Not just to boost the payload, but to reduce the wastage of literally irreplaceable helium as well. It's a completely non-renewable resource and there are other applications that there are no substitutes for (such as coolant).

Not that this is an amazing article, but the question is, how is this different than Loon and more likely to succeed? Loon LLC CEO Alastair Westgarth said the company could not find a way "to get the costs low enough to build a long-term, sustainable business"

This was the company that not only deployed high altitude stratosphere balloons, but managed to map high altitude wind currents at the point where they could navigate balloons without propulsion systems and used LTE to successfully cover various parts of the Earth.

My guess would be a Japanese government subsidy.

I'd like to see someone get these working: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship

It's like starlink minus Kessler Sundrome

“We can stay over an area of operation, and we do that in the stratosphere right around 60,000 feet, so we’re twice as high as air traffic and we’re above the jet stream, and yet 30 times closer than low-Earth orbit satellites,” Mikkel Frandsen, founder and CEO of Sceye, told Ars. “We can fly through day and night until the sun comes up the next morning and recharges the batteries, at which point we’re still at the same altitude and still over the same area of operation.”

Genuinely interesting technology, which is so rare these days LOL. But I have questions:

1. Cell towers cover a much smaller area, and are connected with wires. How is an airship going to cover a larger area with more traffic, without wires? It says it flies "in disasters" so maybe the traffic is prioritized somehow for emergency communications?

2. Looking at the photos, it looks like it has a few hundred watts of solar, how the hell is that powering this thing 24/7?

3. It says they have plans for "year-round operation". Surely it would leak down eventually? Or run out of power during cloudy conditions or unavoidable winds/rain? Or is 60k feet above all of that?

Yeah... it's totally gonna be strictly for connectivity...

I feel like this type of airship didn't quite pass the muster during the last go round...

Jokes aside, in the very unlikely event that they can keep their surveillance out of it, this is actually really cool tech.

usa so it will be used for spying and/or invasions