The future looked bleak for high altitude platform systems (HAPS) as an option for non-terrestrial network (NTN) communication after several high-profile failures such as Google’s Project Loon and Facebook’s Aquila. But these were blamed more on flaws related to the specific project than HAPS and interest simmered to be revived under subsequent projects that now show much greater promise. The situation could be compared with mobile broadcast, which is now at last in the air after a series of failures over a decade or more. The coming of age for HAPS may well have occurred last month in July 2022 when Airbus launched the first significant commercial business in the field around its existing HAPS technology platform, called Zephyr. In…