With clusters of balloons through the stratosphere, Project Loon aims to bring internet to the two-thirds of the world’s population who still don’t have access

It’s a gloomy day in Silicon Valley, and there’s a hive of activity inside Alphabet’s X laboratory, where the technology company incubates ambitious “moonshot” ideas.

A handful of staff wearing sunglasses and shark slippers are standing on top of a 15-meter illuminated surface, marking an enormous piece of plastic with pens. It looks like the world’s nerdiest fashion runway, but it’s actually a giant flatbed scanner – nicknamed Billie Jean – used to analyze structural damage to the high-altitude Project Loon balloons Google’s parent company wants to use to deliver internet service to remote parts of the world.

Alphabet invited members of the media to the usually secretive lab to brag about advances the company has made in the development of its internet balloons. The key breakthrough has been made in the navigation system that maneuvers clusters of balloons through the stratosphere. More precise control over the balloons means that far fewer – dozens rather than hundreds – are needed to deliver consistent service to an area.

The helium-filled balloons fly in the stratosphere twice as high as planes. Photograph: Google

“This makes it much easier to ramp up. We need so many fewer balloons to deliver a service, so in principle the service has a better chance of being profitable,” said Astro Teller, “captain of moonshots”, who delivered a presentation while wearing rollerblades.

The balloons are manufactured and tested in a large workshop named Toys R Us within the X lab. The project is led by Christopher Schuster, who previously spent 12 years in the US navy engaged in the tactical deployment of submarines.

Project Loon staff wore shark slippers while analyzing damage to the balloons. Photograph: Google

Today, the long-haired, bearded engineer with a pierced septum is dressed in a bright pink suit, matching shoes and a floral tie as he describes the various stages of testing each balloon goes through before being packed into a Moac, which stands for Mother Of All Crates. Before we move into the next room – the Billie Jean room – he hands us all stickers in the shape of cats to attach to our notebooks.

If the company was trying to perpetuate the “madcap inventor” Silicon Valley stereotype, it couldn’t have done a better job.

Project Loon was first incubated by the experimental X division in 2011 but was officially announced in June 2013, with a remit to help bring the internet to the two-thirds of the world’s population who still don’t have access.

It started with a trial involving 30 balloons over New Zealand. Since then, Alphabet has partnered with companies in Australia, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Indonesia to deliver balloon-powered internet access.

The 12-meter-tall helium-filled balloons fly in the stratosphere at altitudes of between 18km and 25km – twice as high as planes – and each balloon can provide connectivity to an area of around 40km in diameter using LTE wireless communications.

The dozens of balloons needed to provide coverage for each area are coordinated and tracked via mission control. Photograph: Google

The dozens of balloons needed to provide coverage for each area are coordinated and tracked via mission control – manned 24–7 from the X lab – to optimally position the fleet to provide the best coverage. Steering is made possible by moving the balloons to different altitudes – where stratospheric winds travel in different directions.

The original navigation plan involved creating rings of balloons sailing around the globe, delivering internet service when they were over a target region. However, thanks to machine learning, the company has improved its navigation algorithms dramatically over the past year. This means that it can now keep clusters of balloons shifting through the winds to remain circling above a specific country.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Astro Teller, the ‘captain of moonshots’ for Google-parent Alphabet. Photograph: Glenn Chapman/AFP/Getty Images

Despite the accelerated timeline, Project Loon has yet to deliver internet service to anybody. A partnership announced with Indonesia in October 2015 was supposed to involve real users, but the X team said this had not happened yet. X shuttered a sister project to Loon that used solar-powered drones instead of balloons earlier this year.

When asked when the balloons would start to deliver their intended service, the X team wouldn’t be drawn on specifics.

All Teller would say was that “testing with real users” would happen in the “coming months” with a “telco partner somewhere”. Then he rollerbladed away.