10 ms·
Facebook abandons Aquila, its internet drone
- alehul 8y agoThank you for changing the title, as I really cannot believe how deeply they buried that admission. > Given these developments, we've decided not to design or build our own aircraft any longer, and to close our facility in Bridgwater. It's literally one sentence, five paragraphs down, with a few more paragraphs afterwards.
- baybal2 8y agoTo distill the meaning further: >Making an airplane happened to be harder than running a clickfarm
- shawn 8y agoAnyone know how Project Loon is doing? It's been awhile since I've heard anything. https://x.company/loon/ https://x.company/loon/ It seemed similar.
- dingaling 8y agoThey made a major advance in the last couple of years by integrating real-time wind data to the flight planning. The baloons can 'loiter' much better now by changing altitude to drift back and forth over an area of interest.
- Gargoyle 8y agoGoogle balloons still show up on ASD-B (aircraft transponder tracking) from time to time, but beyond that I dunno.
- zymhan 8y agoYup, I saw one floating over Georgia recently. It floated over from the Caribbean.
- mikeyouse 8y agoIt looks like they're actively hiring to commercialize Loon, which seems like a good sign: https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/x/head-of-supply-chain-loon-x-google-building-41-1600-amphitheatre-2623620086 https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/x/head-of-supply-... > Preferred qualifications: > Have taken a telecommunications product or aerospace product from concept to mass production
- shaklee3 8y agoNot very well. They had a short span during the hurricane disasters where they got publicity, but they face a lot of the same problems: spectrum, movement, and small coverage areas.
- tiredwired 8y agoThey appear on https://www.flightradar24.com/ https://www.flightradar24.com/ once in a while. 3 in Northern Nevada right now.
- jpm_sd 8y agomy initial reaction to this news was "oh good, now Google can cancel Loon without feeling like they lost to Facebook"
- oh_sigh 8y agoIf Musk launches his satellite data mesh, would loon still have a place?
- wongarsu 8y agoThat's hard to tell at this point. From a pure physics standpoint, loon should be able to outperform satellites in urban areas and in receiver cost. I'm sceptical if that is enough to justify the project, but we don't know how Musk's satellites will perform yet
- kayoone 8y agoArguably no, but lets see if Musks plans are more than PR speak to build up hype. Right now, Google is way ahead.
- londons_explore 8y agoWith current designs, Musks satellies need special ground stations to communicate with. They can't beam internet direct to your phone. Loon can connect direct to your phone. Both will require a fairly decent set of base stations so the balloon/satellite itself can connect to the internet.
- jacknv7 8y agoHere is some info from my observations of the Google Loon activity out of Winnemucca, Nevada... https://desertfog.org/projects/project-loon/launch-activity/ https://desertfog.org/projects/project-loon/launch-activity/
- xevb3k 8y agoThe bridgwater team was based around the acquisition of a consultancy company 4 years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/28/facebook-buys-uk-maker-solar-powered-drones-internet https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/28/facebook-... I can’t find the exact story, but wasn’t there some recent news that they were mostly abandoning Free Basics/Internet.org? From what I can tell Free Basics seems to have been mostly a failure.
- chrischen 8y agoIt was overly obvious capitalist “altruism washing”. If they had just come out to say directly that they wanted to provide free internet so that they could monopolize emerging undeveloped markets it might have been better received.
- tw04 8y ago*if they had just offered bags of cash to local politicians in exchange for access to their constituents (like the US), this would've been a raging success.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ballenf 8y agoDon't underestimate how much PR is for persuading internal decision makers as much as the public. To outright admit the goal may make little difference to the public, but it might doom the project internally, with the board, or limit its ability to recruit talent cheaper. There's a lot of interesting research surrounding corporate responsibility policies and how they aid recruiting and may affect productivity of workers.
- bigiain 8y agoHmmm, I wonder if the golden handcuffs all fell off at 4 years, and everybody who was part of creating the project and technology has cashed out and left?
- 58x14 8y agoThere is no mention of low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite providers - SpaceX, OneWeb, Telesat, etc. SpaceX in particular promises gigabit speeds with minimal (sub 35ms) latency and global coverage within a decade. Perhaps HAPS systems may play a minor role in providing coverage in developing areas, but will likely be leapfrogged by satellite coverage.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoFacebook might still be salty with the Falcon 9’s rapid unscheduled disassembly on the pad with their communications satellite onboard. “Facebook has expressed disappointment in the loss of its Amos-6 communication satellite. The satellite was supposed to deliver broadband internet access to remote locations in Africa as part of the internet.org initiative. Facebook and satellite provider Eutelsat spent $95 million to license satellite’s Ka-band communications array for five years. The satellite is owned by Israel-based Spacecom.” https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/234845-spacex-falcon-9-explodes-on-launch-pad-destroying-facebook-communication-satellite https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/234845-spacex-falcon-9-e...
