Dear Mike, that's a good question and the postponement gives us more time. Today I read in the LA Times that high flying balloons, believe it or not, may offer services to metropolitan areas.
The interesting thing about the ballon proposition is incremental growth. It can be tried on a city-by-city basis, rather than a 'bet the ranch' approach.
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The Subspace Race
The telecom explosion is leading engineers to consider some surprising
alternatives to satellites--like a stratospheric network of balloons and planes
that fly in endless circles.
By ASHLEY DUNN, Times Staff Writer
In the still, blue skies about 55,000 feet
above the surface of the Earth lies the last
great frontier of earthly telecommunications.
Few flights intrude into this peaceful zone of
the atmosphere, and the storms that lash the surface of the planet lie
thousands of feet below, trapped in an atmospheric shell that hugs
the surface.
Through decades of telecommunications development, engineers
have largely skipped over the high altitudes of the stratosphere in
favor of building out the vast cocoon of copper wire and antennas
on the planet's surface or launching satellites into the blackness of
space.
The very thought of fixing some device in the air that would
constantly struggle against the pull of gravity seemed an affront to
engineering elegance, the laws of nature and plain common sense.
But in the last few years, a group of engineers has begun looking
at this forgotten zone as an alternative to satellites or terrestrial
networks of antennas and wire.
At least four companies in the United States are now developing
stratospheric telecommunications networks using high-altitude
planes or balloons to serve as sort of tall antennas or very low
satellites, depending on your perspective. The aircraft would work
in shifts, staying aloft for hours or, in the case of some of the balloon
proposals, years at a time to provide uninterrupted wireless service.
The idea may seem farfetched, but the enormous demand for
high-speed data connections and cellular phone access has begun to
lift the concept of stratospheric platforms into the realm of the
possible.
The Subspace Race (cont'd)
Sky Station, a Washington-based company
co-founded by former Secretary of State
Alexander P. Haig, is hoping to launch its first balloon in 2000, with
the ultimate goal of placing at least 250 balloons over every major
urban area in the world.
A St. Louis-based company, Angel Technologies, is set to begin
flight tests in the next few weeks of its Burt Rutan-designed
high-altitude long-operation (HALO) aircraft. (Rutan also designed
the Voyager, the first plane to circumnavigate the globe without
refueling.) The company hopes to start offering high-speed Internet
access to consumers and businesses starting in 2000. It estimates
that a 1.5-megabit-per-second connection--about 50 times faster
than a standard analog modem--would cost about $40 a month.
"It's a viable technology," said Yahya Rahmat-Samii, a UCLA
professor of electrical engineering who specializes in satellite
communications. "You just have to view them as very, very tall
towers. The market is growing so big that there is a niche for every
proposal. It might not serve billions, just millions, but that's a viable
niche."
Steve Morris, an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, which is under contract to help develop one commercial
stratospheric project, added: "There's nothing kooky about it.
People think this is a black art or something, but it's all off the shelf."
The main hurdle for the various proposals, according to
Rahmat-Samii, is not so much the technology but rather the fitting of
all the disparate pieces together. The pieces exist, he said; it's just
that no one has ever put them together in this way before.
The Subspace Race (cont'd)
Ann Henry, a satellite industry analyst for the
technology-focused investment bank
BancAmerica Robertson Stephens, said a more difficult problem to
overcome is trying to find a niche for the technology in the rapidly
expanding telecommunications market. She said there are now so
many proposals for high-speed voice and data services that there is
no great incentive for investors to put their money in such untested
ideas as the stratospheric projects.
"The thing that makes me nervous is not so much whether the
technology works, but that there are other planned systems that
offer the same capacity," Henry said. "From a pragmatic standpoint,
satellite systems are much better funded and everyone knows they
are going to happen."
Dale Ford, a principal analyst with market research company
Dataquest, said that even the high-profile satellite projects have met
with wariness from investors because of the large start-up costs of
building and launching the systems.
* * *
In many ways, the stratospheric projects make sense only when
seen in the context of the enormous scale and cost of more
traditional telecommunications systems. For example, the
construction of the vast web of cellular phone towers that blankets
most of the United States took more than 15 years to build and cost
more than $46 billion.
