====== Satellite ====== Using high altitude airships or long range weather balloons rather than going into orbit! * Maintain position around a zone of gps co-ordinates, could be used as a system of emergency communications e.g. disaster zone, within 2 or 3 hours you could have it up and it would cover a fair area for perhaps photography or communications * There should be little air movement above the jet stream, so it won't drift (confirmation? See Bellow) * Perhaps use compressed air as propulsion to maintain position (though would be a limiting fuel) * what about a point/ring ionizer as a soure of propulsion (driven form solar panels) * High Speed ducted fans (A nice project would be to measure thurst in reduced pressure chamber) * obviously solar panels - due to the height they would be far more efficient then on the surface * Perhaps use normal balloon to provide the lift to get the payload/satellite into position * Or, a helium balloon cluster that is disposed after reaching certain altitude. * Due to the gradual lost of He from the standard balloons perhaps use a metallic balloon or have a helium canister onboard to refill to maintain altitude. The other alternative is to have ballast (such as water of compressed air) which can then be vented/dropped to maintain altitude * Possible to change the ballon shape/size with tensioners to reduce volume/boyancy? ---- + About JetStreams [[http://stuff.mit.edu/people/stransky/jetstream/|External Link]] + Jet Streams Forecast MIT - [[http://paoc.mit.edu/synoptic/|External Link]] California Weather (includes global data) - [[http://squall.sfsu.edu/crws/jetstream.html|External Link]]