- defen 8y agoWould launch insurance cover this? I know it exists but I’m not familiar with how it works so maybe someone can correct me.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoInsurance did cover the loss, but by its marine cargo policy, not the launch insurance. That of course doesn’t cover the opportunity cost of Facebook not having its satellite in orbit. https://mobile.twitter.com/pbdes/status/771410879770456064 https://mobile.twitter.com/pbdes/status/771410879770456064 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/18011/was-amos-6-insured-for-pre-launch-operations https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/18011/was-amos-6-i...
- shaklee3 8y agoThere have been news about most of these. In general, they're all late. SpaceX was the last I saw that publicly stated the problem was harder than they expected, and it will be delayed an unknown amount.
- ironjunkie 8y agoI had to read this whole thing twice to find what it is all about. A lot of self-congratulatory corporate speak there. I wish companies could just clearly state what is going on sometimes. Then I'm not surprised, this is Facebook...
- frogpelt 8y agoI would be surprised if there wasn't corporate speak about it. Honestly, if you were running the corporation would you just boil it down to "We stopped building our Internet airplane thingy. Sorry y'all" ?
- omeid2 8y agoThere is plenty of honest closure notices, generally along the lines of "lessons learned", "goodbye", and such.
- JorgeGT 8y agoOr an honest post-mortem that explains the shortcomings of the proposed aircraft concept: design, aerodynamics, autonomous stationkeeping, RF comms, logistics, or whatever. The current trend of publishing positive results but completely hiding negative results is deeply harming to research and engineering, since it doesn't allow future attempts to learn from previous mistakes.
- slx26 8y agoThat's pretty much the first line I would write. And then I would continue explaining. If you can have both, start with honesty and not wasting people's time. You'll be more likely to earn it.
- tzakrajs 8y agoWouldn't the shutdown be the thesis of the memo?
- oh-kumudo 8y agoIt reads almost like they choose to shutdown because the program itself is too successful. The irony.
- lord_ring_111 8y agoSeems rational. I would not count on fb being abke to compete with fulltime airplane design companies when they started focusing on it. Fb instigated the market, others who are more capable are picking it up, so fb handed over the batton.
- mygo 8y agohow often does a company build entire research and development facilities and lobby regulators and be the first movers... just to instigate a market? If competition is the problem they’re not even acquiring a single company? And if it’s just insufficient tech instead of worry over competition, Facebook usually has no problem acquiring what it can’t develop. They even acquired oculus to step into VR. It would appear that there’s more to it than just that.
- lern_too_spel 8y agoThey didn't want to make an Internet drone. They wanted to make a Facebook drone. When Facebook Internet.org failed, this was sure to follow.
- lorenzobr 8y agoI think it would be difficult for Facebook to acquire Airbus :) http://www.airbus.com/defence/uav/zephyr.html http://www.airbus.com/defence/uav/zephyr.html
- throwawaymath 8y agoHah. The actual title, "High altitude connectivity: the next chapter" and the admission that the project is actually shutting down remind me of Google's corp-speak drenched blog post about Google Fiber, "Advancing our amazing bet": https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-bet.html?m=1 https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-b...
- microcolonel 8y agoThat's not the case though, they are shifting to external vendors rather than developing their own aircraft.
- shaklee3 8y agoThat's the same as shutting down.
- taneq 8y agoWell, not really. It's more like Apple going into partnership with VW for their self-driving car project. Building a production vehicle is a massive distraction from the core project (ie. the self-driving software).
- mtgx 8y agoNah, Google also did the same with its End-to-End encryption extension for Gmail. They "didn't abandon it", they just "allowed the community to take it from there". Yeah, so they abandoned it.
- thinkcontext 8y agoThe "it" they abandoned is the aircraft, they will continue to work on connectivity. They mention working with Airbus, they have a drone that has stayed aloft for 14 days. It seems like FB decided that they weren't making enough progress on building their own aircraft to justify not using someone else's technology for that piece of the overall project.
- anonu 8y agoI skimmed over that post. I had to go through it twice to see where they actually were admitting defeat. Was buried in the middle of the second to last paragraph.
- milesf 8y agoIridium has finished launching their Low Earth Orbit satellite system using SpaceX's Falcon 9 http://www.spacex.com/news/2018/05/22/iridium-6grace-fo-mission http://www.spacex.com/news/2018/05/22/iridium-6grace-fo-miss...
- wmf 8y agoIt's not finished yet and Iridium will never be cheap enough for the developing world.
- etaioinshrdlu 8y agoI helped them in some of their achievements mentioned there. The amount of organizational ADD was staggering. They could actually achieve things when they focused long enough to finish them, which was pretty rare. They are kind of crazy people. But they do have a lot of money to play with.
