241–250 of 264 posts
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I honestly think SpaceX could give those away in developing areas if they had to. But yes, you’re right that being able to use LTE and existing phone radios was a point in loon’s favor.
Ok, but just to be clear, I wasn't trying to make a statement about cost; that can always be folded into the monthly payments or, as you say, philanthropically donated.
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Wouldn't this be considered 'strategic' to Google b/c it had the potential to provide additional eyeballs & ad revenue to users outside of their normal markets (US/EU)?
The general idea of a global telecom is a good one. The strategic failure was not recognizing that starlink’s approach to the problem made way more sense. They didn’t see that as the existential threat it was. Instead they downsized their implementation to running the network over poor countries and hand waved a bit about being able to provide connectivity in congested areas. Loon has no viable future in a world with…
That's a real shame if true, because they solve different problems. Loon is like a super high range cell tower and could fill in a lot of gaps.
I am currently reading "The Idea Factory" [1], the story of Bell Labs and its innovation streak for many decades. There were so many amazing things Bell Labs worked on - all directly related to solving business problems. At one point, they were given a task of developing the most perfect lubrication oil dispenser with a requirement that it dispenses exactly 15 drops of oil per squeeze of the trigger. They worked on T…
Oh, and Fire TV, and Echo.
Yeah, Lab 126 definitely did its job. Literally every product integrates is a core part of the Amazon experience.
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I think the main problem is they lost the edge on execution. Traditional "vision" is not strictly needed for moonshot projects; the vision for moonshots is provided by a small team working on their idea. But should the technology start panning out, the company needs to focus aggressively on finding a commercial home for this technology. And this is where I think google (and many big companies) fail. Technologically,…
> did not build a commercial case Selling stolen technology you tried to patent from under the company you suckered into believing into buyout, and then having those patents stripped by the Judge might have something to do with it.
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> did not build a commercial case Selling stolen technology you tried to patent from under the company you suckered into believing into buyout, and then having those patents stripped by the Judge might have something to do with it.
Have a source on any context or additional information about this? Otherwise I have no idea what you are talking about
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You mean starlink's failure will supplant loon's? Think carefully before you respond. I am one of about 5 engineers to help invent both globalstar and iridium.
> Think carefully before you respond. I am one of about 5 engineers to help invent both globalstar and iridium. I don't think this kind of warning is a helpful part of the conversation. If you want to make an argument against Starlink, fine, go ahead and make it. But what is the use of the admonition for someone to "think carefully before they respond"? It seems to be the only real effect that is intended to have is…
Oh yeah and I also interviewed with Loon.
Iridium solved the satellite interlink problem (but only wirelessly at 10 Mbps). They could have used laser crosslinks but they didn't know how to implement a search / sync up algorithm (fast sub-second search algorithms were available before iridium was built but they failed to take advantage of the MIT research.)
The basic problem is that Iridium / Globalstar / Loon / Starlink are all fill-in systems for terrestrial internet. And since we've been deploying terrestrial internet for 25Y, the number of places missing higher-speed internet is smaller and smaller each year. All the rich customers have all been reached by faster, cheaper wires. The poor customers ... well they are poor, they will not pay much for service. And there are fewer of them every year ...
No LEO system can actually penetrate a building with a data signal. It's a physics problem with sending a signal 400 mi wirelessly. Reusable rockets don't solve that physics / power problem. Iridium has a special +35dbm channel that can ring a phone inside a building, but you have to walk outside (in the rain, snow, whatever) to take the call. Same with starlink. Physics hasn't changed since the mid 1990s. It is not expected to change in the next billion years, either.
So its just not a smart thing to build satellite internet. period.
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I thought pizzas were measured by their circumference, not their radius. If so, that's a 72" pizza. I measured out 59cm on a measuring tape and compared it to my refrigerator, and that's much larger than any pizza I have ever seen.
Pizzas are measured by their diameter (in the US).
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Yeah. This is how prejudice works. It doesn't matter what you do, if you're X you'll be (pre)judged as an X and nothing short of an immaculate behaviour will prevent people from just pointing at some past mistakes or self-serving behaviours to undo all positive actions you may have done
I can't believe you had the gall to post that after they said "I wasn't aware of that - that is fantastic." Talk about bias...
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Sending 2nd rocket to the moon was much cheaper than the first one, so you can’t just divide by 10.
That's not what the poster meant. It wasn't counting rockets, but the fact that the cost was spread out over multiple years. Yes, if it were possible to go from zero to moon in one year then that would be all of Google revenue. But spread over 10 years that's just 10% per year.
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While this could be considered a noble effort, I wish Alphabet would have tried harder. Google has enormous resources and talent. It seems like they dedicated relatively little to aggressively making Loon happen. When the US took a moon shot, we actually made it to the dann moon. It was very expensive and risky and lives were lost. But we committed ourselves and accomplished the goal no matter what it took. I hope th…
I worked on Loon for about 3 years. We had a team of over 200 people and launched thousands of balloons. Resource constraints were never the issue. In fact I think the lack of constraints contributed to some bad engineering decisions. The technology worked. It was, in fact, totally possible to build solar-powered, balloon-borne LTE base stations that provided internet access directly to handheld phones. But in the en…
> But in the end, it was just a fundamentally flawed idea. Satellites don't pop and fall out of the sky. Balloons do, frequently.