Talk:High Altitude Pseudosatellites
These get really neat! Granted i have to check myself before a Von Braun Complex or Oppenheimer Complex gets the best of me, but they are really neat. Between those Solar Planes, those Crewed HALE Planes (Although those were largely replaced with "Globalhawk" etc since as with Nuclear Submarines your main limit to mission endurance...is the sentient meat that needs fed/watered/sewage systems etc)
There was also some sort of airship DARPA had a project for. They were going to have some of the external membrane be an antenna of sorts for the SAR or whatever.
There was a decent video done on it on YouTube, although original reporting by VICE or Vox or whoever + some article digging / wikipedia rabbit holes did way better, but that Wide Area Motion Imagery these enable can get a bit spooky in the wrong hands.
Absolutely amazing technology though, and if we don't get around to making Refurbish/Take Down like they Planned to/did a bit of (Re: Hubble Telescope Repairs), keeping things out of orbit to begin with is an interesting way to reduce Orbital Debris
Sidenote NASA Funds being abysmally low killed it off, but they had a Telescope in the back of a big airliner that was really neat. Could get "top of a mountain" / borderline space performance, but be anywhere within it's range (so fuel+airstrip etc). Also like ground telescopes it could be modified/repaired real easily. Granted some Swarm Robot type thing but with JWST Mirrors and a whole ecosystem of vehicles maintaining that/taking modules up and down would be way more powerful! Also we have that Lunar Crater Radiotelescope in the works!
Thats enough gushing/ranting on my part lol, i see HALO Aircraft / Pseudosatellites and i gotta infodump a little!
