What 20 pound load could have saved the Titanic? Why wouldn't such a miraculous tool or part have been brought aboard already as a precaution?
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Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
61–70 of 145 posts
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Binoculars.
or coffee for the watchers :)
Maybe a gigantic one of these? https://youtu.be/0xzN6FM5x_E?t=9
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Without a VERY dense detection infrastructure, catching these things is not going to happen. Not really, Where it matters, radars have been deployed that can easily find those things. I've seen live demonstrations in the mid 1980s (as in, a system protecting borders), and I bet the state of the art has advanced since then. IIRC it was a SAR system, but I'm not sure. > Furthermore even though these lasers are very c…
> I've seen live demonstrations in the mid 1980s (as in, a system protecting borders), and I bet the state of the art has advanced since then. Yup, long stare SAR hooked up to a DVR was a thing over 10 years ago - it could cover a lot of ground (like a large Iraqi city) with a resolution that would easily detect this drone.
Are these the overhead not-quite-satellites you're talking about ? That would require a drone every 5 km or so.
Not - one drone. A drone in the air 24/7 every 5km for a border ~2000 km long.
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've seen live demonstrations in the mid 1980s (as in, a system protecting borders), and I bet the state of the art has advanced since then. Yup, long stare SAR hooked up to a DVR was a thing over 10 years ago - it could cover a lot of ground (like a large Iraqi city) with a resolution that would easily detect this drone.
Are these the overhead not-quite-satellites you're talking about ? That would require a drone every 5 km or so. Not - one drone. A drone in the air 24/7 every 5km for a border ~2000 km long.
The system I saw 30 years ago were more ground based and covered tens to hundreds of KMs.
But even if you need a drone every 5km (you don't). That's all of 400 drones, 800 if you want to have pairs doing charge-work duty. For an 2000km border guarding operation, that's really not much. An order of magnitude or two cheaper than the fence they would guard.
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#65Once this (cool) tech is commonplace (they already have competitors) these airborne drones will be a logistical and regulatory nightmare.
Nah, once there are established rules about which classes of aircraft use which altitudes, corridors, etc, it will be just like private aviation operating in the same sky as commercial airlines.
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#66What 20 pound load could have saved the Titanic? Why wouldn't such a miraculous tool or part have been brought aboard already as a precaution?
At the time, probably nothing. At best they could have sent out life jackets or something similar, though I don't know how much they weighed at the time. But if that happened today, we could minimally start getting inflatable lifeboats out to the people, supplementing afterwards with blankets for heat, life preservers, food, and so on. If you kept some on the ship in a slightly similar tragedy, the drones could offsh…
https://www.amazon.com/Sevylor-Colossus-2-Person-Inflatable-...
Weight: 9.5 pounds each.
They're not for long term use, but it would have kept people out of the water until proper rescue boats arrived.
Obviously these didn't exist back in 1912, but then again, neither did these drones.
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Battleground? Are there many problems with Kalman filtering and preloaded maps of a path?
Not only that, GPS jamming can be overcome with better antennas (phased arrays of such, even retrofitted to existing commodity receivers) to eliminate jammers which are not more-or-less directly above the vehicle.
Excellent article on anti-jamming:
http://gpsworld.com/anti-jam-technology-demystifying-the-crp...
> CRPAs work by exploiting spatial diversity; that is, making use of the fact that the desired satellite signals, and the unwanted jamming signals, generally arrive from different directions. In simple terms, you create a spatial filter, one that removes signals that arrive from particular directions, whilst letting through signals from other directions. To achieve this, rather than use a single antenna, we use an array of antenna elements.
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#68Technology like this is why The Wall is a waste of money when it comes to deterring drug trafficking.
You can shoot at drones with impunity, unlike people that you have to feed, house, process and eventually extradict if that's even possible.
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Jamming drones is easier than you think, the new battleground will be autonomous flying to avoid trivial radio/gps jamming. MIT has open source code for this already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qah8oIzCwk https://github.com/andybarry/flight
How about going low tech and just use gyroscopes to keep steady and fly in a straight line until it is unlikely that any jamming might occur?
Probably fine and less vulnerable in situations like simply trying to get a few km over a wall on flat ground. Far more complicated over terrain and trying to fly low.
Off-the-shelf open source consumer drone flight controllers already have enough sensors to achieve what you suggest.
Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get that. Before the sun rises tomorrow, for the US alone, 32 Americans will make a mistake with their car that kills someone (potentially, but unlikely, themselves, 2 will kill themselves, 29 will kill someone else, one will kill 2 others, for a total of 33 deaths). At the same time, a further 2000 Americans will injure someone with a car, and another 3000 will cause severe (I believe > 1000$) property damag…
Don't you have a score system? It has a noticeable effect, that probably happens by taking the insane drivers off the road. You start with ten points that you lose with infractions, more points for more serious ones. If you run out of points, you don't drive or face jail.
Yes. We usually start at zero though.