FightingBlue
@direcpc.com
| Re: Using balloons for wireless internet? An 8 foot diameter balloon should use around 250-300 cubic feet of helium. At $0.30 per CF, that would be $90 to completely fill the balloon. Even if you had to completely fill it monthly, that's not that bad considering the cost savings.
wispman, you're right that weight is at a premium. An 8 foot balloon, with 250-300 CF of helium, would lift about 15 pounds. Balloons in that range, based on my investigations of eBay, generally weigh around 6 pounds. That would leave 9 pounds for payload, tethers, and the rest. 100 feet of Cat5 cable (assuming I used that altitude) would be very roughly around 1.5 lb, plus figure two pounds for the circuity, another pound for the casing and rope, and that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for antennas, even if you used featherweight tethers. One way around that would be to use a bigger balloon. A 12 foot balloon would provide 74 pounds of lift, minus its own weight. Of course, that would increase the expense considerably. A simpler way might be to bind 2-3 balloons of the 7-8 foot size discussed earlier together, thus producing 18-27 pounds of payload.
Part of the reason the balloon idea appeals to me is because to some degree I really want to provide WiFi. I've been plotting out a system based on Alvarion BreezeAccess hardware, but I've always harbored a desire to offer real, pervasive WiFi. Unfortunately, due to the terrain, trying to offer it from ground level would be difficult (few tall structures in town, and plenty of trees). A balloon carrying MIMO gear seemed like a relatively simple way to do it over a broad area. |
