Google’s parent company, Alphabet’s Loon, announced that the stratospheric balloon flight time exceeded 1 million hours. The rune balloon travels 40 million kilometers. This is equivalent to 50 round trips between the Moon and Earth or 1,000 rounds around the Earth.
Rune is a company that runs a stratospheric internet business using hot air balloons. It builds a hot air section network by floating a hot air balloon in the stratosphere and broadly expands it by relaying LTE radio waves from a ground gateway. Originally started under the name Project Rune at Google X, a research institute affiliated with Google in 2013, it spun off in 2018. Commercial services will start in Kenya within this year.
The rune hot air balloon uses a different wind direction depending on the altitude, and moves it to the desired location by adjusting the altitude of the hot air balloon. AI is used for such altitude adjustment. It is creating a stratospheric wind direction navigation system through its own real-time measurement data using global weather models and hot air balloons.
Of course, instead of a hot air balloon, companies like SpaceX have announced plans to launch 12,000 satellites. The Starlink project will use it to service the 1Gbps Internet to the Earth via satellite. The first 60 units have already been launched. Related information can be found here .