Sceye, a Swiss materials science company, continues developing high-altitude platform stations (HAPS).
Sceye platforms are solar-powered by day and battery-powered by night and are designed to launch into the stratosphere. From there, the balloons/blimps/platforms hover and can perform various functions. According to a Sceye press release, they include "universal and equitable connectivity, improve climate change monitoring, natural resource stewardship, forest fire monitoring and better detect and contain disasters before they spiral out of control." The company calls them "enhanced balloons." Still, they look like blimps from early sci-fi, as you can see in this melodramatically scored promo video:
Internet access is a basic right that improves healthcare, education, quality of life and democracy itself. Sceye can provide the first truly equitable connectivity across rural communities and urban centers — connecting underserved locations that have previously been out of reach.
We're also committed to monitoring and protecting the Earth. Our platforms can carry advanced sensors that can track greenhouse gas emissions in real-time, supporting the development of enforceable, accountable climate-friendly policies.
Sceye believes that doing good is good business. We are committed to providing universal connectivity, and to enabling environmental stewardship.
The founder and CEO of Sceye, Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, is also the owner and former CEO of Vestergaard, the company behind LifeStraw, a portable personal water purifier, and PermaNet, a pesticide-infused mosquito net. The company spent $3 million on kits with a straw, a net, and condoms, to be given away for free, with an HIV test, to 50,000 residents of a rural district in Kenya. This resulted in 80% of the population being tested, as opposed to 20% before the kits and testing. Despite this initiative and other humanitarian efforts, the company is still profitable, something more companies should note.
via New Atlas
Bonus: Archer does not understand blimps
Previously: Bring back blimps!
