The ground is not enough for some of the biggest tech companies anymore. They have taken the internet drive airborne.
In a bid to make Internet services more accessible to users, Facebook and Google are investing in rival efforts to launch drones into stratosphere, to heights twice as high as airplanes can fly.
Facebook said it aims at building a network of laser-beaming drones that will tightly circle known black spots.
Google on the other hand has a drone project plan and the company is more open about an attempt to send “strings” of giant balloons circumnavigating the globe to provide persistent data links to the parts of the planet they pass.
Although the schemes may both seem far-fetched, brains at both tech giants say they are convinced they have a real shot at connecting 57% of the world’s population which is still offline.
Engineering chief, Jay Parikh, argues that Facebook has made considerable progress with the end of the year the main target.
“It has not flown yet. But added that he hopes the first drone will be airborne before the year’s end.”
The drone tagged Aquila 1 was built recently in Somerset, England before being shipped to a secret test site. Aquila 1 is wider than a Boeing 737 jet but looks quite different, since there’s no need to carry passengers or a pilot.
Some of its giant features are thin layers of foam covered in carbon fibre, with four propellers attached.
“The whole structure is 142ft (43m) wide but weighs less than a Toyota Prius.
“The structure and stiffness of the plane is all in the carbon fibre of the wing and that supports everything, the [internet-providing] payload, the batteries, and the solar panels on top,” Parikh explains.
The objective is to build a fleet of the drones with radio transmitters fitted underneath to beam data across a 100 mile representing 160km diameter zone below.
Terminals on the ground would use the signals to provide the internet to people’s computers.
Facebook wants the drones to stay aloft for three months at a time (the current record is about a fortnight.)
“The analogy that we have come up with is this: If I took a US dime [18mm in diameter] and I walked 11 miles away from you, and then you had a laser in your hand, you would have to hit that dime.
“And by the way, these are not stationary targets – these are moving.
“So, we have to do this and keep this pointed and connected while the one point and the other point are moving. It’s pretty freaking hard,” Parikh quipped.
Facebook has tested the innovation in its California labs, but making it work 27km above ground will not be easy.
Google on the other hand aims to employ balloons for a similar purpose. The plan is to pump helium in and out of bags fastened to the balloons’ outer plastic envelopes. The objective being to find winds that will take them in the desired direction.
This plan is called Project Loon and it has been taking to the skies since June 2013.
According to Project Loon, Vice President, Mike Cassidy “We’ve flown almost 1,000 balloons at this point. We’ve flown almost 20 million kilometers around the world. One of our balloons went around the world 19 times.”
It said, the balloons travel with the winds, along an easterly or westerly latitude.
Rather than working hard to station the balloon over one spot, Google’s target is to create a circular sequence where as one goes out of range of antennas on the ground, another takes its place, providing a continuous internet connection.
Google has however struggled regularly to keep its balloons aloft for 150 days.
“Even a millimeter-sized hole in a balloon will bring it down in a few days.
“So, you need to study every phase of the process from manufacturing to packaging to shipping to launch. We just slowly found the holes by failure analysis, Cassidy said.
Credit -Post Nigeria
This is some serious tech rivalry. LOL
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