Facebook's Drone Has Second Flight and Lands Successfully

[monkeymagick]

Aquila, the first functional drone aircraft from Facebook, took on its second successful test flight at a total flight time of 1 hr and 46 minutes. The drone flew above 3,000 feet and successfully landed this time as opposed to the crash after the first test flight. The goal of the drone is to potentially provide internet access in remote locations while powered by solar for a weeks at a time.

Check out the flight and landing below.

...this new process, which included locking the propellers horizontally to reduce damage, worked mostly as designed - though only one propeller on the craft actually locked horizontally, while the rest remained vertical until landing, as you can see in the clip above. All four motors stopped as intended, however, and the craft landed softly on a gravel surface, resulting in "a few minor, easily repairable dings," which is a much better result than they had the first time around.

 

[daglesj]

Hmmm a good way to normalise drones hovering above the population. Very convenient.

 

[AK0tA]

This is one of the stupidest things ever. Yeah research great, moving forward great, internet to poor people in the remote jungle dumb. Fb wants them, they don't want or need us.
For the cost and research in this project they could have put a mesh net over the entire earth to give coverage. Do not us people who live in remote areas have the right to not have our sky littered with facebook trash.

 

[B00nie]

The goal is to spy and data mine even the remote locations. We live in sick times.

The amount of people who use Facebook sickens me. The amount of people who place political or opinionated comments to public using their Facebook profiles (combined with their place of work) makes me lose my hope for humanitys survival.

People are so mind bogglingly dumb that they probably deserve Facebook.

 

[zkostik]

The goal is to spy and data mine even the remote locations. We live in sick times.

The amount of people who use Facebook sickens me. The amount of people who place political or opinionated comments to public using their Facebook profiles (combined with their place of work) makes me lose my hope for humanitys survival.

People are so mind bogglingly dumb that they probably deserve Facebook.

Amen! Twitter and Instagram are even worse.

 

[Deleted member 93354]

This is a thin edge high aspect ratio wings. Which is highly efficient as most of the lift occurs close the leading edge, especially at lower velocities. (And why gliders use such a design)

There's a problem with this design though. You get into a little tuffit of weather, and you could have a problem on your hands as the airflow becomes unstable and hard to recover without elevators. This is why the Germans abandoned it, and why the B-2 uses high end computers to control it.

Still a very impressive and might feat. Keeping something aloft with sunlight it just amazing and at the edges of what is theoretically possible.

Drag Force + Lift Power= Power Required to keep aircraft aloft.
Drag Force = Coefficient of drag * surface area * Velocity*Velocity
Lift Power = m*g which breaks out into 1/2pV^2 * surface area

It breaks out into a cubed equation listed here.
http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node97.html

 

[Mohonri]

Cool technology. But here's my question: What's the advantage of this over loading a trailer with a generator, a cell phone tower, and a satellite uplink, and parking it in the area where you want to provide service?

 

[Deleted member 93354]

Cool technology. But here's my question: What's the advantage of this over loading a trailer with a generator, a cell phone tower, and a satellite uplink, and parking it in the area where you want to provide service?

Because as Dish proved, Satellite based internet service is slow and expensive. (And unreliable at times)

 

[Spire3660]

Because as Dish proved, Satellite based internet service is slow and expensive. (And unreliable at times)

Not for long. There are at least 2 low earth orbit networks being planned right now ,utilizing several thousand microsats.. Aquila is already dead.

 

[Mohonri]

Because as Dish proved, Satellite based internet service is slow and expensive. (And unreliable at times)

So where is the drone getting its internet to share with all the people below it?

 

[serpretetsky]

So where is the drone getting its internet to share with all the people below it?

duh... it flies to the nearest ISP, offloads the data, and then flies back to the client with new data. Even I knew that one.

 

[Zepher]

So where is the drone getting its internet to share with all the people below it?

It comes from space

 

[termite]

Bah, "internet for remote areas" my ass. They'll be shooting laser guided "Like's" at people from the air, you watch.

 

[likeman]

so not to damage the blades and the motors , it would of been best if they could of set the blades to go Flat when lading so they don't impact the ground

 

[Mohonri]

so not to damage the blades and the motors , it would of been best if they could of set the blades to go Flat when lading so they don't impact the ground

That's the intent, and they're trying to do it, but it only worked for one of the motors on this test.