
Facebook abandons Aquila, its internet drone - ajuhasz
https://code.facebook.com/posts/190457848334738
======
alehul
Thank 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
To distill the meaning further:

>Making an airplane happened to be harder than running a clickfarm

------
ironjunkie
I 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
I 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
There is plenty of honest closure notices, generally along the lines of
"lessons learned", "goodbye", and such.

~~~
JorgeGT
Or 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.

------
throwawaymath
Hah. 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-b...](https://fiber.googleblog.com/2016/10/advancing-our-amazing-
bet.html?m=1)

~~~
andyidsinga
haha - right out of the Veridian Dynamics playbook :)

edit: see also - Jabberwocky [http://www.veridian-
dynamics.org/jabberwocky.php](http://www.veridian-
dynamics.org/jabberwocky.php)

~~~
NatW
Thanks for the link. I like their disclaimer:

>Here at Veridian Dynamics, we care about you. That's why, by visiting this
site, you agree to suspend all of your rights. Because we care.

------
xevb3k
The bridgwater team was based around the acquisition of a consultancy company
4 years ago:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/28/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/28/facebook-
buys-uk-maker-solar-powered-drones-internet)

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
It 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
__*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.

------
etaioinshrdlu
I 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
What could they have done better?

~~~
etaioinshrdlu
They 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
What 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._

------
shawn
Anyone 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.

~~~
oh_sigh
If Musk launches his satellite data mesh, would loon still have a place?

~~~
londons_explore
With 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.

------
anonu
I 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.

------
lord_ring_111
Seems 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
how 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
They 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.

------
58x14
There 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
Facebook 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-e...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/234845-spacex-
falcon-9-explodes-on-launch-pad-destroying-facebook-communication-satellite)

~~~
defen
Would launch insurance cover this? I know it exists but I’m not familiar with
how it works so maybe someone can correct me.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Insurance 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-i...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/18011/was-
amos-6-insured-for-pre-launch-operations)

------
xg15
Now 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.

------
mathattack
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.

~~~
394549
> 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
Good point. There’s a fine line between a pep talk and losing credibility.

------
Flenser
Do Facebook have any patents on HAPS technology? If so, are they going to make
a patent grant so anyone else can use them?

------
telltruth
wow... 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
Here 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-
an...](https://code.facebook.com/posts/2265698886989780/facebook-and-airbus-
working-together-to-advance-high-altitude-connectivity/)

------
milesf
Iridium 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-
miss...](http://www.spacex.com/news/2018/05/22/iridium-6grace-fo-mission)

~~~
wmf
It's not finished yet and Iridium will never be cheap enough for the
developing world.

------
ademi
Does anyone know why opting aircrafts instead of satellites ?

~~~
wongarsu
Because 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

------
rblion
Somewhere the Eye of Zauron is watching...

------
rmrfrmrf
Possible fallout from Brexit. Not much point in global companies setting up
shop in the UK these days.

~~~
imdsm
Really? How did you come to that conclusion?

~~~
geden
Because 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
Yea, the USA is in bad shape now, but I think the OP was talking about the UK.
;)

------
ademi
Why using aircrafts instead of satellite?

------
ademi
Why not satellites instead of aircrafts?

