"many other companies' requests were approved at the same time"...
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The Register?? LOHAN??
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We need to know.
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The Register has not replied to this request at the time of posting :-)
The Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) has cut its response time to a measly ten months in approving Amazon's most recent drone flight request. In a letter to Paul Misener, public policy veep for the Sultans of Seattle, the FAA stunned all witnesses in granting permission for delivery drone test flights only ten months after the …
Yes, we even have Spaceport Canada you can use! Perfect for putting LOHAN into a polar orbit, in fact. Just mind the polar bears and mosquitoes. Oh, and the black flies that can bite you through your jeans. Oh, and there's a few (hundred) small lakes you may wish to avoid, as well as a modest-sized bay (admittedly attached to a larger but still modest one, not like that gaudy Bay of Bengal). Oh, and it's been shuttered for a decade or two. Oh, and you can't drive there on account of the lack of a road. Oh, and ...
I'd much rather our border agents take pot shots at Brown Boxes With A Smile slung under a drone than the poor immigrants from down south.
Just to register a personal opinion (as if the rest isn't): This whole drone thing is going to make life around the world a lot more "interesting". There are all sorts of things that can be delivered when the carriers don't need to travel in flatland - and it's much harder to monitor that extra dimension.
why would someone buy an expensive, short range drone that no one cares about when they can force a "poor immigrant" to mule the cargo and gain all the protective sympathy that almost guarantees successful delivery for free, like they've been doing for decades?
Coyotes make almost as much from the extra cargo as they do the human cargo.
@elDog
Yes. I can imagine Cloned Amazon Drones delivering all sorts of things... a few grams of this, a few grams of that... Then we'll start to see Cloned Amazon Drone wars, muggings in the sky - at least they'll be 'victimless' muggings, that is, unless we start to develop emotions/feelings for these machines (<<--that was silly).
But that would be illegal except in a land of the free where congress makes no law where the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall be infringed (such as Canada.)
That is the difference between American and Canadian: For Canadians can is the first thing.
That and in Canada only criminals and those with a right to bear arms carry guns. Apparently anyone can play with toys though.
Wait until the problems start and it will be in a matter of days once these devices are allowed to fly. I suspect that a lot of hunters are going to enjoy the fun. The FAA and other agencies allowing this foolishness to progress have no idea the genie they have let out of the bottle. Soon you'll wish sanity had prevailed.
The technology was waiting for the acceleration needed for the drone to ring the doorbell, drop a "we tried to deliver a package while you were out" and get away before you can respond.
Drones are perfectly practical, if like citylink, you never intend to actually deliver the actual package.
I see El Reg forgot one little teesy weesy detail - is the "operator must maintain line of sight" provision still attached to the Amazon approval ?
"Line of sight" - the operator, Amazon, must be able to actually see the drone diring its entire flight - is a deal killer. That provision blows Amazon's dream of automated drone delivery "out of the water". As usual, the devil is in the details.
El Reg fail.
If 5-10 satellites in orbit have a "line-of-site" to the drones, does this count?
Even this lowly plebe could probably afford (if the lady allowed me to mortgage her house) a few cube sats and a few "fun" whirlybirds.
Now, I'm looking for some good KickFunDieGoGo ideas and $$$ (or Euros - no bitchoins, please.)
Or will it simply drop your newest iThingy onto the front lawn and leave?
Anyone compared max range of such drones to the number of depots required? Maybe they could deploy the drones from a hovering mothership. Maybe they could simply put 3D printers on the Fusion Powered endlessly-hovering mothership, and simply 3D print your new iWatch in 15 seconds and drone-deliver it to you a minute after you ordered it. Maybe they could drone-deliver a new 3D printer and I won't need to buy anything from Amazon ever again. Except cartridges of 3D printer paste.
"Or will it simply drop your newest iThingy onto the front lawn and leave?"
Well, that's how UPS delivers stuff to my home - they just leave it on the front steps. Nothing disappeared yet, but every time they do this it makes me uneasy...
No you definitely should not say Mustafa.
If you will be saying it as the US/UK forces did the day before Mustapha's friends attacked Paris. At least not if you are relying on the US/UK/French or even German police to protect you. They don't have a reputation for good police work.