14 DAY TRIAL // Google X has several projects out the door already, though you couldn't call any of them ready just yet. Project Loon is one of the more interesting offshoots of Google X, but there is still some way to go before a significant amount of people will get their Internet from Google balloons.
In the meantime, the company continues to explain how its ambitious program will function. A lot of skeptics doubted that the company could keep balloons afloat and stable enough to provide a constant connection.
But Google has it all figured out. For one, the balloons won't stay in one spot, but as one moves away another will move into place, a reverse of what happens when you travel with your phone. As you move about, your phone connects to the cell tower closest to you. With the project Loon, you stay put while the balloons move.
This movement is controlled though and Google will use the winds to always have a balloon covering a certain area. For this, it needs very good wind data which it gets from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The video describes how this data is put to good use to predict where the balloons are headed.
"As Project Loon balloons will remain in the stratosphere for much longer periods than typical weather balloons, and will have their positions monitored via GPS, a fleet of Project Loon balloons will provide a rich stream of real-time atmospheric data, allowing for more accurate wind pattern predictions and balloon steering," Google explained.
In the future, as the full Loon network goes online, Google will actually have one of the best data sources around on stratospheric wind. It will be able to use this data to better guide its balloons, but also provide it to NOAA to feed it into their models.
