The most striking part of this is the systematic quality improvement they implemented. They went from an expert saying that long-term balloons were impossible, to making it a reality by understanding the true engineering variation causing failures.
We should look at every endeavor in this manner to improve quality. Look up W. Edwards Deming, wonderful stuff on quality control that can be applied to software just as well as manufacturing.
Deming's career arc has been interesting. Neglected in the US to revered in the Japan to revered in the US to forgotten in the US. Maybe now that we don't fear Japan so much, we don't feel the need to obsess about his views on quality.
Many of his ideas stand the test of time. He just doesn't fit neatly into any academic curriculum.
Such is the flaw of academic curricula. Extreme specialization in a world of complexity.
Quality in Deming's point of view requires a deep multidisciplinary understanding: statistics, psychology, engineering, business, economics, and more.
The true irony is that now, more than ever, coming out of a recession and having a corporate and manufacturing issue in the US, we need the manufacturing and quality prowess that Japan exhibited post-WWII. We need Deming.
I believe his main problem was that he was a horrible writer. We need someone to take his ideas and clarify them much better than he could.
His writing was fairly disorderly, even in his best work. Conversely, a lot of insight is compressed into his 14 points.
I think a lot of the issues he explains go way beyond manufacturing. When I think about the problems with performance reviews, I go back to him. Same with training and leadership.
Yes! Absolutely agree. They're generalizable to almost any kind of work. I've been meaning to start a blog implementing his work in the relevant field of Software development.
I started my career in IT at P&G a long time ago. One of my mentors got me started on a few business books, and worked Deming into the equation. An interview with Robert Reich (yes, the same one) and him was included in a training class there too. The writing resonated quite a bit then.
Who am I? That's a much deeper question. :-) Someone who has drifted between data, technology and finance over a 20some year professional career.
I think it is really great that Google is trying this, I don't want to be too pessimistic either as they seem to always defy the odds, but one of the problems with any type of high altitude platform whether it is LEO, Geosynchronous balloons or otherwise is that they cover a huge area, just by nature, which limits the capacity. Terrestrial cellular technologies get around this issue by being low to the ground so that the RF energy is dissipated and you are able to re-use the frequencies with the next cell over. With such high altitudes that is just not feasible. So I think this approach will always have limited capacity. Also, the fact that it is moving will be a challenge since both LTE and WiFi use OFDMA which is very sensitive to Center frequency offset that can be caused by the Doppler shift as the balloon moves. At 60kft, the uplink is going to be a challenge since most handsets transmit at 200mw max so it will be difficult to achieve high data rates in both directions. There are a number of other technical challenges that are ahead of them as well, but I am very impressed with their perseverance. I hope they are successful.
The velocity is dependent on the vector, which you do not know since it is dependent on where the user is. If the ground station is a known location perhaps, but otherwise you cannot predict the vector. For commercial LTE at 700Mhz, the offset is 5Hz, above that the error rate starts to exceed the specs. It is pretty tight for OFDM.
Although probably no one is still following this thread, I feel obligated to self correct a little here. Goggle really does their homework, I checked around online and the average wind speed at 60,000ft is around 20Mph, so well within spec for LTE (in fact there is an average wind speed minimum at 60kft, which is obviously why they picked that speed) I erroneously assumed the wind speeds had to be really high at that altitude and they are not.
> ..since NOAA only supplies forecasts for 16 days out, Google now has to make sophisticated guesses using a giant database of historical wind and weather data.
It would be interesting if, as a side-effect of Project Loom, Google ended up becoming the world's leading weather forecaster.
The article stated that Titan may be able to use Loon's wind data (exactly for what it did not say) which implies that Google will (obviously) be collecting and storing wind data for each balloon. This may open up a new line of business for Google. We could soon see them selling access to their data to the government (wind data, that is) or to other corporations that are invoked in similar activities in that part of the atmosphere.
Furthermore, using data collected by the balloons, in conjunction with model forecasts generated by NOAA, could lead to some interesting/challenging/fun new algorithm development - using wind data from some subset of balloons to predict the trajectory of some other subset of balloons. Sound like fun!
Does anyone know how retrieval is ideally planned opposed to the current search party option?
There must be a reasonable cost for each balloons electronics, as well as the risk of this equipment hitting someone with balloon/time increases if left to random descent.
If you want to get the next billion connect why balloons? Why not a conventional grid? Why not improve internet service in Mumbai? Is there a more direct way to get the next billion connected? Does Google think there is no competition in these rural areas?
At least balloons are impossible to steal or sabotage, which might be a benefit for areas where no functional state is present (try Somalia). I can also imagine they are very cost efficient and fast to deploy to areas where connectivity is needed or is rapidly lost, say after an earthquake.
It is hard. Read this story about one similar rogue balloon from a few years back. The RCAF apparently fired over 1000 rounds into the balloon, and it still stayed aloft.
Because then you have to tear up the ground and maintain the grid's quality and physical security, this would involve managing relationships with numerous jurisdictions on many levels.
Also the bandwidth/latency needs are initially going to be quite a bit lower, which eases capacity planning.
You absolutely hit the nail on the head with this comment.
Furthermore, does every developing country want high bandwidth surveillance by developed countries? Because that's what a digitally unsophisticated populace and a crap-ton of smartphones with social networks, high resolution CCDs and IP telephony with dot gov access holes (eg. Skype) does...
Personally I think the China model (limit international bandwidth extensively, block or muck with traffic on larger foreign surveillance systems slash free web based services with invite buttons and 20-second polling apps with GPS requirements) actually has some decent properties in terms of decentralizing global power when viewed in this light: "ZOMG, furry foreign kittens!" They're like, exactly the same in China.
