Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 145 posts

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#71

Post by stephen_g »

haberman wrote: post #28

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?

Not to mention it was 600km (370 miles) off the coast of Newfoundland, and took less than three hours to sink from hitting the iceberg. So if you happened to have drones in exactly the right place (assuming they’re based at an airbase on land), and sent them right when the ship started sinking, they’d get there just about as the last part was going under.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#72

Post by heedspin »

ganzuul wrote: post #51
boxcardavin wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, nothing is more depressing than listening to the a16z podcasts where they're discussing the minutiae of well-established b2b saas strategies for capturing long tail revenue. Shit, let's build some robots instead.

This is why I quit IT to become a machinist. Now seeing how starved manufacturing is for talent, I suspect IT 'easy' money is a huge brain-drain on society.

The world can use more smart IT individuals.

7 years ago I left silicon valley and moved to Raleigh, NC. It was part of our grand plan to move all the extended family back to the same area.

As part of this move I became involved with a couple manufacturing companies. I couldn't help but start helping with their IT set ups. I built some web apps to provide access to information locked up in their horrible ERP/MRP systems. 7 years later and these folks still call me a hero. Some simple web apps made a significant improvement to their productivity.

What I did was not rocket science. But it required spending time to understand the business, their workflow, and the bottlenecks. The solutions were simple after all that time was spent. The work ended up being very rewarding. There were no project managers, so I was full stack from the metal to the end user. It was also not bogged down by scaleability / uptime concerns. If something crashes, my user base is something like 30 people. I deploy with an ssh and git pull.

Anywho, I hope you get my point. I'd love to help Elon throw someone at Mars and he's my hero on many levels. But your simple IT skills could make you something of a small pond Elon for lots of non silicon valley people.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#73

Post by spodek »

haberman wrote: post #28

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?

Flotation devices.

They wouldn't save the boat but could help people in the water and don't weigh much.

Not sure the technology then for self-inflating boats for people to get out of the cold water, but today you could make self-inflating rafts under 20 pounds.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#74

Post by spodek »

daveguy wrote: post #2

Technology like this is why The Wall is a waste of money when it comes to deterring drug trafficking.

> Technology like this is why The Wall is a waste of money when it comes to deterring drug trafficking.

One of many many reasons. While it's sufficient, it's far from the top of the list.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#75

Post by astura »

narag wrote: post #43
candiodari wrote: post #25

Earlier 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.

It plain just doesn't work (as implemented.)

First off, it is much too lenient and the points drop off your record much too quickly. Most infractions can be reduced in court and many crashes (especially single car crashes) don't result in infractions unless they are serious.

Secondly, those people will just drive unlicensed anyway, so it really doesn't matter if we take their license away or put them in jail for a month, they already don't follow the rules and don't give a shit. There's nothing physically preventing someone unlicensed, uninsured, or unfit to drive from climbing into an vehicle, starting the engine, and driving on public roads. The only thing that can deter them is getting arrested after the fact, but that's pretty rare.

My dad lost his licence years ago (for good reason) and a judge has denied his application to get it reinstated many times (for good reason). He still drives all the time and still crashes his truck fairly regularly. Sure, he gets arrested once in a while, but that doesn't stop him.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#76

Post by wayanon »

haberman wrote: post #28

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?

Exactly what I thought - the Titanic had radio/flares/lifeboats all of which seem more useful than a drone.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#78

Post by state_less »

daveguy wrote: post #2

Technology like this is why The Wall is a waste of money when it comes to deterring drug trafficking.

The war on drugs has been a big self inflicted wound. Including building a billions dollar wall to supposedly keep drugs (and people) out. If we sold the real thing under the prescription of a doctor or nurse technician, you wouldn’t fuel drug lords, deadly look-a-like drugs, deadly cutting agents and overdoses due to potency variability. That’s a better way to manage drug use than putting up walls and laws and pretending criminality matters to a dependent drug addicts.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#79

Post by tfolbrecht »

a012 wrote: post #20
ShorsHammer wrote: post #15

Earlier 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

I'm no expert but how autonomous works if there's no positioning methods involved? (To avoid GPS/GLONASS,... Jamming)

Surprised nobodies mentioned celestial sensors.

Celestial navigation by imaging the sky, and combining that data with a clock and compass.

Re: Drones that can haul a 20-pound load for 500 miles and land on a moving target

#80

Post by ovi256 »

haberman wrote: post #28

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?

It's probably a reference to radio parts. Their radio was down for a lot of time, and they missed iceberg warnings issued by other ships.
Post reply on HN