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[Weaver]

Many years ago, I seem to remember some blurb advertising a conference on the subject of comms balloons.

I wonder if a system could be made to work where comms drone aircraft (solar-powered or solar-topup) at some suitable altitude could be made to work in a grid like satellite internet but without all the horrendous launch costs and without the latency, which is imho the biggest showstopper.

Questions:
1. Altitude ? Lots of things driving this.
2. Weather? See satellite presumably unless all the good frequency space is all used up.
3. How do you locate them? Presumably moving, so needs tracking ground antennae.
4. Presumably lots drones, in a grid, redundant, going out of service every once in a while.
5. How does the downlink and backhaul work?

If it can be made to work properly and the downlink and weather issues can be solved, then I get the feeling this could be an absolute killer.

Am I insane?

[Dray]

https://www.google.com/loon/

https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10101322049893211

[AArdvark]

Isn't Google or someone playing with this idea now, as is a real project with real hardware ?

@Dray beat me to it.