121–130 of 145 posts
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> Furthermore even though these lasers are very cheap, by army norms, to fire, they're still 600$ or so for a single shot. So shooting down drones will be expensive. Far more expensive than the drones themselves. What is the approximate cost of allowing the drone in?
Depends if we assume they're smuggling or dropping explosives/something dirty.
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It's a little sad that people's first thoughts about tech like this is "It can bring me goods faster than FedEx!" That's such a trivial thing to use it for. Emergency deliveries in rural areas are where this will be most useful. Getting medicine and mechanical parts to remote places during crisises is hard .
I think the simple economics of it would completely rule out this being used for 'fresh groceries' ... or rather only to people who want to pay 10x for their groceries. My bet: the military/security/coast guard, for far off service posts (like when they put hydro wires way out in the middle of nowhere), offshore Oil, and for very specific things (i.e. medical equipment) for remote communities.
However, not so sure I agree that economics will prevent 'fresh grocery' delivery. It will be different vehicles for sure, but the operating costs of a small electric vehicle with 5-10lb payload can be very low (cents/hour). I doubt there's going to be direct farm-to-house deliveries, but instead something that can augment the current transportation infrastructure. Imagine a national grocery chain adopts small electric drones for last-mile delivery. They leverage existing shipping network in place to keep stores stocked, and just send drone deliveries from store-to-house. Actual flight cost for one round-trip store-to-house is going to be pennies.
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?
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…
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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.
Which would be better put onto any sea-going vessel before you leave.
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I think the simple economics of it would completely rule out this being used for 'fresh groceries' ... or rather only to people who want to pay 10x for their groceries. My bet: the military/security/coast guard, for far off service posts (like when they put hydro wires way out in the middle of nowhere), offshore Oil, and for very specific things (i.e. medical equipment) for remote communities.
I agree with you that deliveries to offshore oil and specific functions will be very practical. However, not so sure I agree that economics will prevent 'fresh grocery' delivery. It will be different vehicles for sure, but the operating costs of a small electric vehicle with 5-10lb payload can be very low (cents/hour). I doubt there's going to be direct farm-to-house deliveries, but instead something that can augment…
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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.
Unfortunately one of the downsides of living in one of the non-terrible parts of the US is that you basically need a car to be a functional member of society. The insane drivers stay on the road because they just drive illegally. They borrow their spouses cars and stuff. There isn't much appetite for points systems in the US because points systems just enrich the state and insurance companies at the expense of commut…
I won't even address "non-terrible parts of the US" nonsense.
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The technology world progresses as an arms race. I'm quite sure that when these things are used to traffic drugs, a small version of [0] will be used to stop them. [0] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/neqvag/the-us-nav...
Heh, that's cute. The issue with that is that locating UAV's that are, say 50 meters above the deck, more than 1km from your detector is essentially impossible. Without a VERY dense detection infrastructure, catching these things is not going to happen. Furthermore even though these lasers are very cheap, by army norms, to fire, they're still 600$ or so for a single shot. So shooting down drones will be expensive. Fa…
Where are you getting that $600 number? The laser in the article quoted is 150kW, which firing for a fraction of a second would be no more than a few dollars electricity.
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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.
How did that ground based system solve the horizon problem ? Drones don't fly very high, so you'd need one of these systems, say at 50 meters drone height, ~ every 50km. That's probably worse than those drones watching from above, seeing as you'd need actual infrastructure at every interval. And, that'd be fixed infrastructure, with fixed blind spots.
Aerones have developed a drone that can haul a human - https://www.aerones.com/eng/news/?text_id=18
so did i :-) We logged a lot of hours with a person onboard who didn't touch the controls. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7SjOOuTct0
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?