UP, UP,
AND
AWAY
HARNESSING
OPPORTUNITY
IN THE
STRATOSPHERE
Disruption is everywhere we look these days, with profound positive
implications for the global economy. Advancements in infrastructure
and technology have always transformed industry and opened
up new realms of economic opportunity. Routine and affordable
commercial flight created a new travel and transportation industry;
cell towers sparked the birth of wireless telecommunications; and
rockets birthed the possibility of the space industry. World View is
pioneering technology that we believe will have a similarly profound
effect—a platform with endless commercial application that will
unlock an entirely new economy in the stratosphere—the modern
high-altitude balloon, otherwise known as a Stratollite.1
—Jane Poynter, Chief Executive Officer, World View Enterprises
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
Accenture pays close attention when
the horizon promises new technological
advancement that will have world-wide
impact. Accenture is exploring the high
value commercial applications and promise
of stratospheric platforms on industry
and the global market. Together with
World View, we at Accenture have found
that stratospheric balloon technology is
projected to have a global market impact in
three of the four strategic pillars that anchor
the agenda for Accenture A&D executives.
Disruptive Innovation
World View is the first business to
commercially offer an affordable, longduration, persistent high-altitude flight
platform using a proprietary and tested
method of stratospheric balloon control.
This station-keeping balloon platform is
known as the “Stratollite.” As a softwareenabled platform, these Stratollites have
been identified by Accenture leadership
as a technology that will unlock numerous
commercial applications and generate
significant opportunities for the firm. With
Google and World View Enterprises leading
the high altitude balloon R&D effort, there is
great promise for this disruptive technology
in the global marketplace. As the technology
roadmap for stratospheric platforms unfolds
over the next several years, we will see
manufacturing and supply chain efficiencies
take hold as development ramps up—driving
down cost, accelerating market impact, and
opening up new opportunities in the A&D
sector and beyond.
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
The Space Race
With companies like Blue Origin and SpaceX
vying for the spot as low cost suborbital and
orbital launch providers, the space launch
service business model is changing. High
altitude balloons are expected to become
highly efficient deployment platforms for
quick and inexpensive access to space.
The high altitude balloon itself can act as
a connectivity and geo-spatial asset while
hosting both communications and earth
observation payloads. With increased M&A
in the A&D space, it’s highly likely that larger
A&D firms will invest in the acquisition of
small innovating companies developing
high altitude balloon platforms.
Asia and Middle East Growth
Emerging and developing economies within
Asia and the Middle East are catching the
attention of Defense firms as they turn to
these markets for opportunity to capture
and accelerate growth. With commercial
air traffic growth in Asia and the Middle
East outpacing other regions of the world,
there is a growing need for increased
connectivity and geo-spatial intelligence.
With little infrastructure available on which
to rely, the stratospheric balloon offers
an inexpensive solution for immediate
serviceability for the growing needs of
these regions.
THE HISTORY OF
THE BALLOON
The history of the balloon dates back
to the Chinese Empire around 200-300
A.D., when the Chinese Empire used
flying lanterns for military signaling. The
Mongolian Empire marked the introduction
of balloon technology to the Western
World 1000 years later, when they used
them for their invasion of Eastern Europe
in the early 13th century. By the 1700s,
the Montgolfier brothers lifted the first
human approximately eighty feet off the
ground in the first controlled flight of a
hot air balloon. The gain in altitude and
flight time associated with using light gas
instead of hot air drove further innovation
and, in the same century, the first manned
hydrogen balloon reached almost almost
two-thousand feet and to clock in a flight
time of just over two hours. Helium and
hydrogen quickly became the standard
for fueling high altitude balloons and they
became critical for scientific research
applications in the fields of weather and
early aviation.
Despite promising early progress, the
innovation in balloon technology plateaued
sometime in the 18th century until the late
1920s when there was a spark of innovation
in stratospheric ballooning. Unfortunately,
this push was soon eclipsed when the
United States and Soviet Union engaged
in the space race of the mid-20th century,
focusing on going much further than the
stratosphere. As a result, both balloon
manufacturing techniques and ballooning
capabilities stalled; however, removed
from the space race, India continued to
build upon balloon innovation. The Tata
Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)
was founded in 1945 where Dr. Homi
J. Bhaba began sending balloons up
to the stratosphere to study secondary
cosmic radiation. India now stands as a
world leader in balloon engineering and
stratospheric science, inspiring a new breed
of balloon innovation. Now, companies like
World View and Google are building upon
the successes of TIFR and establishing a
hub for stratospheric balloon innovation in
Tucson, AZ and San Francisco, CA.
