It appears that fishermen aren’t the only ones using Livescope to find stuff in the water. I bet there is some really great technology thats even more powerful than the LV34 transducer and livescope sonar in perspective mode. Maybe someday there will be 360 degree livescope.
The Google AI project was a project know as the Google Loon Project and has an interesting connection to San Luis Reservoir. Ten years ago in August, I spotted a UFO flying over San Luis Reservoir and managed to film and photograph it before having a pretty good day on the lake fishing for stripers. The footage and stills that I took went viral the next day because many people spotted the UFO over Dinosaur Point. I was even contacted by the TV show UFO Hunters but Gina thought it might hurt our practice if I appeared on the show. Almost a year later, I was contacted by Google. They asked if they could use my photo in there archives and explained to me that I had taken pictures of the maiden voyage of the first Loon Project balloon.
The Google Loon project was an initiative by Alphabet Inc. (formerly known as Google) to provide internet access to people in remote and rural areas around the world using high-altitude balloons.
The project began in 2011 and was officially launched in 2013. The idea behind the project was to use a network of balloons that would float in the stratosphere at an altitude of around 20 km, well above commercial airline traffic and weather systems. These balloons would provide internet connectivity to remote and underserved areas by beaming a signal to a ground station, which would then transmit the signal to local internet service providers.
The balloons used in the project were made of a special material that was designed to withstand the harsh conditions of the stratosphere, and they were equipped with solar panels to power the equipment on board. The balloons were also fitted with navigation equipment that allowed them to be steered and kept in a particular area.
The project was tested in various locations around the world, including New Zealand, Brazil, and Sri Lanka, and it was able to provide internet access to tens of thousands of people in remote areas.
In January 2021, Alphabet announced that it was shutting down the Google Loon project, citing the lack of a sustainable business model for the initiative.
I was told by the engineers that the balloons ran on solar power and could maneuver with GPS. This was years before Drone Tech and pretty amazing stuff. The balloons could communicate with each other and drive themselves after a couple years of service to a repair facility. They established there positions in space with AI navigation. It sounds very similar to the balloon that was recently shot down. The concept is eerily similar to the Starlink concept accept for Loon use of balloons instead of Starlink’s use of Satellites.
I thought I was going Looney spotting that UFO. Turns out I was….