The modern alternative to earthbound networks has been
satellites, either low-Earth-orbit or geostationary. But launching
satellites is expensive, and the systems are relatively complex and
fragile.
The Subspace Race (cont'd)
For example, Teledesic, a Kirkland,
Wash.-based company backed by Microsoft
Chairman Bill Gates, Motorola, Boeing and others, is proposing a
network of 288 low-Earth-orbit satellites that would provide global
voice and data service. The cost of the system is estimated at $9
billion. The network requires a large number of satellites since in
low Earth orbit, the devices are constantly moving at high speed to
overcome the pull of gravity.
Geostationary satellites have the advantage of "parking" at a
fixed location; thus, only a few are required to cover most of the
planet. But at 22,000 miles out in space, the power needed to send
a signal to the satellite and the delay in bouncing the signal back
make them a difficult fit for modern two-way voice and computer
communications.
On top of these problems, both low-orbit and geostationary
satellites are vulnerable to catastrophic failure. There is essentially
no way to repair them after launch, as demonstrated by the failure
of a Galaxy 4 satellite in May that blanked out 90% of the nation's
44 million pager users.
Stratospheric platforms address some of the problems of
traditional networks because of their relatively large footprint, low
cost and flexibility, although they also raise problems of their
own--such as the basic one of keeping a machine in the
stratosphere 24 hours a day, forever.
Marc E. Arnold, chief executive of Angel Technologies, said
much of the equipment involved in a stratospheric network has
already been developed and can be largely assembled from
off-the-shelf pieces.
The Subspace Race (cont'd)
The aircraft that Angel Technologies is using
for its system is based on a family of
high-duration craft designed by Scaled Composites of Mojave. The
electronics, which will be contained in a pod beneath the plane, are
drawn from existing equipment used to create wireless data
networks.
The company is using a piloted aircraft, as opposed to an
unmanned drone, to avoid regulatory and technological problems.
The planes are designed to stay airborne for 18 hours, although
pilots will work in eight-hour shifts. One of the advantages to using
piloted planes is that they can be diverted to distant airports in case
of bad weather.
Arnold said that finding pilots willing to fly for eight hours in the
same spot is a potential problem, but the company hopes that by
offering a higher salary--from $40,000 to $80,000 a year--they will
have no difficulty finding the two pilots per shift needed for the
project. Arnold added that the Angel pilots will have a regular
schedule--a benefit that corporate jet pilots don't always get.
"In our case, they get to have a life," he said.
The flight mission is not so different from a transoceanic flight,
Arnold said, except the plane would constantly fly in a tight circle
over the same area.
To complete the network, users would be outfitted with a small
antenna to send and receive information. The signal would be
routed through the plane down to a ground station with a
high-capacity link to the Internet.
Sky Station International has opted for using unmanned balloons
as its platform in the stratosphere. The balloons would be able to
stay aloft for years at a time.
The Subspace Race (cont'd)
The company has focused its plans not only
on dense urban areas, but also on developing
nations where its system could be quickly put in place to provide
instant cellular phone service. Sky Station estimates that a platform
at 70,000 feet could cover an area of about 625 miles in diameter
on the ground.
* * *
Unlike low-Earth-orbit satellite systems, which must have all
their satellites launched before the network can be operational,
stratospheric systems can be turned on with the lofting of a single
aircraft.
At least two other companies are pursuing stratospheric
projects--New York-based Skysat Communications and Platforms
International of Redlands, Calif.
Angel Technologies' Arnold said that ultimately, the small scope,
simplicity and flexibility of stratospheric platforms may be their
saving grace. The companies aren't shooting for global coverage,
but rather tiny areas of influence where they can carve out a niche.
Because of the relatively low start-up costs and the ease of
expanding the system, he said, his company needs only a small
percentage of the market to succeed.
"Three to 5% of the market would be a major home run for us,"
he said. "We don't have to be a mass supplier to win big."
* * *
Times staff writer Ashley Dunn can be reached via e-mail at
ashley.dunn@latimes.com.
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