Jul 18, 2018 4:20 PM

Internet of Balloons

How Loon, Google’s newest sister company, uses stratospheric balloons to make the web truly worldwide.

Since 2011, Loon—which started as a Google X project—has been figuring out how to use gigantic balloons to replace networks of cell towers. Here’s how they plan to make it happen.

Illustration by Alicia Cocchi
01
To launch the balloon, Loon fills its inner chamber with helium, turning something that looks like a molted snakeskin into something that looks more like an ice cream cone. The outer layer is for regular air, but it doesn't get filled up just yet.
02
After it's released, the balloon climbs about 1,000 feet a minute, until it's 12 miles up. That's twice the cruising altitude of a commercial jet—a rarefied zone where you might spot the occasional spy plane.

Illustration by Alicia Cocchi
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As the balloon rises into thinner air, the helium expands, until the balloon is the shape of a jellyfish and the size of a tennis court.
Illustration by Alicia Cocchi
04
The goal is to keep the balloon in roughly the same place, but constant wind means it's always moving.

Illustration by Alicia Cocchi
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Each balloon can provide coverage to an area of nearly 2,000 square miles, using an assortment of solar panels, antennas, and varied electronics. That makes it easier to bring the internet to places where sparse population and challenging terrain make cell-phone tower networks a nonstarter.
Illustration by Alicia Cocchi
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Since the wind is always pushing the balloon one way or another, the trick is keeping it in roughly the same place. That's why Loon uses machine learning and mountains of wind-pattern data—to figure out which air currents are headed where.

Illustration by Alicia Cocchi
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If the balloon's drifting away from where it wants to be, it knows how to find the air current that gets it back into position. And if that current happens to be a few thousand feet below, the balloon pumps air into its outer chamber; the heavier air works like ballast, weighing the whole thing down.
Illustration by Alicia Cocchi
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In partnership with multiple telecom companies, Loon plans to fly packs of balloons all over the world—spreading the gospel of connectivity from 60,000 feet up.

Alex Davies is a senior editor at Insider and the former editor of WIRED’s transportation section, where he specialized in covering autonomous and electric vehicles. He is also the author of Driven, a book chronicling the origin of and race to create the self-driving car.

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