Google and Facebook goes for altitude - Curt Lewis

Google, Facebook in race to build high-altitude aircraft

MOUNTAIN VIEW -- Its visionary founder is in prison. Its most heralded invention crash-landed in the New Mexico desert this spring. 

Titan Aerospace, bought by Google last year, is experiencing some turbulence on its way to the stratosphere.

In its quest to build a solar-powered drone that can beam the Internet down to Earth from 12 miles above, Titan is racing to beat a sleek rival, Facebook's boomerang-shaped Aquila plane, which is complete and awaiting testing over the United States.

Tech giants Google and Facebook are dabbling in experimental aviation for the same reason they have invested in undersea cables and communications satellites: They hope to connect a larger portion of the world's people to the wonders -- and advertising -- of the Internet. But of all the risky "moonshot" experiments Silicon Valley is throwing money at this year, few seem as odd and starry-eyed as the race to dominate the cold, lonely reaches between the highest commercial jets and disintegrating meteors.

"There's not a whole lot up there," said Brian Wynne, president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International. "It's really cold, so the operational environment is pretty harsh. The idea is you can get -- particularly using solar -- real endurance out there and fly for months on end."