Google Loon: Balloon-Powered Internet - Page 4

On June 16 2013 08:31 iMAniaC wrote:


I noticed that the balloons are transparent, so perhaps they function as greenhouses? If so, then the sunlight would heat up whatever gas is inside the balloon and trap the heat, so that the uplift from the hotter air inside the balloon would keep the entire balloon up. The stratosphere doesn't have that much clouds, so balloons shouldn't be trapped inside clouds too often, and perhaps the solar panels will be able to charge some battery which powers a heating devide to keep the air inside them hot if they get lost inside a cloud (or at nighttime, I guess). What I'm trying to say is that it may not be necessary to fill them with helium, perhaps regular air or a mixture of other light gases would suffice. This is all just guesswork on my part, though.

Or perhaps Google will announce that they'll set up a base on the moon within the next year to mine He3 for all their balloons

Helium-3 is made up of two protons and one neutron and the isotope is rarely found in nature, although it is produced as a decay product of tritium, a component of nuclear weapons. During the cold war, the US, Russia and other countries stockpiled tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, and in doing so accumulated vast amounts of helium-3. Initially, this resource was barely tapped - in fact the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and its predecessor agencies, which have maintained the US tritium stockpile, used to consider the gas so useless that they vented it into the atmosphere. In the 1980s, however, scientists began to realise the potential of helium-3 as a neutron detector.

On June 15 2013 21:55 disciple wrote:
next stop is implementing the technology in cell phones so they can receive the signal and we can wave goodbye to all telecoms around the world (which are already dying anyway)

On June 16 2013 15:57 Executor1 wrote:

How are telecoms dying, in countries just starting to receive wide adoption of cell phones (and especially 3g) its probably one of the fastest growing industries. Also even in the west, many people will still be switching from feature phones to smart phones over the next few years which = more money for telecoms as those consumers start to pay for LTE/4g services.

On June 16 2013 11:33 RiceAgainst wrote:
This is pretty sick. When does Google ever do something bad? I never hear of it. Google!!!

P.S. Don't tell me the bad stuff Google does. I only want to know good things about them.

On June 16 2013 14:29 electronic voyeur wrote:

They know almost everything about you based on you online activities. While it will suggest to me Lebron James posterizes Duncan when I search "rim", it might suggest something of the NSFW thing for you using the same keyword. :p

On June 16 2013 15:15 Infernal_dream wrote:
They're not going to be overlords once the NSA gets ahold of them. They'll be overseers.