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The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

rain.aero

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Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#81

Post by ceejayoz »

cgriswald wrote: post #68
ceejayoz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living near something doesn't make one an expert in that thing. I live near a school, but I'm still fairly worthless as an elementary school teacher or administrator. The actual experts agree with the parent poster. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/06/how-fore... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l... https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-... https://www.…

The grandparent poster seems to be commenting about relative risk rather than personal expertise. You may not make a good elementary school teacher or administrator, but it would make sense for you to have an opinion on how the school manages traffic. Certainly you wouldn't value my opinion since I don't live by the school and even if I had expertise in school traffic management I might not have your interests in min…

> it would make sense for you to have an opinion on how the school manages traffic

No, we have traffic engineers for that.

Decisions should be made based off expertise, not proximity.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#83

Post by Narkov »

dragonsky67 wrote: post #66
mabbo wrote: post #39

The reason we have such terrible fires now is that we keep putting out fires when they're small. Nature builds up too much burnable matter over time. Small fires would burn it in small, localized areas. But if the small fires don't happen then we get the massive fires that destroy towns, cities, and cost lives. I am not impressed by a new way to put out small fires, because that just ensures bigger fires in the long…

One of the biggest problems with managing bushfire in Australia is having the fire "jump the line". Where embers fly ahead of the main fire, starting spot fires that unless dealt with just extend the reach of the fire. Currently a lot of spot fire management is attempted using helicopters with water buckets, but this is both expensive and bloody dangerous. Being able to use semi disposable drones could assist dramati…

> - The airspace around a bush fire is a particularly hostile environment.

This is a good point. Bushfires are also largely caused by high winds that are unpredictable. It makes drones carrying heavy fire retarding payloads a very difficult proposition.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#84

Post by Teever »

cgriswald wrote: post #68
ceejayoz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living near something doesn't make one an expert in that thing. I live near a school, but I'm still fairly worthless as an elementary school teacher or administrator. The actual experts agree with the parent poster. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/06/how-fore... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/decades-mismanagement-l... https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-... https://www.…

The grandparent poster seems to be commenting about relative risk rather than personal expertise. You may not make a good elementary school teacher or administrator, but it would make sense for you to have an opinion on how the school manages traffic. Certainly you wouldn't value my opinion since I don't live by the school and even if I had expertise in school traffic management I might not have your interests in min…

Controlled burns are a great idea. drones that can quickly put out unanticipated fires are also a great thing.

These ideas aren't mutually exclusive, I don't know why we are arguing about it.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#85

Post by systemvoltage »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #34
systemvoltage wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drones are horizontally scalable. Instead of one, 50 can go extinguish the fire.

You're off by a few orders of magnitude. It's more like 50,000, and that would only work for a very small fire. Water is heavy and it takes a lot of it to counteract the heat generated by a wildland fire. Which is why water is not the primary tool for fighting wildland fires: McLeods, chainsaws, and bulldozers are. Fuel removal along a one-dimensional perimeter is much easier than bringing in massive quantities of wa…

I thought we're talking about first 10 minutes of fire. Not firefighting after it has accelerated.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#86

Post by lief79 »

RangerScience wrote: post #49
Teever wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

AFAIK, it's now long (40+ years) that (at least on the west coast) periodic small fires are not only beneficial, but necessary, and that the US policy of "stop ALL fires" has been long-term extremely problematic. Mostly the "knowing" of this was finally accepting that the ways of those who originally lived here (first nations / native americans) were, in fact, better, since such periodic burns were the practice of th…

Depends on where. Much of the east coast is wet enough the fires aren't a regular occurrence, and the dead underbrush rots away. I recall one in SE Pennslyvania in the past 30 years.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/2013/04/07/french-creek-state-park...

Hmm, this makes me question my dismissal of the concerns, but still supports the idea that it's not a long term concern on the east coast.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#87

Post by 71a54xd »

I'm going to be a downer here, and would bet that since this system requires lots of drones flying around to identify fires that it's more likely for one of those sensor drones to crash and cause a fire rather than actually identifying a fire small enough for a few "fire ball" retardants to extinguish an actual fire.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#88

Post by klyrs »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #61
klyrs wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most startups fail. Declaring any one a waste of effort is statistically justified. Alternative reason to read HN: a sadistic desire to watch people fail, and say that I told you so.

This is maybe unnecessarily harsh (but you do you). I too am mostly here in a more spectating mode when it comes to all the VC startup brained ideas, but its not primarily people that fail, its an entire system of thought, and the money that gets poured into it; its staunch belief in technological determinism combined with highly sophisticated investment schemes and plenty of capital. I am not going to the race to se…

I am not motivated by the schadenfreude, myself. I was just speaking to motivations that one may have for hanging around a site with a significant startup readership.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#89

Post by 4oo4 »

I really don't get why we haven't figured out how to do controlled burns properly, lots of indigenous cultures had been doing it successfully for at least hundreds of years. And they did it all without fancy technology. I think it might just come down to the arrogance of trying to exert control over a forest rather than work symbiotically with natural processes.

I never thought about the liability angle, hopefully legislation can address that to make controlled burns more viable.

Re: The Rain System “contains wildfires within 10 minutes of ignition”

#90

Post by dymk »

onion2k wrote: post #33
dymk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lofty ideas, supported only by hope. People can dream up solutions as much as they want, doesn't mean it's going to work. 99% of startups fail, this one will be no exception to the stats. Sure, they might succeed, but there's no guarantee they'll make it past this super basic PoC.

Lofty ideas, supported only by hope. They're a startup. That's what startups do. If you think they're wasting their time you're really on the wrong website right now.

I'm responding to:

> Anything you can think of, they’ve thought of and it’s on their roadmap.

Literally nothing about the linked site suggests that this is the case. The commenter I'm responding to is functioning on unbridled (and in my opinion, irrational) optimism for a company that has one demo video putting out a camp fire.

It takes more than hope to run a company. You have to have a viable idea and execution plan, too.

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