- walterbell 8y agoWhat could they have done better?
- etaioinshrdlu 8y agoThey are sort of a skunkworks lab. So it's natural to abandon lots of ideas after a short time. Trouble is that they even abandon their wild ideas that work. Everyone involved felt like all the middle managers were on a mission to impress Zuck and not much else.
- walterbell 8y agoWhat did we all do before middle managers were invented? New skunkworks project: Create new org role (and matching business school curriculum) for communication and synthesis, rather than hierarchical packet filtering.
- rmrfrmrf 8y agoPossible fallout from Brexit. Not much point in global companies setting up shop in the UK these days.
- imdsm 8y agoReally? How did you come to that conclusion?
- geden 8y agoBecause the country has humiliated itself on the world stage, proved to be run by a scabby band of self interested morons and half populated by backwards facing gullable isolationists, willing to burn 50 years of hard won progress and risk destablishing Europe, just at the point where we face huge global environmental and economic challenges, at a time when it’s clear that working togther is of paramount importance. Just a guess :)
- JoeDaDude 8y agoYea, the USA is in bad shape now, but I think the OP was talking about the UK. ;)
- pjc50 8y agoAs Airbus and BMW have recently pointed out, nobody can say what the customs regime is going to be in either direction. Nobody can say what the immigration regime is going to be either, but there are hints that it will be even more onerous. And that's without considering the less likely but still possible disaster scenarios of the government's own planning: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-deal-food-medicine-shortage-doomsday-armageddon-david-davis-a8381076.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-no-dea...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ademi 8y agoDoes anyone know why opting aircrafts instead of satellites ?
- cup-of-tea 8y agoGeostationary satellites are a long way away. Twice as far out as GPS satellites. You need a big dish to communicate with them.
- dboreham 8y agoRockets Expensive.
- wongarsu 8y agoBecause satellite internet already exists and apparently didn't fully solve the problem. Better satellite internet would help. But the best way to do that is to fly the satellites lower, which means you need a lot more of them. Unless you happen to own the cheapest space launch service on the market that's hard to do, so only Elon Musk is really pursuing that path. Aircraft on the other hand are kind of like really close satellites that are cheap to refuel. Satellites (that aren't geostationary) are all or nothing: you either cover the entire globe or it isn't very useful. Other aircraft are easy to keep over one select area
- ademi 8y agoWhy using aircrafts instead of satellite?
- ademi 8y agoWhy not satellites instead of aircrafts?
- Flenser 8y agoDo Facebook have any patents on HAPS technology? If so, are they going to make a patent grant so anyone else can use them?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- xg15 8y agoNow please let's do the same for Wired (and similar) - who not just present you with an opt-out tool designed to maximize the number of clicks you have to do, but they even admit in the tool that half of their partners are not even possible to opt-out of.
- rblion 8y agoSomewhere the Eye of Zauron is watching...
- telltruth 8y agowow... what happened to hacker ethos? Facebook has hired the executive BSers who are expert at buryieng actual news in a single line deep in the pile of executive bullshitting. For me that's the real news here than closing down Aquila.
- telltruth 8y agoAlso the fact that they should rightfully be ashamed about shutting down this moonshot. It's super amusing that these companies are sitting on billions of dollars that they don't know what to do with and essentially running hedge fund instead of investing for next technical breakthroughs. My guess is that guys working on this project have moved on and no one else has enough passion to run it. But seriously, I can think of two dozen folks who would be happy to dedicate their lives to this project. Saying that aerospace is companies would take u the slack is pure fantasy given tight budgets and general lack of risk tacking there.
- telltruth 8y agoHere is the post on AirBus partnership by same guy. Again virtually information-less and 99% full of corp-speak. Can't believe such a corporate suit is FB's director of engineering of all things. Is Zuck finally not recognizing talent anymore? https://code.facebook.com/posts/2265698886989780/facebook-and-airbus-working-together-to-advance-high-altitude-connectivity/ https://code.facebook.com/posts/2265698886989780/facebook-an...
- mathattack 8y agoThis is definitely an instance of burying the lead. Perhaps the audience isn’t HN, rather it’s the engineers they want to keep engaged after their project got sacked.
- 394549 8y ago> This is definitely an instance of burying the lead. Perhaps the audience isn’t HN, rather it’s the engineers they want to keep engaged after their project got sacked. As an engineer, having to parse a bunch of corpspeak to extract the buried lede that my project was canned is not going to keep me engaged. If they want to keep people engaged, they need to be clear and upfront about what's happening now and what's happening next. I worked at a company that hid a layoff announcement in a self-congratulatory email about positive quarterly financial results. I wasn't personally laid off, but communicating in that way lowered my opinion of the executive management.
- mathattack 8y agoGood point. There’s a fine line between a pep talk and losing credibility.