Originally Posted by Derfred
It's not beyond my imagination that we could develop the technology to the point where we could launch a low cost UAV to FL500 and leave it on a set course (or a holding pattern) for a year or so carrying a useful communications payload.
the problem with that is LEO satellites are getting much cheaper every month as are the launch costs, to the point SpaceX are already looking to launch their own LEO constellation for net connectivity (the way they are heading is looking like they could put up enough in 2 launches to cover the planet).
in reality, the number of planes/blimps/whatever to do this job would simply be far to expensive and have too high a running costs for anything practical.