Facebook’s Solar Powered Wi-Fi Providing Plane Completes Second Successful Flight
As if Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t already changed the world enough by completely revolutionizing the way that people communicate, his efforts have continued to change the world in other revolutionary ways. This kind of stuff is really the way of the future and if you haven’t heard about it yet, you’d better strap yourself in because what the Zuck has been up to lately is a project that I personally guarantee will blow your mind wide open!
As you might’ve heard in the rumor mill, there have been talks about Facebook getting into the game of providing internet instead of just being one of the top three sites for existing internet users. The goal here is to not only be a new internet provider but also help to reach out to the other half of the world’s population that has yet to receive internet connectivity. As someone who lives day today in America, it’s really easy to take for granted the connectivity that we have while forgetting that for every person who has internet, there is another person who doesn’t. How is that going to change?
With a project known as “Aquila,” the goal is to build an unmanned aircraft that will fly for months at a time, acting as a sort of wi-fi drone to provide internet connectivity to the masses.
Zuckerberg tells us that “When Aquila is ready, it will be a fleet of solar-powered planes that will beam internet connectivity across the world. Today, more than half the world’s population — 4 billion people — still can’t access the internet. One day, Aquila will help change that.”
From the days of Facebook getting rolling in a dorm room, we’d venture to say that the business model has expanded quite a bit to become something that truly changes history. Just think about that – how many people get to say that they completely changed the way that the world operates?
This time, we check out a video of the craft’s second successful flight, lasting almost two hours! It certainly is a work in progress, but exploring this new frontier could really pack a punch for the better.
When telling us about his progress with it all, Zuckerberg elaborates, saying that “In this test, it flew for 1 hour and 46 minutes over the desert and landed smoothly near Yuma, Arizona. We successfully gathered a lot of data to help us optimize Aquila’s efficiency. No one has ever built an unmanned airplane that will fly for months at a time, so we need to tune every detail to get this right.”
Check out the video below that shows you a step in the process that could look a lot like something that you’ll eventually see slicing through the skies one day, providing the world with connectivity like never before.
https://www.facebook.com/zuck/videos/10103841456831511/
