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Facebook Completes First Test Flights of its Solar-Powered Aquila Internet Drone

posted by cmn32480 on Monday July 25 2016, @11:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the kiss-the-rest-of-your-privacy-goodbye dept.

"exec" writes:

Up in the sky, look! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a solar-powered internet drone!

http://www.computerworld.com/article/3098912/internet/facebook-completes-first-test-flights-of-solar-powered-aquila-internet-drone.html

Facebook has revealed that it has completed the first successful flight of it's Aquila drone, which it hopes will eventually be used to provide internet access to remote regions of the world. The company, which has been testing a one-fifth scale version of the drone for months, initially hoped to fly the full-sized aircraft for 30 minutes, but far exceeded that goal.

[...]

What exactly is Aquila? Just an unmanned, solar-powered, internet-providing drone from Facebook. Yasmeen Abutaleb shares the important background information:

Facebook...completed a successful test flight of a solar-powered drone that...will help it extend internet connectivity to every corner of the planet.
...
Aquila, Facebook's lightweight, high-altitude aircraft, flew at a few thousand feet for 96 minutes in Yuma, Arizona...The company ultimately hopes to have a fleet of Aquilas that can fly for at least three months at a time at 60,000 feet...and communicate with each other to deliver internet access.

-- submitted from IRC

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday July 25 2016, @04:16PM

    by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Monday July 25 2016, @04:16PM (#379877)

    By the Alan Parsons Project
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_%28song%29 [wikipedia.org]

    "
    I am the eye in the sky
    Looking at you
    I can read your mind
    I am the maker of rules
    Dealing with fools
    I can cheat you blind
    ...
    "

    Wow, who says life doesn't imitate art?

    While I agree this kind of drone tech could be useful in some situations like air quality monitoring, providing communications and Internet access to rural and disaster area, etc.. I also know that this tech WILL be abused at some point and used against the average person. How many people want to bet that eventually these drones will have high res cameras added to their equipment list to "assist" LEO's in enforcing the Peace?

    --
    "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
    Starting Score:    1  point
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