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In the near future, tourists seem excited through portholes above the Earth, delighted by the sight of starry darkness above and the curved blue horizon here below.
It is a spaceship, but a balloon near the space . "It was launched from Mongolia, not Houston, United States. The tourists are Chinese
In 1958, Russia surprised the world by launching Sputnik, the first satellite, in space. USA it was eager to create NASA to participate in the race for the Space and has become the most important space power in the world
Satellites are essential for communications, climate monitoring, navigation and other tasks.But 60 years after Sputnik, the High altitude balloons defy them
Balloons provide an observation point 30 kilometers away, a much smaller distance than satellites They cost a fraction of their price and, unlike satellites, they can easily return to Earth for its mid to be updated or repaired.
The balloons are huge . Some are seven times larger than St. Paul's Cathedral in London, they are filled with helium and made of plastic the thickness of a sandwich.
Their weak point is that they can only be blown away by the wind. "We are learning about a whole new navigation area," says Jeffrey Manber, CEO of the American space company Nanoracks
. It is called the stratosphere because it is "stratified", divided into several layers and with winds that blow in different directions at different altitudes.
But with the necessary weather information, a balloon can go in the desired direction by simply moving to the correct altitude and sliding between the wind.
— Help in case of emergency —
The Loon project developed by Google is one of the first to exploit These opposing winds, with high altitude balloons for provide communications in remote areas or affected by disasters.
The original plan consisted of a series of balloons that followed the prevailing wind, but the researchers found that the balloons could stay in place. using compensatory winds at different heights.
Sophisticated machine learning algorithms change the pitch to take advantage of the correct wind.
This project managed to give 300,000 people access to the Internet in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria destroyed its infrastructure last year.
For its part, World View, based in Tucson, USA, plans to use its balloons known as stratolites not only as communication transmitters, but also as monitoring platforms. BBC Future visited its facilities in 2016.
"The applications are endless, from constant monitoring of forests to notification of emergency services in case of fire, seeing parties remote from the ocean in search of maritime pirates or by monitoring in real time the health of crops, "said Angelica DeLuccia Morrissey of World View.
— Options for military use —
The defense industry, for example, sees the stratoliths as the new eyes in the sky
"We believe that this has the potential to bring a change in the game for us, "said Kurt Tidd, commander of US Southern Command. after a successful test flight of a stratolite
The same technology could help track time in real time or get a close up of a hurricane from above.
The current stratoliths carry a load of 50 kilograms. Balloons capable of carrying larger loads are still in the planning phase
We believe this could bring about a change in the game. ""
Kurt Tidd, Commander of US Southern Command
Plans for more Long-term include near-space tourism and goods delivery. When his mission ends, a stratolite goes up to a certain point and parachutes to the ground .
The same technique could be used to deliver emergency supplies or other cargoes to remote places in the world
—- Chinese Competition —
But there is increasing competition from China. Kuang-Chi Space (KC), founded in 2010, specializes in airships and communication technologies.
The company develops its Traveler globe and its own version of stratospheric navigation by sea wind.
Jeffrey Manber, Nanoracks
"The initial goal in China is remote sensing and telecommunications, with customers that include municipalities that they seek to integrate Traveler into a smart city system, "says Zhou Fei, head of KC Space's R & D team
who guarantees that the system will cost between a tenth and a one one hundredth of a comparable satellite system.
Traveler will also carry one capsule with six pbadengers in the stratosphere Last October, KC safely launched and retrieved a balloon carrying a turtle at one altitude of 21 kilometers
This could be converted into pbadenger flights in 2021 which would cost about US $ 96,600
— The microsatel market lites —
Fei says that Traveler could also be a "secondary launch" platform. This would mean launching a rocket over most of the Earth's atmosphere, from where it could fire a small rocket into orbit much more easily than from sea level.
This would be useful for the growing market of microsatellites. CubeSats.
"One of the holy grails around the world is to be able to reduce the cost of launching a small CubeSat into orbit," says Jeffrey Manber, whose company Nanoracks is working with KC on the Traveler program.
The Chinese army is also interested in "close space". Nobody still controls this area, and stratospheric balloons provide an economical way for military surveillance and other uses.
After the Russian Sputnik showed the world what satellites could do, He overcame it in the race for space. In the near future, more and more stratospheric balloons will appear focused on near-space tourism, communication or surveillance.
The near-space race is under way and, although the United States is currently leading, China is catching up quickly .
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