went to the NSF U.S. Antarctic Program Clothing Distribution Center, where he
was equipped for Extreme Cold Weather. The Friday evening flight to Williams
Field at McMurdo Station was rescheduled for Saturday morning aboard a USAF
C-17. He flew from springtime Christchurch to the continent of ice, snow, clouds
and extreme cold.
The first launch of the CREAM payload was on December 19, 2008 followed
by the launch of the ANITA II telescope on December 21st. The 2009 campaign
was wrapped up with the flight of a super-pressure balloon on December 28th.
After that, Henry packed up and began the long trip home.
What do sheep and Loons have in common?
The first person to gain Google Balloon Internet access was Charles Nimmo, a
sheep farmer and entrepreneur in Leeston, NZ, a small town on the Canterbury
Plains on the South Island some 30 km (19 mi) southwest of Christchurch. He
found the experience a little strange after he was one of 50 locals who, in 2013,
signed up to be a tester for a project that was so secret no one would explain to
them what was happening. Technicians visited their homes and attached bright red
receivers the size of basketballs to the outside walls.
Nimmo is among the many rural folk, even in developed countries, that can’t
get broadband access. After ditching his dial-up four years earlier in favor of satellite internet service, he found himself stuck with bills that often exceeded $1,000 in
a single month. He received internet access for about 15 minutes before the balloon that was transmitting it sailed on past. His first stop on the Web was to check
out the weather, because he wanted to know if it was an optimal time for “crutching” his sheep; a term he explained refers to removing the wool around a sheep’s
rear ends.
The test was the culmination of 18 months’ of work on what Google decided to
name Project Loon in recognition of how wacky the idea sounded. Developed in
the secretive Google X laboratory that devised the driverless car and web-surfing
eyeglasses, the flimsy helium inflatables beam the internet down to Earth as they
sail past on the wind. Then still in their experimental stage, the balloons were the
first of thousands that Google’s leaders eventually hope to launch 20 km (65,500
ft) into the stratosphere in order to bridge the digital divide between the world’s
4.8 billion “unwired” people and their 2.2 billion “plugged-in” counterparts (see
Section 5.1 for details).
“It’s been weird,” Nimmo said of the Google Balloon Internet experience. “But
it’s been exciting to be part of something new.”
For a 1:31 minute video of Charles Nimmo describing his experience, go to:
https://youtu.be/LNCFc00oejE
306 Appendix 3: Interesting Stories
was equipped for Extreme Cold Weather. The Friday evening flight to Williams
Field at McMurdo Station was rescheduled for Saturday morning aboard a USAF
C-17. He flew from springtime Christchurch to the continent of ice, snow, clouds
and extreme cold.
The first launch of the CREAM payload was on December 19, 2008 followed
by the launch of the ANITA II telescope on December 21st. The 2009 campaign
was wrapped up with the flight of a super-pressure balloon on December 28th.
After that, Henry packed up and began the long trip home.
What do sheep and Loons have in common?
The first person to gain Google Balloon Internet access was Charles Nimmo, a
sheep farmer and entrepreneur in Leeston, NZ, a small town on the Canterbury
Plains on the South Island some 30 km (19 mi) southwest of Christchurch. He
found the experience a little strange after he was one of 50 locals who, in 2013,
signed up to be a tester for a project that was so secret no one would explain to
them what was happening. Technicians visited their homes and attached bright red
receivers the size of basketballs to the outside walls.
Nimmo is among the many rural folk, even in developed countries, that can’t
get broadband access. After ditching his dial-up four years earlier in favor of satellite internet service, he found himself stuck with bills that often exceeded $1,000 in
a single month. He received internet access for about 15 minutes before the balloon that was transmitting it sailed on past. His first stop on the Web was to check
out the weather, because he wanted to know if it was an optimal time for “crutching” his sheep; a term he explained refers to removing the wool around a sheep’s
rear ends.
The test was the culmination of 18 months’ of work on what Google decided to
name Project Loon in recognition of how wacky the idea sounded. Developed in
the secretive Google X laboratory that devised the driverless car and web-surfing
eyeglasses, the flimsy helium inflatables beam the internet down to Earth as they
sail past on the wind. Then still in their experimental stage, the balloons were the
first of thousands that Google’s leaders eventually hope to launch 20 km (65,500
ft) into the stratosphere in order to bridge the digital divide between the world’s
4.8 billion “unwired” people and their 2.2 billion “plugged-in” counterparts (see
Section 5.1 for details).
“It’s been weird,” Nimmo said of the Google Balloon Internet experience. “But
it’s been exciting to be part of something new.”
For a 1:31 minute video of Charles Nimmo describing his experience, go to:
https://youtu.be/LNCFc00oejE
306 Appendix 3: Interesting Stories