It’s … an unmanned drone that can beam Internet to developing countries!

Facebook is reportedly in talks to purchase a company called Titan Aerospace, which makes solar-powered drones that can fly around without needing to land for five years. These drones may be used as satellites to project free Internet to developing nations from outer space.

You may recall that Google has a similar plan to bring Internet to the world via balloons, dubbed Project Loon.

If the plan goes through, Facebook would build 11,000 of its “SOLARA 60” model unmanned flying machines (show in the YouTube video below) and launch them into the air to become “atmospheric satellites.” That means that they’re just like orbital satellites but can also monitor weather, aid with disaster recovery, photograph the Earth and, yes, act as flying Internet providers.

They work like this: You launch them into the air at night using power from internal batteries. After the sun rises, they can store enough energy to zoom up to over 65,000 feet above sea level. Then, crazily enough, they just sort of stay there for five years. Like the cobwebs on your ceiling fan that you will never clean. Or that dude who switched majors a lot in college.

Why is CEO Mark Zuckerberg willing to fork over a reported $60 million so he can get the citizens of developing nations online? The company’s official reason, as TechCrunch reports, relates to Facebook’s grand plan to bring Internet service to the approximately 5 billion people in developing countries who don’t have it yet, via its nonprofit initiative Internet.org.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some money to be made for Zuck and Facebook. After all, the phrase “developing nations” is public relations code for “emerging markets.” In other words, hook ’em first, using these Internet drones, and they’ll be Facebook fans for life.

You may be wondering: Is it legal for Facebook to just launch a bunch of flying machines over Africa and have them chill there for five years? Sort of! Because these drones are deemed satellites and they’re being launched to a height above the official U.S. Class A airspace (about 60,000 feet), the country isn’t able to regulate them. Obviously this law will be different in, say, Africa (where Facebook reportedly aims to launch the program first). 

And … that’s it for our peek into the imminent and unsettling future of technology for the day. Unmanned flying vehicles and balloons will zip around above us, beaming the Internet, and tech CEOs will smash drones against their new boats instead of champagne bottles.

Meanwhile, I’ll just be sitting here waiting for someone to stream me a live television event that doesn’t buffer.