Facebook Cancels Program To Deliver Internet By Aquila Drones (ieee.org)

Wave723 shares a report from IEEE Spectrum: Facebook's plans to beam high-speed Internet from enormous solar-powered drones in the stratosphere appear to be in disarray. Two key engineers behind its Aquila drones have left the company, and it recently cancelled plans for a secret high-altitude flight campaign at Spaceport America, possibly because Facebook no longer has any aircraft available to deploy.

A trove of emails between Facebook and Spaceport America, obtained under New Mexico public records law and first reported by Business Insider, details the painstaking process of turning a site for rockets and spaceplanes into a testbed for some of the largest drones in the world.

Comments

Let me just be the first to say:

[olsmeister]

Shocker.

Re: Let me just be the first to say:

[Anonymous Coward]

It's almost like this shit is hard to do in real life with all of the bullshit life throws in the way.

Re:Let me just be the first to say:

[Anonymous Coward]

pointy haired boss is even more shocked.

Re:Let me just be the first to say:

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue is they should have been tequila drones.

Re: Let me just be the first to say:

[Anonymous Coward]

One in the pink, four in the stink!

SubjectIsSubject

[p0p0]

"The humans have become aware of our data collection techniques. We must put on hold our attempts to contact the mothership."
- Mark "definitely not a space lizard" Zuckerberg

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[PolygamousRanchKid]

"The humans have become aware of our data collection techniques. We must put on hold our attempts to contact the mothership."

Well, I guess my new sig is appropriate here . . .

Hey, it worked for Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day . . .

Re:SubjectIsSubject

[Anonymous Coward]

Christine Fitzgerald, a brilliant and gifted healer, who was a close friend and confidant of Diana for nine years was one person to whom Diana told stories of the Queen Mother. Because of Christine’s understanding of the esoteric, Diana was able to talk to her about matters she would not dare to share with anyone else for fear of being called crazy. Her nicknames for the Windsors were “the lizards” and “the reptiles” and she used to say in all seriousness: “They’re not human”.
Diana told Christine that the Queen Mother was the power behind the Windsors, along with Prince Philip, but, Philip was subordinate in the hierarchy to the Queen.
“Diana used to tell me that the Queen Mother was evil”, Christine Fitzgerald said, “She actually used that word, evil. She said she hated the Queen Mother and the Queen Mother hated her.”
During her time at Clarence House, before the wedding, Diana told Christine she was being given drugs like Valium. “They drugged her”, Christine said, “I’m sure of it. They had her doped from the start.”

Devastated

[dohzer]

All my internet hopes and dreams... crushed!

Re:Devastated

[Tsolias]

I hope you have a fat deposit of playboys until the next internet messiah gets spawned.

maybe there's another solution

[Tsolias]

if the drone solution failed, maybe you wanna try porting it to 3D... this worked for a lot of games that I used to play back in 1999.
have you tried 3D printers?
I'd suggest using VR or AR, but it would be so high, that noone will be able to see it.
anyhow, such a great idea and it goes to waste. You can still make some money off of it on kickstarter. I know a good fake director if you need one.

Re:maybe there's another solution

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't use drones, you can always go back to old fashioned RFC1149.

FB with their own telecom

[Anonymous Coward]

would be the same end result as Columbian cartels trying to launch their own comms satellites.

Spaceport America!

[Anonymous Coward]

A spaceport to nowhere!

Your first stop on a journey that won't take you to the moon, the planets and the distant stars!

Re:Spaceport America!

[Anonymous Coward]

In 2007, New Mexico’s then-Governor Bill Richardson (Democrat) promised that the spaceport would yield 5,000 new jobs, and up to $1 billion in new revenue. Just like Obamacare, a big fucking lie - but it made him feel good. God damn Progressives.

Not feasable solution long term

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Google and their balloons the ideal of drones doing stable long term was a ideal that should have never started. Satellite internet right now the only really good solution. besides running fiber to several nodes and providing public wifi access.

Re:Not feasable solution long term

[Anonymous Coward]

This what happens when you let Silly-con Valley come up with ideas.

Re:Not feasable solution long term

[Anonymous Coward]

This what happens when you let Silly-con Valley come up with ideas.

They didn't. Google bought New Mexico company Titan Aerospace then ran the company into the ground. I lived in Albuquerque at the time and they tried to recruit me because of my DO-178 experience. I passed and thankfully dodged that bullet.

Could it have to do with the Telco....

[Your Average Joe]

you know this would be a large disruption to the AT&T surveillance program at the NSA...

Re:Could it have to do with the Telco....

[Desler]

No, it has nothing to do with that since this was going to be for providing internet access to places outside of the US.

Re:Could it have to do with the Telco....

[Anonymous Coward]

How so? This was for remote parts of the world with no internet access. The US is not the whole world, FYI.

At least balloons stay airborne ~forever

[raymorris]

Compared to planes and helicopters, at least balloons stay aloft without burning fuel constantly, running out pretty quickly.

Re:At least balloons stay airborne ~forever

[Anonymous Coward]

This particular aircraft was intended to stay on station for 90 days at a time due to its use of solar power (and at 90k daytime altitude clouds aren't an issue).

I don't know what limited it to 90 days, though, but I would assume that's got to be longer than what a balloon would get. The problem with balloons is that they need fuel to stay on station and that gives them an endurance like an airplane.

dom

Data collector

[Purevoice]

Mark the private data miner. imagine how much data that could have been scraped if they had gone through with this internet project Latest Nigerian Entertainment News

Just like the earlier story about renegging on ads

[Anonymous Coward]

Two-Face-Book makes some press announcement to garner some positive media attention, but when it is time to deliver, it's a different story.

I hear next they're going to cure cancer, or more exactly, claim to cure cancer real soon now...

Too bad the press has absolutely no memory of things they don't want to remember.

You don't say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is anyone surprised? I think we will look back at the period of Silicon Valley this idea was bourne from as the height of narcisisstic billionaires with stupid and patently exploitative ideas. Then again, Musk may still have some crazy in the tank. :/

Only defense contractors doing HAPS

[Anonymous Coward]

No new serious HAPS/HALE UAV makers right now. Major defense contractor BAe has Zephyr coming online but that isn't (in theory at least) as good as Facebook's Aquila or Google's Titan. At least through some BACN on that Zephyr...

On the plus side though, Aquila's lasercomm gear becoming available to other makers would be hot stuff though...