Project Loon is all about balloons

It sounds like a sci-fi send up cooked up by Spike Milligan or some equally whacky member of the lunatic fringe; however, it’s a fact Google Project Loon has started to be deployed.  “And what precisely is Project Loon when it’s at home,” some may ask…

Well it’s like this… A network of high altitude helium filled balloons is going to be positioned up in the clouds at 60,000 feet (the stratosphere, no less) where it is to relay mobile data streams at speeds of between 3G and 4G to connected devices.

Quite literally ‘data in the cloud’

Many struggle with the concept of cloud computing. Even now, people still find it difficult to accept the idea that data or computing resource can be just ‘out there’ somewhere, unbounded by geography, and that ‘cloud’ is just a metaphor for a computing model. This project made the whole concept of ‘data in the cloud’ quite literal.

Google believes Project Loon is a much cheaper connectivity method for mobile subscribers than fibre linked mobile masts.

Amazing up-to-date tech

The superpressure balloons are based on the weather balloon technology developed by the US Air Force in the 1950s. But slung beneath this is some amazing up-to-date tech.

• Two radio transceivers to receive and send data streams, plus a third back-up radio
• A flight computer and GPS location tracker
• An altitude control system, which is used to move the balloon up and down to find winds that will take it in the desired direction
• Solar panels to power all the gear

Down to Earth, trusted cloud solutions from Serviced Cloud

When it comes to HTL Support's cloud solutions, there’s nothing sci-fi or lunatic fringe about our cloud technology or capability. We provide down to Earth, trusted cloud computing that finance firms depend on to service their clients and that meet the regulatory requirements of the FCA and DPA/ICO. To find out more about our cloud computing solutions for the finance industry, simply get in touch.

Click here to see ‘Google's Project Loon internet balloons to circle Earth’ for more about this story at bbc.co.uk

Click here to see more about Serviced Cloud contribution to space exploration in our blog ‘Shooting for the moon: Serviced Cloud aiming for lunar landing as well as high quality services and solutions’.