In 1783 the Montgolfier brothers lifted a human to an
altitude of 80 feet in a hot air balloon. In the same
century, using hydrogen, a manned balloon reached
nearly 2000 feet and lasted over two hours.
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
Balloons in the 21st Century
Since the 1940s, hardware and electronics
advanced in performance and decreased in
size so balloons these days take a different
physical form than they used to, but for the
most part, they are conceptually the same
vehicles they once were. Unfortunately,
many people in the broader public sphere
consider high altitude ballooning to be little
more than a hobby. In fact, the barriers to
entry in the hobbyist space are quite low,
giving high schoolers and college students
the opportunity to experiment with small
latex weather balloon projects. With that
said, heavy-lift high-altitude ballooning is
a whole different ballgame. It’s a complex
process, and, historically, has been riddled
with capability barriers that have prevented
commercial market penetration.
Even the most sophisticated NASA balloons
are handicapped by the fact that flight
paths simply cannot be easily controlled.
Wind patterns encountered during flight are
variable and fairly unpredictable, making a
balloon’s trajectory hard to anticipate and
incredibly difficult to steer. As a result, the
use-cases for such platforms have been
limited mostly to scientific research, with
no meaningful commercial applicability.
Ultimately, this makes balloons largely
irrelevant to the vast majority of people
and enterprises; as a result, stratospheric
balloons did not receive the same
R&D attention as other aerospace and
astronautical endeavors. However, a few key
organizations and individuals have begun
to solve the issue of high altitude balloon
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
navigation to open up the commercial
application and viability of this seemingly
forgotten technology.
Google seeks to be a trail blazer of the
stratosphere. Google’s Project Loon is
investigating the usage of high altitude
balloons for remote Internet service
delivery around the globe. World View has
developed a high altitude balloon platform
to carry both humans and various scientific
payloads and un-crewed sensor platforms
for communications and Earth observation.
World View captured the world’s attention
in 2014 when they carried Google executive
Alan Eustace 41km above Earth’s surface
via high-altitude balloon where he broke
the world record for longest free fall
jump—eclipsing the record set by Felix
Baumgartner in 2012 of 39 km.2 World
View and Google are currently developing
technologies that tackle the technical
challenges necessary for sustainable
controlled balloon flight. When coupled
together, these elements fuel public interest
in stratospheric flight and drive innovation
in balloon engineering. Innovation which
stands to open a host of use cases for high
altitude balloons that are poised to jumpstart
a whole new stratospheric economy, and
potentially impact and revolutionize the
global economy in the process.
SPACE
TOURISM AND
COMMERCIAL
INDUSTRY
APPLICATION
Space Tourism
“There was a startling recognition that the
nature of the universe was not as I had been
taught…I not only saw the connectedness,
I felt it…I realized that this was a biological
response of my brain attempting to
reorganize and give meaning to the
wonderful and awesome processes that
I was privileged to view.”3
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, said this
in an attempt to articulate his experience
on his first and only spaceflight in 1971.
Upon his return to Earth, Mitchell uncovered
in ancient literature a description called
‘savikalpa samadhi’—the highest spiritual
state of consciousness. According to
Mitchell, this means that you see something
normally, but experience it “emotionally
and viscerally, as with ecstasy, and a sense
of total unity and oneness.” During the late
20th century this feeling, expressed by
numerous other astronauts, became widely
known as the Overview Effect.
Many space sailors return home and
vocalize similar accounts of the Overview
Effect. Seeing the Earth from space creates
a cognitive shift in awareness of the
human self and the human existence—a
booster shot of wisdom that brings the
swift and impactful realization that we
are far less significant than we perceive.
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
The Overview Effect is the core motivator
for the idea of space tourism. Getting to
orbit is prohibitively expensive, and using
rockets to bring space tourists in any
sizable number to orbit is an unreasonably
expensive endeavor; however, using high
altitude balloons in lieu of launch vehicles
presents an attractive alternative. World
View plans to sell tickets to experience the
Overview Effect at the edge of space using
its Voyager spacecraft, an astronaut-piloted
capsule hoisted ~31km above Earth via high
altitude balloon.
World View is offering this trip to the edge
of space for $75,000 per seat, far less than
either the $250,000 suborbital rocket ride
offered by Virgin Galactic or the $50M+
dollar sticker price that space tourism
industry competitors offer to reach orbit.
