The FAA is likely to say "no." I can't remember what crash it was in the '80s that took us from the glorious future where all the jet setters got off their private helicopters on their skyscraper rooftops (remember Tron? Remember Runaway? Remember how everybody was doing that in the movies in 1983?) to the current mundane "law enforcement, news and life safety only" universe, but it was literally one crash. A 10kg drone simply experiencing a power failure at 500 feet gives you an impact energy equivalent to a hand grenade. There are reasons to use this technology. "You're too lazy to schlep your ass to the Apple Store and too impatient to wait for a fucking truck" is not one of them. If I had to bet on package delivery in 2026, I'd bet on Fedex Home Delivery, only not Fedex. It'll be privateers, organized into a loose fleet, working as independent contractors. 3D printing is nice for prototyping but sucks for manufacturing. The materials strength will never be there and the materials cost is shockingly high. The price will come down but 3D printing technology will never compete. Even if I'm using the exact same polymer, injection molding it gives me a real leg up as far as durability, flexibility and tensile strength over layered deposition. And hey - if I need to work with, you know, metals and wood and composites and glass and Lexan and Plex and pretty much anything other than Cheez Whiz, it's no contest.
Oh I fucking agree. That was my overriding thought during that stupid demonstration video -- there's no way in hell the FAA even thinks about it. What altitude do they fly at (although isn't it true that under 1000 feet or something, you can fly anything without the FAA's approval? Or is that private non-commercial only? I don't know crap about this.) etc. What if they try to make a delivery to Buck in East Texas but they fly over Johnny Redneck's land on the way and he fucking blows them out of the sky? EDIT: it's nice to be right. What if they crash? Who's responsible for the forest fire that starts? I've read links you've posted in the past pointing out exactly what the flaws and strengths of 3D are, that was mostly a tongue in cheek thing. Although it really is hard to know where we'll be even 15 years from now. I like your idea -- I can imagine a crowdsourced app similar to the ones for carpooling with strangers: going from Austin to Dallas tomorrow? Have a trustworthy rating on YouFedex app? Take these packages here and here for 10 percent...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/technology/drones-with-an-... So right now, cops'n'fire gets anything under 2 kilos, under 400 feet. Two years from now, the FAA gets to rule what "safe" integration is. Likely they will say "under 2 kilos, under 400 feet, NO AUTONOMOUS ACTIVITY. 'cuz that's the thing. I've got a Syma S107 and it's a toy. You run it into a wall and it won't even really mess up the paint. But I've also got a Blade MSRX. You hit yourself in the ankle with it and it might draw blood. It weighs a whopping 31g and has the payload capacity for a keyring camera. You get up into the 300, 400, 700 series birds and suddenly you're talking 3.3 kilos. That's the bird, by the way, that will take off the top of your head if you screw up in just the right way. And that's with someone responsible for it. And, as per my post on the Amazon Air thing, you don't get useful with these things until you're in the 10 kilo universe. The ethical situations associated with UAVs are legion. PW Singer's "Wired for War" covers most of them. And while piloted rotorcraft are allowed over private property, unpiloted anythings aren't. Which means these things would have to fly down the street. Might as well send a truck.Under the new law, within 90 days, the F.A.A. must allow police and first responders to fly drones under 4.4 pounds, as long as they keep them under an altitude of 400 feet and meet other requirements. The agency must also allow for “the safe integration” of all kinds of drones into American airspace, including those for commercial uses, by Sept. 30, 2015. And it must come up with a plan for certifying operators and handling airspace safety issues, among other rules.
Really good NYT article that answers a lot of my questions. Still, I can't help but think that in some shape or form -- just not one so trivial as Amazon delivery -- having drones become a familiar sight in domestic skies is inevitable in the next 30 years or so. Whatever ruling the FAA comes down with will have to bend eventually, I'd put money on it.
Yeah, the stunt copter guys worry me a little. Something about 2-stroke nitromethane engines attached to carbon fiber sword blades being made to pirouette around the sky in ways real airframes can't.