LOON (Project Loon)

A balloon flying high above your head is now your new savior from lousy internet connection. Google, the father of internet searches is also now proudly, the father of Loon Project, Loon for all.

Loon is a research and development venture by Google to provide high-speed internet to rural and remote areas around the globe. Since Google is obsessed with fixing the world’s internet issues and today high-speed connection is like electricity but yet 2.7 million masses are still wired to the earth, here comes the floating solution.

“Loon for all” project gives our dear old balloons a new hi-tech face. Loon uses Raven Aerostar and polyethylene plastic of about 0.076mm thickness for envelopes. These balloons are filled with Helium gas and they stand 50ft tall when fully inflated with the help of their custom air-pump, “Croce”.

These new hi-tech toys have their own solar panel of the size of card table to enable them to provide facilities around the clock. In full sun, these can produce up to 100W of power, well enough to keep the balloon working during day and even charge up for the night.

A small box of magic weighing 10kg holds up all the electronic needed for this wonder to work. It contains radio antennae and Ubiquiti Networks Rocket M2 to comply communications with other loons and ground resources.

These loons normally function for 55 days and are well equipped with parachutes to retrieve the solar panel and control box once the balloon is ready to be taken down.

Each balloon flies above the range of airplanes and below satellites, it covers a 12km radius thus covering a large area of 1,256km² alone. They transmit their signals to a ground receiving station, spaced about 100km apart. The most interesting part is the “sig-hop” i.e. the hopping of signals from one loon to another to each the ground work and hence us.

Currently the loons communicate at 2.4 and 5.8GHz unlicensed ISM bands but Google has a vision and mission of delivering 3G like speed. How? It’s still to be uncovered.

This entire fantasy-come-true project started back in 2008 when Google considered acquiring “Space Data Crop”, a company who sends similar balloons in air to maintain connection between truckers and oil companies in southern USA, but it didn’t plan out. So the unofficial work started in 2011 under incubation in Google X at Californian central valley.

On June 16 2013, many amateur astronomer of Pike County, Kentucky, New Zealand grabbed their binocular and spied the glimmering UFO like object high above their homes.

CNN and governments followed the suit. Rich DeVaul was now satisfied by the buzz his craft has created. It was the launch of Google’s very first loon and the start of bringing the Internet to a huge swath of as-yet-unconnected humanity. Google plans on sending up to 300 balloons around the 40^th parallel south, bringing connectivity to New Zealand, Australia, Chile and Argentina.

Lying down underground fiber cables is a cumbersome and expensive job, which many of the developing countries can’t afford. Yet the recent growth of the world demands these newly emerging nations to have connections around the globe for better future prospects. The Loon project focuses on such places and is using a sci-fi technology to bring the gas-lit era to mainstream.

So in few years to come, all you need to get 3G speed network is a small red balloon on your house’s exterior to invite the Google loon and connect you to the universe. But wait that doesn’t mean balloons replacing stars in open sky, or does it?

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Divyansha Singh Bais
Technical Associate, BitSprint