Space Tourism
$50M+
Cost per seat
$250,000
$75,000
High Altitude
Balloons
Spaceplanes
Rockets
(or Spaceships)
Much like an ice-cube floats atop water, the
Voyager spacecraft sails atop 99.9% of Earth’s
atmosphere, offering passengers a view of
the world from space on the order of hours as
compared to minutes with sub-orbital rocket
experiences. World View’s space tourism
experience calls for no special spacesuits, no
medical requirements needed for flight, no
pre-flight training, and even offers an on-board
bar and internet connectivity to communicate
with friends and family below during flight.
While the analogy of an ice-cube floating on
water sounds simple, the Voyager operations
are not. This platform is the most complex
and capable balloon in existence. Perhaps in
the next several decades the world will see
more regular and routine private travel to the
stratosphere; perhaps even with ticket
prices as affordable as a first class
transcontinental flight.
As exciting as space tourism via high-altitude
balloon sounds, innovations like stationkeeping and balloon trajectory control
offer unprecedented stratospheric market
potential above and beyond the ultra-high net
worth individual space tourism market. High
altitude balloons capable of maintaining long
duration flights across predetermined flight
paths and hovering above cities and other
areas of commercial and scientific interest
will open up a host of opportunities. Early
identified and targeted applications include
global communications, Earth observation,
and weather surveillance. These high-altitude
balloon platforms will help enable a host of
technologies with multi-faceted industrial use
cases that have the potential to profoundly
impact the global economy at large.
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
Commercial Industry Use Case
Impact
Today’s world of communications and Earth
observation is enabled by the infrastructure
and technological platforms that hold the
critical payloads that provide these services.
Generally, telecommunication and scientific
payloads are hosted by towers, drones,
planes, or satellites—each with their own
advantages and disadvantages in quality of
service, reach, and cost.
For research and development, each of
these platforms are well studied, well
understood, and well developed. While each
technology sees incremental improvement
in capability year after year, the platforms
themselves are bounded in performance by
their operational environment—ground for
the towers, low atmosphere for drones and
planes, and space for satellites. Satellites
and planes generally provide expansive
and less reliable coverage at a higher price
point while drones and towers generally
provide more reliable and less expansive
coverage at a lower price point.
The harsh vacuum of space and the
significant speed necessary to reach and
maintain altitude equate to high start up
costs and operational expenses, ranging
anywhere from the low millions of dollars
to a few hundred million dollars. Satellites
are launched with rockets so that they can
be deployed to orbit at speeds of faster
than 15,000 mph. At such velocities and
altitudes, operating payloads can become
complicated. Obtaining, preparing for, and
ultimately reaching a geo-stationary orbit, in
order to provide persistent coverage similar
to the new station-keeping capabilities of
high-altitude balloons, can cost hundreds
of millions of dollars, making viable
commercial applications sparse. Low earth
orbit is less costly to attain but results in
more complicated operations due to the
increased velocity relative to the target.
EARTH OBSERVATION PLATFORMS
Drones
Balloons
Satellites
ALTITUDE
Planes
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Coverage Area:
Coverage Area:
Coverage Area:
Coverage Area:
Res/Exposure:
Res/Exposure:
Res/Exposure:
Res/Exposure:
Revisit Rate:
Revisit Rate:
Revisit Rate:
Revisit Rate:
Modularity:
Modularity:
Modularity:
Modularity:
Cost:
Cost:
Cost:
Cost:
Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
Despite these downsides, the higher altitude
platforms provide great geographical
coverage relative to alternative platforms,
which is beneficial in many earth observation
and communications applications.
High and low altitude drones are
inexpensive relative to satellite platforms as
they are generally operated at a lower mass,
velocity, altitude, and flight time. In effect,
their resultant service benefits from shorter
distance to target and smaller relative
velocity but provides less geographic
coverage per flight. Even with these pros
and cons, the maintenance and operational
costs of drones exceed those of stationkeeping high-altitude balloons when longduration persistence is needed. Balloons
can stay aloft for days, weeks, and even
months, while drones must return to Earth
for frequent maintenance, limiting their
duration capability.
Towers represent the least expensive option
for Earth observation and communications,
as they amount to a single standing
structure that can host many different
payloads, without the need to haul heavy
equipment through or above the atmosphere
at high speeds. Although the platform is
inexpensive, it is highly limited in geographic
coverage, which results in minimal
scope when it comes to providing Earth
observation or communications service.
