Project Loon team gave Puerto Rico connectivity—and assembled a helicopter
The number of people Loon connected in Puerto Rico has doubled since
November: 200k+.

NATHAN MATTISE
Ars Technica

2/18/2018, 10:00 AM

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/project-loon-engineer-sees-a-tool-for-future-disaster-response-in-puerto-rico/


AUSTIN, Texas—"So this happened—this is September 2017," Juan Ramírez Lugo,
president of the AAAS Caribbean division, tells the audience at the 2018
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Conference. The
slide that soon greets the room depicts an almost surreal reality: the
available power (or lack thereof) on the island of Puerto Rico in the
immediate aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

"The island went dark; the Virgin Islands basically disappeared off the
map. This blew my mind to not have my cell phone in this day and age,"
Ramírez Lugo continues. "The routine eventually became get up in the
morning, then try to check the news and Status.pr to see how much service
has returned to normal."

Ramírez Lugo cited estimates that the cost of Hurricane Maria's damage will
total 34.1 percent of Puerto Rico's GDP, so calling the storm devastating
almost seems like an understatement. The routine Ramírez Lugo shared
highlighted another crucial (re)building block for disaster recovery, one
that's now joined general infrastructure and health needs: connectivity.
With the vast amount of electrical grid and ground towers damaged, FEMA
estimates put cell service availability at a mere 60 percent an entire
month after the storm.

That’s precisely when Project Loon stepped in. Project Loon is the
high-profile balloon Internet experiment from Alphabet's X (formerly Google
X); on October 20, project lead Alastair Westgarth wrote a blog post
revealing that it was working with AT&T and T-Mobile to support basic
communications on the island, including text messaging and Internet access
through LTE-compatible phones. This marks the first time Project Loon
pointed its machine-learning algorithms toward keeping balloons over Puerto
Rico—the island previously only hosted launch sites—and the first time its
leaders recognized that their goal of connecting underserved areas may mesh
perfectly with disaster response.
"We usually think about [Project Loon] in places with no existent network,
but when a network goes out, people who were served become underserved,"
says Sal Candido, a director and principal engineer at X, who presented
with Ramírez Lugo at this weekend's conference. "In the future, being
prepared for these kind of things is something we hadn't really thought of,
but it could be done in advance as a contingency."

Candido's video aid when the time came to explain how Project Loon
functions. "The team back in Mountain View knows presentations aren't my
strength."

Candido notes that the pace of partnerships made Project Loon's Puerto Rico
deployment so successful—the initiative delivered Internet to 100,000
Puerto Ricans by early November, and Candido says the number exceeds
200,000 now. Typical deployments require Project Loon to work out ground
network hardware with local governments, recruit existing carriers in the
area for service, and then acquire the rights to use the spectrum.

"This usually takes four to six months; spectrum licenses alone can take
years," he says. "We managed to get it all to happen within a couple of
weeks, much faster than we previously thought possible." And going forward,
Candido believes Project Loon may be able to help areas more susceptible to
natural disasters set up such contingency partnerships in advance.

Beyond the bureaucratic elements, another major challenge for Project
Loon's Puerto Rico deployment was quickly plotting effective balloon
patterns and then figuring out how to maintain them. The company simulates
30 million kilometers of potential navigation daily to better understand
how jet streams and weather patterns will impact balloon routes.
Eventually, the team settled on a path that launches from Winnemucca,
Nevada, and travels south. To date, balloons are still being launched on
this trajectory and as many as five to seven can be canvassing the island
at a time.

"Here's a nice picture, one when it's working really well," Candido says,
introducing a slide in which a handful of balloons can provide coverage for
a majority of the island. "[After a disaster] there's a lot of things
needed, but this was one very small thing that could help people out."

Although what Loon accomplished shows great potential for future use,
Candido remained quick to acknowledge it's just one small contribution to
the massive recovery efforts still needed in Puerto Rico. In fact, being on
the ground there during the planning stages of this Loon implementation
only further drove that point home for the engineer. He unexpectedly took
part in much heavier lifting.

"We quickly realized this was a situation with very mission-oriented tasks,
and many mission-oriented people were down there. It was hard to get things
on and off the island, so we'd take water for other organizations or
partner with military, and they'd all do favors back for us," Candido says.
"I actually learned Chinook helicopters come in pieces—you have to pick up
the motor mount and literally put it on top of the helicopter. Once, the
government contractor with the crane couldn't get there in time, but Google
happened to have one around to lift our boats out of the water. They came
right over and said, 'You know that thing over there, it might work.' It
did."
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