Facebook Is Testing a Solar-Powered Internet-Beaming Drone
Imagine looking up at the sky and seeing a 900 lb. drone the size of Boeing 737 moving in slow circles 11 miles above you. As part of Facebook’s plan to provide Internet access to the 4 billion people who currently lack it, that could soon be the reality for the 10 percent of Earth’s population that lives far from cell towers or fiber optic lines.
Researchers at Facebook’s Connectivity Lab, a division of Facebook’s Internet.org, announced yesterday that the first such drone has been completed as a step toward building a larger fleet. The craft hasn’t been flown yet, but Facebook has been testing versions one-tenth the size over the U.K. and plans on beginning flight tests of the full-size craft before the end of this year.
Related: 12 Weird Uses for Drones
The drone, termed Aquila (Latin for “Eagle), is a solar-powered V-shaped carbon fiber craft that will carry equipment such as solar panels and communications gear that can beam down wireless Internet connectivity. Lacking wheels or the ability to climb, the drone will be launched using helium balloons and will be able to fly for 90 days at a time.
One of the biggest breakthroughs in the project has been the team developing a way to increase the data capacity of the lasers involved. The new system allows a ground-based laser to transmit information to a dome on the underside of the plane at 10 GB per second, about 10 times faster than previously thought possible.
Facebook’s mission isn’t without controversy. Worldwide, critics have been questioning many of Internet.org’s practices on privacy, fairness and security grounds. Those opponents fear that users of Internet.org might be monitored through state-run telecoms, in some cases allowing countries to spy on and repress their citizens. In addition, first-time users of the Internet might confuse Facebook for the entire Internet and only receive news and information from the one site.
The flack Internet.org is receiving isn’t the only problem Facebook has to deal with. Rival Google also has a project in the works to bring wireless Internet to rural communities. Their program, called “Project Loon,” involves high-altitude helium balloons that have transmitters attached to them. Although the project hasn’t been launched yet, it’s in more advanced stages than Aquila.
Watch the video from Facebook’s Connectivity Lab:
Chart of the Day: Boosting Corporate Tax Revenues
The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.
Chart of the Day: Discretionary Spending Droops
The federal government’s total non-defense discretionary spending – which covers everything from education and national parks to veterans’ medical care and low-income housing assistance – equals 3.2% of GDP in 2020, near historic lows going back to 1962, according to an analysis this week from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Chart of the Week: Trump Adds $4.7 Trillion in Debt
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated this week that President Trump has now signed legislation that will add a total of $4.7 trillion to the national debt between 2017 and 2029. Tax cuts and spending increases account for similar portions of the projected increase, though if the individual tax cuts in the 2017 Republican overhaul are extended beyond their current expiration date at the end of 2025, they would add another $1 trillion in debt through 2029.
Chart of the Day: The Long Decline in Interest Rates
Are interest rates destined to move higher, increasing the cost of private and public debt? While many experts believe that higher rates are all but inevitable, historian Paul Schmelzing argues that today’s low-interest environment is consistent with a long-term trend stretching back 600 years.
The chart “shows a clear historical downtrend, with rates falling about 1% every 60 years to near zero today,” says Bloomberg’s Aaron Brown. “Rates do tend to revert to a mean, but that mean seems to be declining.”
Chart of the Day: Drug Price Plans Compared
Lawmakers are considering three separate bills that are intended to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. Here’s an overview of the proposals, from a series of charts produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation this week. An interesting detail highlighted in another chart: 88% of voters – including 92% of Democrats and 85% of Republicans – want to give the government the power to negotiate prices with drug companies.
