Facebook formed its Connectivity Lab earlier this year. Dovetailing with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s new venture, Internet.org, its goal is to build and launch a fleet of solar-powered drones that can connect the billions of people currently living off the grid to the internet.1 It arrived just a month before Google agreed to acquire Titan Aerospace, a startup that makes its own solar-powered drones, and according to Maguire, such projects are a long way from success. There are substantial operational, technical, and regulatory hurdles these companies with have to overcome before any of their technologies can, well, take flight.
