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Facebook Took Its Giant Internet Drone On Its First Test Flight (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A year ago, Facebook unveiled Aquila, its effort to put giant drones in the skies to beam Internet connectivity to areas in the developing world without mobile broadband Internet. Today, the company announced it has completed the first full-scale test of its Aquila drone, after months of testing one-fifth-size models. On June 28, the experimental aircraft (featuring a V-shaped wingspan the width of a Boeing 737) took off from the Yuma Proving Grounds in Yuma, Arizona, and flew for 96 minutes at low altitude, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg and many others watched in the dawn sunlight.. Possibly years of work remain before Facebook's connectivity effort fully takes off, according to a head engineer, including figuring out how to keep the drones aloft for hours at a time, and how to effectively send Internet with lasers.Quartz points out that Facebook may not have been given the permission to test the drones. From the article:Earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) finalized its regulations for flying commercial drones in the US. These regulations, which require commercial drones to be kept within the line of sight of the person flying the drone, and that the drones be kept below 400 feet, do not go into effect until August. Prior to these regulations, any company wishing to fly or test drones outdoors in the US required an exemption from the FAA, called a Section 333. Quartz checked with the FAA last year to ask whether Facebook had one of these exemptions, and was told it did not. (We've asked the FAA again, and Facebook, to see if the company has since received permission to fly drones in the US.) The FAA has started to fine some companies that operate drones commercially without an exemption, including a nearly $2 million fine for a company that was flying drones over people in New York and Chicago without permission.
Why would you use a heavier-than-air craft to essentially hover?
Wouldn't an aerostat accomplish the same goal at a much lower cost, and lower risk of bodily harm should it fall from the sky? I mean, assuming you aren't retarded like the Army and let it break its tether.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I presume these things essentially crash land when it's time to bring them down? Which is why it wasn't shown the video. It would be extremely difficult to try and land one on a moving landing assembly.
Better known as 318230.
"regulations for flying commercial drones "
So, if it's a research aircraft which has no current role in the exchange of goods/services/money, what makes it commercial?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
"and connect to each other using a laser system called free-space optics." So basically they point laser beams at each other. Sounds perfectly safe to me.
Why would you use a heavier-than-air craft to essentially hover? Wouldn't an aerostat accomplish the same goal at a much lower cost, and lower risk of bodily harm should it fall from the sky?
I don't know why they chose it. Here's my take:
An aerostat requires tethers, which are points of failure, and has enormous wind drag. Lose the tether(s) and you lose control. Then you have a large, failing, floating device at the mercy of the winds, dragging first broken tethers, then its own large structure, on an uncontrolled path along the ground, wreaking unknown havoc.
A powered heavier-than-air (but still ultralight) has little drag and can also be made to change locations easily. With good design, if it begins to accumulate failures that jeopardize its continued operational ability, it can be made to fly to a repair site and land - after its backup has arrived to take its place.
If you have catastrophic events - like huricaines, tornadoes, or forest firestoms - it can easily be moved away (to land for shelter or fly around or above the storm) and brought back when the environment is calmer. You don't even have to take it out of service. Just fly it above the tropopause. The stratosphere is probably a good place for it to operate anyhow: Negligible weather, no cloud shadows for solar-powered planes, and gives you a lot of coverage per drone. (Balloons can get there, too, easily. But 50,000 feet or so is a LOT of tether.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What facebook won't do for more subscribers!
What next? Geosynchronous satellites shadowing the GPS system?
AKA porn to the poor. PTP for short.
Why would you use a heavier-than-air craft to essentially hover? Wouldn't an aerostat accomplish the same goal at a much lower cost, and lower risk of bodily harm should it fall from the sky?
A vehicle has to fly faster than the local wind to stay stationary over one spot. So, you are talking about a powered vehicle in any case, regardless of whether it's an aerostat or an airplane.
Since you have to be powered anyway, you might as well use the power for lift.
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Why would you use a heavier-than-air craft to essentially hover?
Let me explain this to you:
This has nothing to do with drones and everything to do with FACEBOOK! FACEBOOK! FACEBOOK!
Just as Amazon got so much free press about drone delivery - that cannot possibly happen for years if at all - this is the work of rich boys with expensive toys that love publicity.
If there is any commercial as in for profit RICH BOY COMPANY that has done realistic experimentation, look at Google.
As for Zuckerberg? Self-pleasuring, most likely in front of a mirror.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Anyone got links for me on DIY surface-to-air missiles? It's bad enough that the Internet is polluted with Facebook, I'll be damned if my airspace is going to be polluted with it too.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
My believe is that they intend to fly hundreds of these. If you have 100 tethers from 0 to 60,000 ft or so, I believe that you would have many aircraft accidents. Recall that the British used tethered balloons to protect themselves from German air raids. There is no way that you could see those tethers while flying, until you were very close to them -- then it would be too late to avoid.
There are a dozen or so tethered balloons around the border of the US now, so far there have been no incidents that I know of -- but the border is a place where pilots are very observant. Also, the balloons are only at about 10,000 ft or so, so most planes are far higher.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
This one is multi-national due to FBI moles. Zuckerberg is as berg as Israel is.
An aerostat requires tethers
Which means that you now have a semi-unpredictable obstruction from 0ft to 60000ft that cannot easily be seen by pilots of other aircraft. You can map it out on a chart, but then you'll have to say "obstruction from point a with a potential circumference of xx miles" since it will never point straight up but bend in a curve. It will also have to go through various classes of airspace, including class A.
I'm quite sure that the average folks on the flight deck of your 737/A320 do not expect any obstacles when cruising at 35000ft.
It's just a bad idea.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
UAV internet is vapourware. A multihop wifi with high gain antennas costs a million times less for a megabit, works, and is there right now.
If they were granted permission to test at Yuma, that is all the approval they needed to do so under the existing military flight privileges.
Well the first thing you do is design it to fly at 65,000 ft, in the US that is uncontrolled airspace, no commercial flights up there, and the only thing you really get is military stuff and a handful of special use planes. Second you put a transponder on it, basically anything up there should have a transponder as well, and will alert the pilot if there is an issue.
Crossing to/from the target position should be like any other plane, and controlled through ATC.
Good luck convincing ATC to let you dangle a tether through 60,000feet of controlled airspace.
OK, so I'm chugging along at 5500 feet in a Cessna. It has a transponder, but I'm operating VFR which means I'm not on an ATC clearance. How does ATC know my intended flight path intersects the cable, which may be several miles upwind of the balloon at my altitude??
No oculus.
Priorities!
Will it also beam reliable power and political stability? There's a reason these areas don't have broadband already.
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Not sure why the article goes into all the FAA rules. Other than for ease of domestic testing, these things are not really designed to be used in the US, but rather in countries that lack regular internet connectivity (which are unlikely to have any such rules anyway).
I'm somewhat critical if this is really even a possibility, but curious at least from a technical standpoint of how it might be done. Most specifically the power and transmission requirements along with weight restrictions that must be in place for the thing to work etc...