  Several commercial telecommunication ventures together with a well funded US
military program make it a likely possibility that an autonomous,
high-altitude, light-than-air (LTA) vehicle which could maneuver and
station-keep for weeks to many months will be a reality in a few years. Here I
outline how this technology could be used to develop a high-altitude
astronomical observing platform which could return high-resolution optical data
rivaling those from space-based platforms but at a fraction of the cost.

Astrophysics