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

cnbc.com

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

#141

Post by simonh »

timmaah wrote: post #107
simonh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So now we have hundreds of monitors checking wobbly camera images all the time trying to spot tiny drones in all weather and all times of day. How often do balloons need refilling? Aren’t balloons highly visible and extremely vulnerable? Has anything like this ever even been tried in practice?

Been tried and working for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethered_Aerostat_Radar_System

That's a high altitude aircraft defence system. We're discussing low altitude terrain level drones the size of a shoebox operating up to maybe 100m altitude, just enough to pop up over the wall. Air defence radar like that is going to be completely useless for this.

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

#142

Post by narag »

astura wrote: post #75
narag wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

The difference seems to be that here in Spain you are seldom sentenced to less than two years. Jail, when you finally get there, is a serious matter. And of course you can't drive in prison so problem solved :)

Points and permit revoking are the way to fast-track what otherwise would be administrative sanctions, clustering them to build a criminal case.

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

#143

Post by candiodari »

MikkoFinell wrote: post #140
candiodari wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, since economics has extensively studied the effect of narcotics on the economy (which is positive, or to put it another way: people will work, even fight, for drugs), we can clearly establish that the cost of missing a shipment is negative. For the economy, it is actually better to miss the shipment than to catch it.

So allowing Mexican cartels to smuggle and sell, for example, heroin has a positive economic effect on society? I have to admit that's a fresh perspective.

But you neglect to take into account the perspective I mentioned. Heroin certainly makes money go round and therefore helps GDP.

We just, as a society, have decided that the social cost is not worth it.

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

#144

Post by [deleted] »

haser_au wrote: post #66
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#145

Post by Tepix »

avoutthere wrote: post #65
Tepix wrote: post #59

Once 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.

But their numbers could be so much greater!
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