(1.) How much power can be generated by a single balloon?

(2.) If large-scale production were started today, what would be the approximate cost of a single balloon?

(3.) How durable are the materials from which the balloons are made? Put another way, what is the average product lifetime?

(4.) What is the energy required to manufacture a single balloon?

(5.) At current transportation costs, what is, say, the per-mile cost to transport them — including not only fuel, but wear-and-tear on the transport, labor costs, packaging, insurance — in short, all the indirect costs as well as direct ones?

(6.) How difficult are these to maintain?

(7.) What sort of maintanence schedule do they require?

(8.) What maintenance activities are required?

(9.) Your story says the target market isn’t individual homeowners because of the balloons’ size. However, solar panels take space, as do wind turbines, water-driven energy systems, and so on, yet in many instances, these are suitable for an individual home (leaving aside the current high costs of some of the technologies). Therefore, why is an eight-foot balloon anymore space-consuming that, say, a medium-size wind turbine or a solar-panel array? (Water wheels probably get a break here.)

(10.) How difficult are these ballons to install? That is, can someone like me — a real klutz when it comes to anything much more complex than removing/replacing screws and the like — reasonably expect to be able to install one myself? Or am I going to have to be a specially-trained technician or mechanical engineer to accomplsih the task?

From so many questions, you probably think I’m about to blast the concept.

I’m a HUGE proponent of any technology that can help get us away from oil and coal. In fact, though I live in Thailand, my Sister and I own some property in northeast Texas, including a smallish (by Texas standards) ranch/farm covering 237 acres. In recent months I’ve been urging her — she, her husband, and our Mother live on the ranch — to investigate solar panels for their homes, as Texas has a decent tax-break (but not refund) program for people using green energy technologies. I myself am trying to find out if it’s worth approaching a wind turbine manufacturer to propose leasing our land to them to erect a wind turbine farm. (And yes, there is a profit motive that is part of my interest; as matters now stand, we’ve basically earned nothing from the ranch in the twenty years since we inherited it.)

I *hope* this technology is cost-effective per unit energy produced. Ideally, it is a low-maintenance/long-life product as well.

I’m especially interested in solar power because of its consistency and cleanness. I also like that in low-tech situations it can be harnessed, if on very small scales, for next to nothing. For instance, some time ago I read an article about a project in some abjectly poor part of Africa (which doesn’t narrow the possible location down very much, does it???) where some outfit was teaching illiterate, impoverished Africans how to make solar collecters using materials as simple, at the very lowest-tech end, as cardboard and aluminum foil to make solar ovens. You can’t much less expensive, in terms of materials costs, than that. (Granted, transportation costs are an entirely different kettle of fish.)

Getting back to these balloons, if they truly aren’t practical for individual homeowners, how about for a *group* of homeowners (or renters, for that matter)? Let’s say there is a neighborhood six blocks by six blocks, with 20 homes on each block (five per side). In all, that’s 120 homes. Would these balloons offer one possible practical solution towards moving to alternate energy sources?

By the way, this entire website is great!

Mekhong Kurt
Bangkok, Thailand