>>has some decent properties in terms of decentralizing global power
With modern transportation and communication infrastructure, I do not see a future for a decentralized government. In this light I strongly prefer America's stewardship compared China. I feel Chinese culture brings up people with integrity problems, the cheating I saw at the university translates directly to products that fall below expectation, and problems with intellectual property that encourage copying rather then innovating. Not to mention human rights and Democracy.
We both understand that China's model is motivated by the Chinese government trying to protect itself from the Chinese people.
Coming from someone who has actually lived in both countries, I find your comments quite uninformed in light of the US's well documented abuse of global human rights, eg. any book by Chomsky, Iraq/Afghan war logs, general foreign policy since forever and slavery before that. We all see that your media/military-industrial/government complex work for corporate masters, and we have watched them smash liberty after liberty with things like 'renditions', torture, exporting of torture equipment, training and military/diplomatic support for brutal dictators, attempts to undermine sovereignty in most of the world, massive white collar crime/fraud, destruction of freedom of the press, huge and growing poverty gap, no education without extreme wealth, lip service to health care... I could go on...
In China, people know where they stand, even if that's not a great place to be. Similarly, their standard of living has raised materially across all sectors of the population to degrees historically unprecedented over the last hundred years, which has to be recognized. In the US, where people are dying of obesity and alcoholism and fighting over access to shitty habit-forming stimulants, the following quote by - I believe - one of your founding fathers most certainly applies: There are no people so hopelessly enslaved as those who believe they are free.
I'm not condoning China's excesses, which are many and despicable, but for the average individual in much of the country it's arguably a better deal than the US.
Both countries are quite similar in my view: converging on a highly dynastically corrupt militarized police state with lip service to democratic principles and human rights.
>>There are no people so hopelessly enslaved as those who believe they are free.
What can I not do in the USA?
>>it's arguably a better deal than the US
Probably not true, given the unidirectional flow of immigration. Also the average household income is 8x less.
>>Both countries are quite similar in my view
I can't do business with Chinese companies, while I can with members of the civilized world. I see a strong difference in culture.
>>converging on a highly dynastically corrupt militarized police state
Having lived in Russia for 10 years I can tell you the USA isn't corrupt. You can get stuff done without paying bribes and your competitors doesn't go to the local politicians to shut you down, you aren't asked to do underhanded favors.
Good question. How about these: Rely on any real form of social security. Become meaningfully involved in politics without first becoming so indebted to corporate / special interest parties that your independence is essentially compromised. Start a financial services business of any real capacity without massive outside investment. Start most forms of large scale business without paying out millions of dollars to lawyers. Get a decent education without becoming stupendously in debt. Find ten people at the local pub that are able to meaningfully discuss politics, history, geography or philosophies beyond their borders. Eat much in the way of authentically decent food from other countries outside of a few extremely wealthy enclaves. Live easily and comfortably without a car. Live easily and comfortably without a cellphone. Live, work and pay taxes as a citizen of another country, without fear of being extradited with mere days to get out and go through the whole hassle again if you have to change jobs, if you don't want to commit to a green card scenario. Avoid, for more than a town or so, people that subscribe to religious conservative radio and watch fox news. Receive well deserved state protection when distributing truths about organizations like Scientology. Avoid draconian punishments like the death penalty and effective long-term incarceration without trial for whistleblowing or opposing established media/publishing congolomerate interests? Hell, this should be a twitter hash tag.
unidirectional flow of immigration
All developed countries have this. Fact: almost nobody from other developed countries has an interest in moving long term to the United States... look up the statistics on the green card lottery if you wish.
I can't do business with Chinese companies, while I can with members of the civilized world. I see a strong difference in culture.
That's abusive and false. China successfully exports more products in more categories to more destinations than any other country, last time I checked. Maybe the problem is you.
Russia
No idea about Russia. From what I read, they basically skipped the development of a facade pretend-representational government and went straight to a mafia state. I guess you have to give them points for efficiency!
I was also expecting them to implement bundle routing / delay-tolerant networking. It just makes so much sense for mobile devices with intermittent connectivity.
Is there a reason not to anchor some of these? I know your very height restricted when anchored because of line weight, but why not anchored balloons as poor man towers? Or are they simply trying get beyond most weather?
There is one thing I don’t understand: the balloon can have a powerful enough antenna to send information to a phone 60,000 or more feet away, how does the phone talk back to the balloon?
It seems there is a ground based repeater, at least initially. See the second article picture: 'Project Loon team members install a Loon Internet antenna while schoolchildren look on.'
That said we have satellite phones now. Given the lower altitude of balloons getting a signal back should be realistic over future developments.
It's not direct phone to balloon communication. It's phone to fixed ground based wifi, fixed ground base to balloon. Although this is kind of glossed over in a lot of PR.
> Google made a different kind of advance with Loon when it added the capability to send data using the LTE spectrum—making it possible for people to connect directly to the Internet with their mobile phones. (Loon’s original Wi-Fi connection required a base station and a special antenna.)
Possible if you have a giant antenna and a large power source attached to your phone. I'll believe it when I see it. Getting LTE over that distance is very unlikely to work with standard hardware. Also consider that the Balloons power is very limited compared to a base station on the ground.
Reminds me of the low-orbit satellite network in Society of the Mind.
IIRC, the protagonist wanted a internet-connected TV product with a small antenna. The only way to do it was to create a satellite network where the satellites were so close they would re-enter after a short timespan. It was countered by a continuous stream of launching satellites.
Replace "TV" with "LTE Phone", it's basically the same idea / value add.
The balloons only have so much buoyancy, and 60,000 feet of cable would end up being pretty heavy. Not to mention that the cables would be a hazard to aircraft navigation.
We should look at every endeavor in this manner to improve quality. Look up W. Edwards Deming, wonderful stuff on quality control that can be applied to software just as well as manufacturing.