The hardest thing about Google X’s Project Loon hasn’t been the engineering challenge of beaming high-speed internet down to the far-flung corners of the world from 60,000 feet up in the sky, explained Richard DeVaul, the founder of the moonshot project. It’s trying to control all those freaking balloons.
DeVaul, sporting a pair of Google Glass onstage at the Smithsonian’s “Future Is Here” event this weekend, gave us a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse at one of the secretive lab’s most high-profile snafus.
“I can tell you about one of the unexpected things that happened,” he said. “We created mass UFO sightings across the US.”
DeVaul revealed to the public for the first time the once-unidentified flying object. It was the “Falcon 11,” a 120-foot long transparent mylar balloon made in-house at the secret Google X lab.
“This is a balloon that went rogue,” DeVaul said.
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