Loon’s final flight

Re:Loon’s final flight by jpm_sd on Friday January 22, 2021 @08:08AM (#25871340)

I worked on Loon for about 3 years. We had a team of over 200 people and launched thousands of balloons. Resource constraints were never the issue. In fact I think the lack of constraints contributed to some bad engineering decisions.

The technology worked. It was, in fact, totally possible to build solar-powered, balloon-borne LTE base stations that provided internet access directly to handheld phones.

But in the end, it was just a fundamentally flawed idea. Satellites don't pop and fall out of the sky. Balloons do, frequently.

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Re:Loon’s final flight by LittlePeter on Friday January 22, 2021 @05:16PM (#25876982)

Was 9 years really needed to come to the conclusion that

> But in the end, it was just a fundamentally flawed idea. Satellites don't pop and fall out of the sky. Balloons do, frequently.

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Re:Loon’s final flight by miohtama on Saturday January 23, 2021 @10:30AM (#25882880)

Is there any way to use the created IP somewhere else? Make it open source and let the developing nations try themselves?

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Re:Loon’s final flight by jpm_sd on Saturday January 23, 2021 @12:33PM (#25884282)

There's no point. Cell towers work just fine.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-loon/alphabet-sh...

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Rich DeVaul, a founder of the project who is no longer with Alphabet, said surging demand for mobile connectivity made towers cost-effective in more of the world than he had estimated a decade ago, diminishing the need for Loon. “The problem got solved faster than we thought,” he said in an interview.

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