.

Since the stratospheric winds predominantly blow in one direction (from West to East in the Southern Hemisphere), keeping balloons within a geographical area becomes somewhat problematic. Google's animation shows that by altering altitude, balloons can be placed in different wind-streams to provide an ability to move around -- but I would suspect that this is not going to be a reliable way to ensure an adequate geosync over any significant period of time. Indeed, the company goes on to suggest that balloons will end up circling the globe under the influence of stratospheric winds.

Now this sounds like a wonderful system -- if it can be implemented and all the bugs worked out but I do have a bit of a concern...

Regular readers will know that I've written a number of columns voicing concerns over the limited and rapidly dwindling supply of helium on earth. According to several sources, the Loon balloons are helium-filled and I would expect that a network which encompasses a good part of the globe would constitute a huge annual consumption of this gas.

For the altitude of the balloons to be changed in order to maneuver their positions as proposed, helium would have to be bled from the envelope to descend and weight jettisoned to ascend. There is also the problem that helium (being very small molecule) tends to escape through the plastic membrane over time and thus the balloons will have to be periodically recovered and refilled.

But, maybe I'm mistaken and perhaps we're using more helium every day in weather balloons than Loon would consume in an entire year -- perhaps someone will chime in and let us know.

I will be watching the progress of Loon with great interest and wonder how long before we see a similar attempt using solar-powered rigid-winged craft which also ride the stratospheric currents but with a far greater degree of control and an enhanced ability to orbit over a fixed position for extended periods of time -- no longer constrained by the slow leakage of helium as the limiting factor for flight times.

Is anyone reading this in the group of Loon testers -- or does their NDA stop you from saying anything?

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