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.

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 . . .

Devastated

[dohzer]

All my internet hopes and dreams... crushed!

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:Not feasable solution long term

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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.

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