Angel was a company founded by David Wine (Founding Chairman), Marc Arnold (CEO), Nicholas Colella (CTO), Bob Kerstein (CFO) and myself as President. Our vision was a multi-gigabit network 60,000 feet above every major city world wide. These networks would be carried aloft on the wings of High Altitude Long Operation (HALO) aircraft... a layer of the Stratospheric segment of the wireless communications spectrum.

The concept for Angel and HALO network was born in the mountain log mansion of David Wine in the small town of Ridgeway, Colorado. David had been a founder of Geostar back in the late 1980's, a Geostationary version of the GPS system (along with the added feature of 2-way messaging). David was also a founder of Constellation Communications. He, along with the rest of us had watched as the satellite systems descended from 23,000 miles to 500 miles. Why not bring them down to 20 miles?

In the early days of Angel we studied all types of different aircraft systems including: robotic drones powered from the ground by wireless power transmission, solar powered aircraft (Pathfinder), diesel powered turbo-prop aircraft, and finally Jet powered piloted craft.

After the first few years, we chose famed aerospace designer Burt Rutan to build our HALO aircraft. He designed and prototyped the Proteus Aircraft. At the time, Scaled was owned by Wyman Gordon Corporation which was run by David Gruber. While the CEO of a major aerospace manufacturer, David was also an Entrepreneur at heart and became an active member of the Angel Board and an investor helping to fund the construction of the Prototype.

Other key individuals in the birth of the company included Ed Tuck, the founder/creator of Teledesic; and Doug Locke a creative genius in the arena of high frequency RF circuits.

Raytheon under the guidance of Bruce Snider built and tested a demonstration LMDS two-may multi-megabit network. The HALO Aircraft took flight in September 1998 and has subsequently set altitude and endurance records above 50,000 feet. The system has never been rolled out because the company was not able to either raise the $100M+ of capital or get a launch customer with spectrum willing to risk a new communications paradigm. HALO and stratospheric systems remain viable and a strong possibility for the future.

A Background on Stratospheric Communications...
Today there are at least three distinct flavors of stratospheric platforms being actively developed. Each with its own positive and negative attributes. The first is the piloted aircraft. The Proteus, a High Altitude Long Operation (HALO) aircraft, is an example of this class of vehicle. Able of carrying some 2,000 lbs of payload to 51,000 feet and supplying it with 25Kwatts of power, the HALO-Proteus uses high-altitude turbofan jet engines design for missions of 8 to 12 hours. On the average, three aircraft work in shifts to provide 7x24 coverage.

A second class of stratospheric aircraft is the unmanned long-duration air vehicle. One example is the Centurion, the creation of Dr. Paul MacCready, this unique gossamer aircraft is a solar powered flying wing which derives 100% of its energy from the sun (running on battery power at night) and flies a six month mission in the stratosphere above a metropolitan city. The Centurion is capable of very high altitude flight above 60,000 feet, but is limited in payload weight (under 1,000 lbs) and power (about 1 kilowatt). Because of their long-mission life, these aircraft are necessarily unmanned.

The third and final flavor of Stratospheric Platform is the unmanned airship (balloon). Measuring multiple football fields in size, these behemoth platforms are floating solar power farms gathering sunlight to fuel both its communications function as well as its veracious appetite for station keeping power. Were the upper atmosphere quiet 365 days of the year, these airships would clearly be the solution of choice, but unfortunately, wind speeds at 55,000 to 70,000 feet can reach very high on certain days of the year, thereby pushing the airship off station and disrupting communications below.

Stratospheric Platforms will be used to provide very rapid deployment of new communications networks which previously might have taken years to build, one tower at a time. Another feature of interest is that many of the proposed platforms can be landed on a regular basis making system-wide upgraded uniquely possible, especially compared to replacing a payload on a satellite (no way!) or replacing the telecom package in 300 to 500 different cellular towers (very expensive).

The initial stratospheric systems will each provide about 20 Gigabits of throughput to the metropolitan region below. This is expected to grow to about 100 gigabits per platform. The overall world market for HALOs serviced cities is projected at about 200. About 50 of these are projected in the United States. If each HALO provides on the order of 100 Gbps, then the total throughput (in the U.S.) of the HALO layer is expected to be about 5 terrabits per second (5x10^12 bps).

Peter H. Diamandis
Co-Founder and Past-President

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