Wonder how it avoided the powerlines, phone lines, antennae, and trees? Also the flight times will be impressive. It's also impressive as a publicity stunt. Andy.
I think they're going to end up using a disposable parachute system or something like that. Then maybe they can just deliver them by mortar or howitzer. But don't count out Jeff Bezos. The man is a force to be reckoned with. Remember, he recently decided he wanted to recover part of Apollo 11's Saturn V rockets. And he did. http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-032013a.html http://www.space.com/20358-bezos-apollo-rocket-engines-shore.html
More power to him. Sometimes it takes a super rich man with more money then the universe to make things legal in the US. If his money forces the FAA to light a fire under their A, then so be it. For argument sake if this were more than a publicity stunt, I don't see practicality of it especially using a MR. Of course who knows what the future holds. People bocked at the idea of a personal computer in everyone's house back in the 70's. Cars were only available to the super rich etc. On a pragmatic note thought just because you can do it does it make sense? Assuming all technological hurdles have been figured out and it can fly safe and not crash into obstacles. What deficient process will this be improving? I suppose one could argue that if you get small packages to people's houses more efficiently then you save fuel money and man hours by not having the UPS/FedEx driver spending resources and time delivering several packages that weigh under 5 pounds. Of course UAV X's wont be cheap. Will reliability over time recap a huge investment? Will fuel savings be over shadowed by other energy costs, for charging batteries? Or do you invest an alternate energy farms to keep the energy self sustaining? Then who will fly them, will Amazon build depot's at every sizable city, or simply contract FedEx or UPS? Of course this does not solve the problem that someone will take their copter and use it for spare parts, or simply their transmitter to it
I recommend reading Daniel Suarez's book, "Kill Decision" before we start inventing swarms of autonomous drones. http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Decision-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451417704 It's a hard book to stop reading....he's a programmer and he gets his technology absolutely spot on. Andy.
He has his most of his technical details correct probably the most accurate I have seen. Some inaccuracies or changes in practice while sampling the first chapter. There would be no reason to fly a Reaper at 2000 feet AGL. Anything not on a air tasking order would have been intercepted by the F-16's first, that was the whole point of having those over there. It would never have been by a predator seen if that scenario was close to real. He explains the use of a concept that was an experiment that was sort of abandoned fairly quickly. That was the use multi-aircraft control. We had one GCS that had 1 pilot and 4 SO's. Each SO had limited control of each aircraft in an airspace the pilot would define. We sort of abandoned that practice mostly flew each plane with one pilot and one SO. It was always rumored to come back, but never did. They kept going back and forth with bringing it back. Other then that it seems fairly good with some things I cant get into too many details
http://www.rockcitytimes.com/walmart-install-mini-surface-air-missiles-store-roofs-shoot-amazon-drones/
Escalate! Now we need some stealthy counter-measures (or Amazon just has to make their copters look like McDonald's Burger-Bomber copters). Alternatively, I can now see the benefits of the cat drone: http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/why-hate-the-catcopter-drones-are-the-real-flying-death (which has been "featured" on this forum before). Andy