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
It would seem that a technology that can
provide expansive and reliable coverage
at an affordable price point would be
the pinnacle platform for the world of
telecommunications, Earth observation
and remote sensing. Conveniently, a
stratospheric balloon offers the benefits
of operating at a high altitude with none
of the disadvantages associated with the
requirement to maintain altitude with a high
velocity. Operationally floating between the
altitude of a satellite and plane, the high
altitude balloon experiences a favorable
distance to target and is not hindered by a
high velocity relative to the area of interest;
this means on-board communications and
Earth observation payloads enjoy both
decreased signal attenuation and increased
signal resolution. Furthermore, loitering over
one location on the surface increases Earth
observation payload exposure time.
Conveniently, a
stratospheric balloon offers
the benefits of operating
at a high altitude with
none of the disadvantages
associated with the
requirement to maintain
altitude with a high velocity.
Global Communications
The idea of global communications is still
mainly conceptual to planet Earth. Satellite
constellations currently in service boast
global real-time communications, but
customers are never fully satisfied with
the end product delivered by these spacebased communications service providers.
Current satellite communications systems,
such as Iridium, Inmarsat, and Thuraya,
were built decades ago and cost hundreds
of millions of dollars to design, develop,
and put in orbit. The startup cost for these
slightly spotty satellite communications
services results in a steep sticker price
for the end customer (especially relative
to terrestrial cell plans) with typical call
rates ranging from $1.00 to $6.00 per
minute4 and data rates at about $1M/
GB.5 Ultimately, the price point limits the
size of their market, creating a certain
irony to the advertised service of “global”
communications.
Current terrestrial based systems are just as
unsatisfactory. Although more reliable than
their space-based counterparts, terrestrial
networks only cover about 10% of the
planet. The majority of the population lives
in the area serviced by the ground-based
communications services, but about 700
million people remain without coverage.6
Furthermore, there are a multitude of
organizations in a variety of industry
verticals that operate assets in the remote
corners of the planet. The shipping industry
operates almost solely in the open ocean
where there is much need for new forms of
consistently reliable communications.
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
90%
of the world population
lives in
10%
of the world
geography
90% of the world population lives in the
10% of the world geography that enjoys
good communications services.7 As a
result, this 90% of the global population
expects good connectivity everywhere,
but there is not. There is an emerging need
for global communications, especially
in the developing world. High altitude
balloons promise a platform to deliver
low-cost communications to remote and
unconnected parts of the world because
they operate at a high altitude and provide
more expansive coverage than terrestrial
networks, but cost significantly less to
deploy in comparison to geo-synchronous
or even low-earth orbiting satellite
platforms. The result can help to enable
communications services at an inexpensive
price point that can impact the large
majority of the commercial marketplace.
Natural disasters typically cause an outage
of terrestrial communications systems,
thus making it difficult to evaluate damage
and coordinate rescue attempts. Satellite
communications can be helpful in some
circumstances, but even this expensive
solution is hindered by the fact that most
communication devices can’t to close the
link at such a distance. Affected and downed
terrestrial cell towers can often take weeks
to rebuild and bring back online. A single
station-keeping balloon could be deployed in
less than a few hours to fill such a void and
provide communications services to large
swaths of effected areas and at an altitude
capable of handling signal propagation loss
through rubble, and debris.
As the developing markets become
more connected to the rest of the world
through the Internet and other broadband
communication protocols, high data rate
connectivity becomes a more integral
component to driving market modernization.
While the developing and emerging
countries have seen smartphone ownership
nearly doubled from 21% in 2013 to 37%
in 2015,8 there is insufficient terrestrial
infrastructure available to support their
use and continued growth. Space-based
communications coverage is available, but
not enough to close the business case for
most potential customers. A single balloon,
however, could provide cellular phone
service and/or internet connectivity for an
entire region of a country.
Narrowband communications systems
are employed by industries in the energy,
agriculture, mining, and transportation
industry verticals. There are a multitude
of high-value commercial assets, such
as pipelines, power plants, gridlines,
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
farms, water treatment facilities, surface
mines, trucks, planes, and ships that
operate in remote locations without
strong connectivity outside of their
narrowband communication systems.
From an operational standpoint, the lack of
connectivity for and observation of these
assets presents an issue that can lead to
delayed responses to critical problems.
Gas leaks, power outages, crop infestation,
mining anomalies, or transportation issues
plague commercial industries on a daily
basis leading to inefficiencies in business
operations and increased costs. High
altitude balloons offer a unique solution
to these issues and can leverage stationkeeping to easily service static assets
such as power plants, farms, and mines.
Additionally, mobile asset courses are
generally known; meaning, station-keeping
balloons can service specific routes.
