back to article We come bearing internet: Google sends up Project Loon balloons in second test

Google is to run another test flight for its Project Loon internet-bringing balloons, this time sending up 20 new helium gas bags in Australia in partnership with Telstra. The Australian Associated Press reported that a second trial of the moonshot project will be taking place over western Queensland in December. Google had …

  1. ukgnome

    Surely we have a better use for Helium?

    1. Chris G

      Fruit of the loon

      I think Googloons may be marginally better than similar from Farce book but the end result is people without a pot to piss in receiving targeted advertising.

      Must be a long term investment: educate them through the Internet, create an economy and then target them with ads. Still better than nothing , maybe.

  2. Ralph B

    Astronomers! Wake Up!

    If they thought light pollution and current electromagnetic interence was bad, how's it going to be when there are few thousand (or million?)* of these Google Loon balloons floating around, blocking the light, radioing to each other and the ground users & basestations. I predict that astronomers will mightily annoyed when they take their eyes off their viewfinders and finally notice.

    (Maybe we'll have to just give up Astronomy, when the Loon Cloud renders the rest of the Universe invisible to us.)

    * Has anyone actually calculated how many balloons Google will need for the final, working system?

  3. Duncan Macdonald

    Why use Helium ?

    Given the operational altitude, there would be no hazard from using hydrogen which is cheaper and far more plentiful.

    1. Dan Paul

      Re: Why use Helium ?

      Except for the fact that hydrogen leaks through a balloon membrane twice as fast as helium does. That MIGHT be important for some reason.

      1. Cynic_999

        Re: Why use Helium ?

        Hydrogen effuses about 1.4 times faster than helium, but has about half the density of helium (H2 molecular mass=2, He molecular mass=4) and so has quite a bit more lifting power - which allows the envelope to be thicker (heavier). In addition it should be possible to put some sort of apparatus in the balloon that generates replacement hydrogen either by a chemical process or electrolysis, or maybe compressed in a small cylinder.

  4. a_mu

    mogul, gentrix et all......

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Genetrix

  5. Hood

    I take a look at the Oceana section in flightradar24.com every so often and these ballons were showing up as a weird looking plane over NZ until they got allocated their own balloon icon. Also saw that they had tried them over western QLD when there was three of them between Roma and Longreach. Click on the icon and it showed the meandering track it had been following.

  6. Bill B

    Mobile homes?

    "...that can beam 4G-style signals to phones and homes circling the globe on stratospheric winds."

    There many of these then?

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