Google Loon balloon crashes near Yakima (opens in new tab)

I took down an AS/400 server once by tripping over two Type 1 token ring cables[1] that had been plugged together in the middle of a walkway. No-one ever owned up to that setup.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IBM_hermaphroditic_connect...

>Will this be the decade where I get to experience being struck by falling routers and switches,

especially if the falling equipment identifies you as the softest landing spot in the vicinity (thus providing for lesser damage to / higher chances of the equipment survival :)

> far from any data center?

until off course it is the air borne (near-space) datacenter itself.

The children's story will have to be revised.

Chicken little decided to go for a walk outside and was killed when the internet fell on him. The sky continued unabated.

Dropping at 2000 feet per minute is not quite free fall, but it's a long way from a drifting dandelion seed. I wonder if the balloon payload left a crater.

There are definitely advantages to being completely wireless, building permits being one of them.

Balloons are launched all the time, Google's balloons are no different than the many many weather balloons, etc everyday. Their regulations are pretty easy [1] to find and follow. Basically, you call them, let them know when and where it's going up, when and where it's going down, and they'll put out a notice that pilots look at letting them know that there's a balloon out there they should look out for. If it gets loose, you call them again, say where you think it's going, etc, and they'll update the notifications accordingly. Stuff like this has been handled for a very long time.

[1] http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/part101.html

The chances of hitting a jet are remote, the balloon would have to loiter at the right altitude for that chance to increase appreciably. Most will go higher, pop and then fall.

The barrage balloons of WW-II had to be anchored very carefully to avoid having them go into the stratosphere. As the balloon expands (which it does when it goes higher) it will become more buoyant, not less so there is a positive feedback loop in there which usually ends in destruction unless you take precautions. Such anchoring requires very long cables, which makes them a bad choice to defend against jets.

So, the risks are non-zero and if one were to get sucked into a jet engine (especially the payload portion) the mayhem would be considerable, but they are so small that a 'notice to airmen' suffices unless you're operating very close to an airfield when you launch.

What is interesting about this incident is how far the balloon came down from where it was launched, it must have travelled for a long time, maybe even circumnavigated the globe more than once before landing.

Jet aircraft are a little more manoeuvrable than power lines.