High-flying robot plane could link telephone
networks
Published: Thursday, 14
April, 2005, 11:53 AM Doha Time
SAN BERNARDINO: Makers of a ‘Stratellite’ believe it
will revolutionise the
broadband and wireless industry – if it ever gets off
the ground.
Florida communications company Sanswire has unveiled
its almost-finished
prototype of a hard-framed, unmanned airship designed
to fly in the stratosphere
21km above the earth and send broadband and mobile
phone signals to an area the
size of Texas.
“We’re shooting for satellite replacement at a lower
cost,” said Leigh
Coleman, president of Sanswire parent GlobeTel
Communications Corp “We believe this
will change the way you communicate.”
When finished, the 245ft (75-metre) long,
robot-piloted, solar-powered
airship will resemble a double-tailed whale.
Flying above the jet stream but lower than a satellite
- and one-tenth the
cost at $25mn to $30mn - the Stratellite also would
render land-based cell-phone
towers obsolete, its makers say.
But that altitude is largely unused and untested, and
GlobeTel CEO Tim Huff
acknowledged the company doesn’t yet have Federal
Aviation Administration
approval to launch an unmanned airship.
“It could be a 90-to-120-day process for Nasa and the
FAA to clear us” for a
test flight over Edwards Air Force base, Huff said.
“We don’t have a test date, but we’re hoping for
midsummer,” Huff said.
“But we’re still years ahead of any other program
doing anything like this.”
The company hopes to start building and launching
full-size Stratellites as
soon as next year, with hundreds if not thousands of
the devices eventually
straddling the globe, staying aloft for months at a
time.
Investors at Tuesday’s much-anticipated unveiling in
the southern California
desert said they were excited by GlobeTel’s
performance and the company’s
promise to wireless phone users.
“Every time a call drops while someone is driving
through the mountains, I
say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, once Sanswire gets up there we
won’t have this
problem,’” said investor Muriel Sigala of California.
- Reuters
Gulf Times Newspaper, 2005 ©
