Facebook (FB) is working on drones that will fly for years and be as big as 747s.
The Facebook drones will fly 17 miles above the Earth and provide Wi-Fi to the people of the world without internet. The social media comapny plans to use solar technology to allow these drones to stay in the air for months and years at a time, reports The Telegraph.
While Facebook’s idea seems interesting to say the least, it could run into several regulation issues. The first issue is that the drones wouldn’t have any human pilots. This would be a problem as current regulations demand that one person must be operating an aircraft. There is also the issue of how high up the aircraft will be as there currently isn’t much in the way of regulations for flying at that height, The Telegraph notes.
“In order for us to fly these planes — unmanned planes that have to fly for months, or perhaps years at a time — we actually have to fly above the weather, above all airspace,” Yael Maguire, Facebook’s engineering director at its Connectivity Lab, told The Verge.