Smart phone ownership in
developing countries
21%
in 2013
37%
in 2015
Earth Observation
The Earth Observation industry is currently
valued at $2B and is exhibiting strong growth,
projected to surpass $5B by the year 2026 at
a 9.5% CAGR.9,10 This projection results from
the fact that data from Earth observation
instruments is starting to drive actionable
strategic intelligence for businesses in various
industry verticals. There are a host of different
payloads that can be used to scan the surface
of the Earth and identify important data
signatures—hyperspectral, visible, infrared,
and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) to name
a few. Each of these data types provide their
own unique insight because each uses a
unique frequency and method for observing
the Earth. For example, hyperspectral
instruments can conduct spectral
fingerprinting and material identification,
mid-wave infrared can identify temperature
relativity and water content measurements.
Visible imagery comes in the form of raw
picture files, and SAR data provides surface
texture and backscatter properties of
scanned objects. The applications for these
data sets span a host of industry verticals
as broad as the communications use-cases:
energy, agriculture, mining, weather,
and transportation.
Current Earth observation solutions
exist on satellite platforms, planes, and
drones. While satellite platforms are most
expensive, they usually provide the best
and most geographically expansive data
sets. Drones are least expensive, but their
pointing instability and low altitude results
in sometimes poor data covering only
small areas. Planes serve as a compromise
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
between the two. Drones and planes are
unique to satellites in that their payloads
can be swapped out, upgraded, and/or
repaired, which provides an element of
flexibility in how they collect data.
High altitude balloons present an attractive
new alternative with numerous advantages.
Balloons operate for a long time at a high
altitude, and they can attain large geographic
swaths of coverage, akin to satellites.
Furthermore, station-keeping balloons
can choose to loiter over the same spot,
surpassing the exposure time and resolution
for their Earth observation payloads beyond
the capability of satellites. Finally, balloons
can be controllably landed, ensuring payload
recovery and the ability to upgrade or swap
hardware when the need arises.
The commercial benefits of Earth
observation data are really derived from
the value-added resellers of raw Earth
observation data. Algorithms can be
utilized to draw strategic intelligence from
an aggregated data set of various types
of Earth observation data and directly
applied to business operations to minimize
cost and risk to high value assets. Earth
observation data can be used to identify
gas leaks, evaluate vegetation stress,
generate soil moisture indexes, capture
temperature anomalies, estimate crop
yield, and calculate container storage levels
for the Energy and Agriculture industries.
This data can also be used to monitor and
track planes, cars, trucks, and ships for the
transportation industry. And such data can
be used to capture atmospheric data for
weather forecasting.
GLOBAL MARKET
IMPACT
High altitude balloon platforms are well
positioned to disrupt the traditional
models and thinking behind obtaining
and providing critical services and data for
numerous commercial industry verticals.
In competition with satellites, planes,
drones, and terrestrial infrastructure,
balloons boast a lower price point and a
capability that is competitive with even the
most sophisticated of satellites. Although
balloons are not likely to entirely replace
any of these platforms individually, they will
certainly find a comfortable niche in the
market in the coming years as commercial
industry realizes the value to cost ratio of
their services.
With the dawn of the space tourism
industry, high-altitude balloons promise the
most affordable ticket to a front row seat
of the view of the cosmos. And as a lowcost enabler of global communications and
earth observation, high altitude balloon
platforms are sure to play a critical role in
the acquiring of data that will drive strategic
and actionable intelligence for enterprises
and organizations the world over.
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Up, Up, & Away: Harnessing Opportunity in the Stratosphere
For more information, please contact:
John Schmidt
Global Managing Director,
Aerospace and Defense
[email protected]
Travis Fulton
Management Consultant,
Aerospace and Defense
[email protected]
Key Contributors from Accenture Research:
Kevin Fohrer
Travis Fulton
Stephen Kingery
Tyghe Speidel
NOTES:
Jane Poynter, Chief Executive Officer at World View
Enterprises. Personal interview. July 2016
1
NY Times, Parachutist’s Record Fall: Over 25 Miles
in 15 Minutes, J. Markoff Oct. 24, 2014
2
http://www.abeautiful.world/stories/the-overvieweffect/
3
http://www.satphonestore.com/airtime/iridiumairtime.html
4
http://www.satphonestore.com/airtime/iridium-sbd.
html
5
https://www.sciencedaily.com/
releases/2008/12/081217192745.htm
6
https://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2015/ericssonmobility-report-june-2015.pdf
7
http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/02/22/smartphoneownership-and-internet-usage-continues-to-climb-inemerging-economies/
8
NSR Satellite-Based Earth Observation (EO), 7th
edition
9
Accenture Market Analysis
10
Copyright © 2016 Accenture
All rights reserved.
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High Performance Delivered
are trademarks of Accenture.
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