Do you personally believe that this sort of technology would slowly lead to the "clear skies" to be the expression of the past? I personally believe that this sort of technology will become very popular do to the fact that its almost self sustaining and self recharging. It would not only be used for communication methods but also advertisements. Just like the streets of Hong Kong & Times Square are plagued by flashing signs, the same will apply to the skies.

I don't think this will be replacing satellites anytime soon in any fashion. Satellites have the benefit of being completely clear of any and all weather. All they need to avoid is the off-chance meteorite and there is nothing else to worry about. No microbursts, storms, or incredibly high winds to deal with. Just smooth sailing for as long as gravity will let you. These types of planes could, perhaps, supply comm on a temporary basis to remote regions, but permanency will still be the reign of machines in orbit.

Satellites have the disadvantage of being rediculously expensive, because of requiring to be launched into orbit. Also, satellites may be above the weather, but that just means their signals will have to travel through that weather. The speed of light alone makes satellite communications much more laggy than earth based communications. Solar plane all the way.

"The speed of light alone makes satellite communications much more laggy than earth based communications."

Light travels at 299 792 458 m/s. I doubt that's the reason why there's higher latency; it probably has more to do with computer routing, error correction protocols and bandwidth management...

But those are just my guesses. Does anybody know more about this?

Yes, light travels at about 300 ,000 km/s. But a geosynchronous orbit is at an altitude of about 36,000 km, so you're looking at about 0.25 s round trip even at the speed of light.

A 250 ms ping isn't that bad for a quake sever :P

Though I suppose that if you add to that the other things that cause latency, it can add up to something non-negligible for "real-time" use.

Interesting.

Sounds like an interesting platform for testing ideas. Would it be stable enough for use as a satelite though?

I'm sure it could be helpful as a low cost (relative to a satellite) way to gather specific data for climate scientists (ie. in the case they want to send a new instrument up but can't afford a satellite or don't want to wait for a new one to be launched).

One problem with sats is that the geosync orbit most of them reside in is so cluttered with junk and particles from blast test weapons (thanks russia) that it might become unusable in the near future.

If I can put up a sat for 100 mil or the same package for 30 mil and have the option of bringing in down safely to be upgraded or repaired guess which one will win?

This is a great idea.

Why use any airplane? Just balloon on the rope , that it. You will tight it, so if you will need to repair the equipment you will just pull it down, fix and pull up.

i love trees

I worry that this is being tested at White Sands missile range. This will be for the military first, a highspeed, super high altitude platform - rods from god anyone?

Hey,

Concerning the comparison for upgrading or replacing satellites : from time to time a spacecraft is returned to the atmosphere (where it burns up). And also from time to time newly designed and outrigged spacecrafts are launched. The relatively small size of a spacecraft, and its ability to stay at a geostationary position is much easier to maintain, in comparison to a constantly moving airplane, that has to cope with weather, high level-high speed winds, etc..

I also think latency on satellite television is caused by systems, not by intrastellair drag or some other wacko idea...

Some ham-radio-fanatics know how to communicate through Lunar reflection. The enormous distance to the moon and back creates a 2 seconds latency, but then we are talking about a distance of 768000km compared to the 36000km of a geosat... (a factor of times 21)

The only thing that should be solved is interactivity or two-way communication for interactive digital TV through ASTRA satellites...

gr,
P.Duyck, belgium

sweet i read about it in popular.mechanics

I'm sure it won't be used to replace satellites but rather as a temporary lower cost solution.

Yes very come to uk

What do you have a s a backup incase the plane gets hit by lightning? or do you have a backup at all?

Given that this thing is funded by the US and UK Defense agencies, I would expect to see it debut in Iraq or Afganistan as an ISR platform - or, I would definitely hope so!

Latency is a very big problem in GEO Sat comms. I'm sure you have all witnessed the ~2-second delay while watching the news report from overseas. That is why all the new comm sat systems are in LEO (e.g., IRIDIUM, Globalstar, OrbComm). Also, once a sat is sent to the GEO belt, it never returns to Earth. The Delta-V required is too high. GEOsats are usually disposed of in a super sync orbit (~200nmi above GEO), unless they die in GEO, then they stay there. Much of the GEO belt is getting very congested. A debris cloud caused be collision with a dead sat could propagate through the belt via orbital drift.