Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Loon’s final flight

blog.x.company

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 264 posts

Re: Loon’s final flight

#251

Post by dTal »

wbl wrote: post #200
dTal wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really; a moonshot is a huge investment to advance the state of the art in something where we know it's possible . It's not a wild shot in the dark. No Saturn V rocket ever failed.

Three men lost their lives in a fire in a capsule.

Well if we're nitpicking, that was the payload, not the Saturn V booster...

But unfortunate though that was, it didn't represent a fundamental uncertainty in the achievability of the goal - simply a fatal engineering mistake, which was immediately rectified.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#252

Post by dTal »

Aperocky wrote: post #211
dTal wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really; a moonshot is a huge investment to advance the state of the art in something where we know it's possible . It's not a wild shot in the dark. No Saturn V rocket ever failed.

The point is, how do you know your path is to the Saturn V and not the Soviet N-1? In the case of Google Moonshots, nobody even know if they're going to use a rocket.

I'm sure the N-1 would have worked as well, if the project had been funded (in both time and money) properly. The Soviet failure to reach the moon was a project management failure, rather than the failure of a blind risk to pay off.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#253

Post by [deleted] »

LittlePeter wrote: post #250
jpm_sd wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Was 9 years really needed to come to the conclusion that > But in the end, it was just a fundamentally flawed idea. Satellites don't pop and fall out of the sky. Balloons do, frequently.

[deleted]

Re: Loon’s final flight

#254

Post by sgt101 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #230
mFixman wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's much harder if you include the return trip.

You have to keep things going for 3 years, but I think such a trip is still pretty straightforward with our current abilities. But wow what a drawn-out load of nothing a mission like that would be.

No resupply, no spares - no chance.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#255

Post by rorykoehler »

teacpde wrote: post #137
rorykoehler wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand people saying full self driving is decades away. We have it always albeit in a very restricted geo fence.

The full self driving product that people expect isn’t a beta product that’s only available in a special region. To be accessible as running water, decades away is probably accurate estimation.

In the mean time we can all drive around in our self driving cars while we wait for them to become a reality? It doesn't make any sense. Either they exist, albeit in a limited form, or they don't. Does it get you from a to b in most normal daily use cases? If yes, then it counts.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#256

Post by ithkuil »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #173
ithkuil wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Fwiw I didn't post it after I read that answer.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#257

Post by Dylan16807 »

sgt101 wrote: post #254
Dylan16807 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to keep things going for 3 years, but I think such a trip is still pretty straightforward with our current abilities. But wow what a drawn-out load of nothing a mission like that would be.

No resupply, no spares - no chance.

There's room on board for literal tons of spares.

Re: Loon’s final flight

#258

Post by sgt101 »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #182
ForHackernews wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's much greater radiation exposure away from Earth's magnetic field. I believe this is still an unsolved problem. Proposed solutions for shielding are heavy and expensive.

I though shielding with water was the way forward there.

In science fiction novels...

Re: Loon’s final flight

#259

Post by miohtama »

jpm_sd wrote: post #201
hooande wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there any way to use the created IP somewhere else? Make it open source and let the developing nations try themselves?

Re: Loon’s final flight

#260

Post by jpm_sd »

miohtama wrote: post #259
jpm_sd wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there any way to use the created IP somewhere else? Make it open source and let the developing nations try themselves?

There's no point. Cell towers work just fine.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alphabet-loon/alphabet-sh...

>>>

Rich DeVaul, a founder of the project who is no longer with Alphabet, said surging demand for mobile connectivity made towers cost-effective in more of the world than he had estimated a decade ago, diminishing the need for Loon. “The problem got solved faster than we thought,” he said in an interview.

Post reply on HN