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Comment by geetfun | Hacker News Reader

Great to see bureaucracy not getting in the way of something like this. Is there a link somewhere about Google’s tech and motivation?

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There's a brochure:

https://x.company/loon/

They want to increase the availability of internet in remote areas.

if only it was original Google idea, and not something stolen by X division like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15422157

https://www.wired.com/story/the-lawsuit-that-could-pop-alpha...

Here's the Space Data patent:

https://www.google.com/patents/US7801522?dq=7,801,522&hl=en&...

It sure is broad and not very specific. One of the claims seems to boil down to turning the radio off sometimes.

Many people had this idea decades before Google. In the 60" the NASA tested the idea of "Satellite balloons" [0].

Following this experimentation, engineers in France planned to create (in the sixties) a national network of telecom (atmospheric, not satellite) balloons, but it turned out it was easier to build telecom towers.

Myself I wrote a Web site in the late 90" explaining the technology (at that time) and economics of such networks. I think it was one of the earliest proposals where active platforms (Echo balloons were passive) and modern telecom (at that time) technology, where brought together. I cannot find it on the interweb anymore.

Later in the 2000" but before Loons there were several research projects on such high altitude platforms. [1]

I filled an unsuccessful proposal for such a project inside my company in 2008.

[0] https://www.space.com/8973-1st-communication-satellite-giant...

[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/07/060717103934.h...

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