Project Loon

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/16/how-googles-project-loon-balloons-learned-to-loiter/

Thanks, and here I thought they were checking out my hurricane diverters

Thoughtful of you to provide us the video and link, but viewing the video from the link was better for me, since I was able to go full screen and read the subtitles, without interfering ads for more videos.

How long will they stay aloft, and what happens when one of these things falls out if the sky?

The 'chicken little' reference makes me think that they've anticipated this. Maybe there is a parachute triggered to deploy if a sudden drop in altitude is detected? So it doesn't fall out the sky and hit someone on the head.

Nothing stays up forever. According to the internet, several have landed unexpectedly, with the attendant UFO sightings. The real radiosonde balloons are equipped with parachutes. Is what is interesting is the ability to maintain a specific altitude. Typically they explode at some altitude when they overinflate due to lower atmospheric pressure. There is usually a reward for finding them. I'm certain Google has this covered.

Nothing stays up forever unless one achieves escape velocity.

At that point, 'up' and 'down' lose their meaning, there is only 'forward' and 'aft.' All other designations are arbitrary and based on artificial reference points: "We'll designate the side with the radio dish as 'top' and the side with the thruster as 'back,' the other four sides will be defined from those two reference points."

I rarely use the LTE anymore, there is usually a wifi connection close enough....I have AT&T and must say the LTE is usually a bit faster...They do seem to be able to control and vary the altitude on these balloons using algorithms, so there must be a gas control valve that varies volume....

I recently moved from a somewhat rural area with decent internet to a very rural area with poor internet. (The ISP actually has two tiers of service, a fiber optic internet connection with excellent speed and an old copper phone/DSL with poor speed. I'm hoping the fiber gets to my neighborhood soon.)

In the meantime, I am seriously considering this. I'm told that they limit your total data, so using it for streaming movies might not be so good, but the upload/download speeds are much better than the DSL I'm stuck with: https://www.dishpromotions.com/technology/dishnet/ This would also cost me half of what I'm paying now.

I already have DISH TV service, and the price is reasonable for what I'm getting.

Oh yeah - the cell service here isn't very good either, so I have my iphone set for calling via my home wifi via the DSL line. This works just fine.

This launch platform?

And this style of balloon & payload?

Yes to both

I hope that payload is equipped with a good 'chute. That's a lot of gear to be falling out of the sky when the balloon bursts - and they're planning to deploy thousands of these?

It's for very rural area communication. What are the odds it lands on something critical.

_{(Just kidding my friends.)}

Machu Picchu isn't critical? Who wudda thunk it.

How much more ruined can a five century old ruin get from the dropped payload of an errant communication balloon? The stones of that ruin settle back to their place after every earthquake, what would a little impact do but startle a few tourists.

I doubt anything dropping from a balloon, or the entire thing that lands on Machu Picchu is going to hurt the stones. Now if, for example some of the gentlemen here were to be playing basketball, and fell, banging their head on the gymnasium floor, we would have to pull up a considerable number of maple boards, and make repairs.

With that payload, who's to say the balloon is going high enough to burst?

They could give it just enough helium to let it 'bob on the waves' between two thermal layers of air, and as the helium slowly escapes (as it always does, there is no gasket made that can hold back H or He forever), the balloon slowly descends back to Earth.

Balloons can burst for any number of reasons and so they must prepare for this.

These balloons are intended to fly for long durations at altitudes where there is considerably less atmosphere to block the Sun's UV. UV is hell on plastics, even at sea level.

Plastics become weak and brittle after long exposure to UV and these balloons will eventually burst. The probability of a given number of balloons bursting increases with the number deployed, and here they're speaking of deploying thousands, so the question remains: what sort of 'chute will they employ for this inevitability and will it be enough?

OK, but the parachute might add 0.5% to the total payload weight?

How about we offer better materials for engineering to the balloons last even longer in the first place, also? Granted that one can only do so much with black UV shielded plastic, and if the balloons travel high enough to be exposed to a higher residual ozone (as a result of the usual photo-chemical atmospheric reactions), the UV shield won't help so much.

Metallic hydrogen foil would be great, but so far, we have not heard back from the metallic hydrogen researchers that recently claimed first observation directly of metallic hydrogen, no report of what happened upon pressure release.

Question is, if you could make rolls of metallic hydrogen foil (MHF), would it be able to prevent permeation of hydrogen gas? Would hydrogen gas actually represent a corrosive agent to MHF? Would ozone instantly set the foils on fire? Lots more questions on top of the general stability one.

Wiki has a nice write-up on Project Loon.

As they fly between 18-25 km altitude, this puts them smack in the middle of the ozone layer. Probably not a good place for MH unless you passivated it somehow, maybe with top coat of something inert. As a balloon material it would have about 3/4 the density of LLDPE (0.7 g/cm³ vs 0.917 g/cm³), what they currently use for high-altitude-balloon envelopes.

Putting ozone and metallic hydrogen in contact with each other sounds like an idea that is all wet to me.

Yeah it would be pretty reactive stuff. Did you read that pdf? MH would make great rocket fuel.

I'm not so sure MH could actually become a very good rocket fuel. The energy release from a chemical reaction with MH would certainly be significant but the containment vessel and temperature insulation required to carry MH may make it prohibitive.

Yes, they discuss that briefly in the paper, fuel 'dilution' being one potential alternative. Another alternative they did not discuss is an expendable, ablative combustion-chamber lining.

The idea for having MH fuel, was that if they can have MH at all at atmospheric or even no pressure, at room temperature, then all they would have to do is shape it (carefully).

Containment would be no different than for most other rockets that have solid fuel.

Yes, at least the end result would be.

Supposedly, the Creator, placed a firmation in the heavens that (as I was instructed in one of my Bible classes about Genesis),

was metallic hydrogen, so thin that it changed the color of light getting to the surface, and we had a magenta sky in the first days of the Bible.

Apparently, this firmament was not destroyed by man, but by the general wickedness of man, when the Creator was forced to take action

(after lamenting that man had ever been created), whereupon the heavens and the earth were smitten by the hand of the Creator,

the water above the firmament began to rain down (start of Noah's flood), and the chamber of the deep that held the irrigation water

that came up as mists and springs from the earth were broken up also, forcing jets of high velocity water to the edges of space (also affecting

the destruction of the firmament. In other words, no boat, you better be able to swim 40 days, 40 nights.

I was not there to confirm any of this, in spite of reports to the contrary.

They are going to launch tonite. There is no wind. Hasn't been all day. C band? My radio stops at 3 GHz

One of their frequencies is 2.4 GHz (S-band), another is 5.8 GHz (C-band).

yeah, just above your radio. Ku band is a higher frequency, shorter wave radio band, and hence is scattered by clouds much much more.

Chicken Little has a screen around it. I can only see a partial on the balloon. Hard to tell how full. 10:35 AST same as EDST

I wonder if Google is involved?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest

Google is always there on the front in the matter of technology.

Last week they pulled the tracking domes from the roof. Don't know if it was for T.S. Karen or just an update. They are back this week. Haven't seen a launch for quite awhile. We've been in doldrums since Karen went through, absolutely flat. Jet skiers are having a field day.............sailors not so much.