FAA Grounds Amazon’s Drone Delivery Plans

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Damn you FAA! Damn you! I was looking forward to Amazon drone deliveries.

In Monday's announcement, published in the Federal Register, the FAA named Amazon's December proposal as an example of what is barred under regulations that allow the use of drones for hobby and recreational purposes. The agency did not mention Amazon Prime Air by name, but it didn't have to.
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Translation: a lobbyist is still waiting for his check from Amazon
 
The United States is falling from power and cannot remain competative unless we excel in the service and technology industries.

We need laws governing this, and we need it yesterday, so Amazon and other such companies can tap this new market and use their technology and experience to penetrate markets overseas.

A failure to do so is a failure for the US economy.

Thanks Obama.
 
Ducman69 said:
The United States is falling from power and cannot remain competative unless we excel in the service and technology industries.

We need laws governing this, and we need it yesterday, so Amazon and other such companies can tap this new market and use their technology and experience to penetrate markets overseas.

A failure to do so is a failure for the US economy.

Thanks Obama.
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At least the individual states are working on employing new technologies.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfsMMVgIToA
 
Ducman69 said:
The United States is falling from power and cannot remain competative unless we excel in the service and technology industries.

We need laws governing this, and we need it yesterday, so Amazon and other such companies can tap this new market and use their technology and experience to penetrate markets overseas.

A failure to do so is a failure for the US economy.

Thanks Obama.
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Seriously? Wtf does this have to do with Obama? It's been completely illegal to use drones for commercial use long before he came in office. And if he were to agree to try and get this changed, republicans in the house/senate would shoot it down just because. Our whole government is useless.
 
The FAA document, which comes amid some dangerous incidents involving ground-operated drones, contained a small laundry list of examples of what types of commercial applications are barred, including:

A person photographing a property or event and selling the photos to someone else
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Arbitrary and stupid. You could fly over in a light aircraft with no license, but using a drone is illegal.
 
I read somewhere a report about fear of uncontrolled access to secure environments was also a driving force to killing drones (for the consumer). Flying into prisons, airports, military installations and what not with easily attachable microphones and HD cameras. This makes sense and I can see the tin hat society starting to build radio cages to break any signal to drones flying around.
 
That_Sound_Guy said:
I read somewhere a report about fear of uncontrolled access to secure environments was also a driving force to killing drones (for the consumer). Flying into prisons, airports, military installations and what not with easily attachable microphones and HD cameras. This makes sense and I can see the tin hat society starting to build radio cages to break any signal to drones flying around.
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If it's a drone, it doesn't need a signal to operate / fly to a destination / return home etc.
 
Biznatch said:
Seriously? Wtf does this have to do with Obama? It's been completely illegal to use drones for commercial use long before he came in office.
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Wrong. And it took him absolutely no time to go on national television and announce to the country that Trayvon Martin, a guy who violently assaulted a hispanic man, that he could have been his son and he was appalled even though he didn't have all the facts and the jury certainly didn't agree with him... but to speak to the country and put his weight behind important things, like promoting something that could revolutionize commerce, nope can't do that.

Then again, I guess he's just busy shutting down guantanamo bay, ensuring we get to keep our doctors with Obamacare, committment to transparency in government (as long as we don't uhm "lose" hard drives that is), not spy on American people without cause, allow Americans to buy medication from overseas, get all our troops out of the middle east, and drastically reduce government spending cutting the federal deficit in half... did I forget anything? LOL!
 
Ducman69 said:
did I forget anything? LOL!
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I think you forgot to talk about drones.

On topic: I'm not certain this is a bad decision, at least currently. I don't see how this would be very secure or safe. Imagine the lengths people would go through to steal these packages. Assuming they fly a programmed route, I'm sure it wouldn't be long before people either learn to hack them to change their routes, or find a way of disrupting them, causing them to crash. Also, what happens if they are out delivering and the weather suddenly turns bad? Even places with generally good/stable weather will get bad weather. Today, I get my packages placed right next to my front door, under the protection of my roof. I doubt a drone could do that. I'd be lucky if it placed the package within 10 feet of my front door.

I like the idea, but there are a lot of potential problems, and I don't think current technology makes it worthwhile. I'd love to see a cost-analysis of this. At what point are drones cheaper than manual labor?

This would probably be more practical INSIDE their warehouses, automating the retrieval of smaller items to bring to packaging. Of course, I have no idea how warehouse automation works, and what is possible in real life these days. I might need to check YT later to find some videos...
 
Ducman69 said:
The United States is falling from power and cannot remain competative unless we excel in the service and technology industries.
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Of course you are. The USA decided to do the very things thay they preached to third world countries that they should not do if they wanted to be successful: excess regulation, trade restrictions, socialist policies.

Thank god the USA is an innovation powerhouse, but that may not last long enough. I hope you guys change for the better really fast. The world will take a nose dive if you fail to do so.
 
Pezzy said:
This would probably be more practical INSIDE their warehouses, automating the retrieval of smaller items to bring to packaging. Of course, I have no idea how warehouse automation works, and what is possible in real life these days. I might need to check YT later to find some videos...
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Inside a warehouse, something you have complete control over, I would imagine rails or similar "hard" systems would be much more reliable than drones. The benefit of drones is in the fact that you don't control the entire environment and don't need to build new infrastructure/can adapt to obstacles.
 
Ducman69 said:
Then again, I guess he's just busy shutting down guantanamo bay, ensuring we get to keep our doctors with Obamacare, committment to transparency in government (as long as we don't uhm "lose" hard drives that is), not spy on American people without cause, allow Americans to buy medication from overseas, get all our troops out of the middle east, and drastically reduce government spending cutting the federal deficit in half... did I forget anything? LOL!
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Drones? What? And if you forget, the Republicans in congress (and some dems) are the ones pissing their pants about terrorists and are too worried to bring the Guantanamo Bay detainees into a US courtroom for trial.

Apparently some stone age idiots are more powerful than the entire United States, and we can't even bring a few men into a courtroom without the most powerful men in America pooping in their diapers. /offtopic
 
I was just pointing out how virtually every campaign promise he made as an absolute certainty he either miscalculated being able to implement or was flat out lying about for votes, and how he has no problem making grandiose announcements to the country about things a president shouldn't even concern himself with, but can't be bothered to interupt his golf game to demonstrate a leadership position in at least non-interference with emerging technologies that have great potential (if not outright promoting them).
 
Anyway, back to drones. Would be interesting to see some actual safety testing and studies being done, does anyone know? I.e., accidents per 100,000 miles or something along those lines.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Anyway, back to drones. Would be interesting to see some actual safety testing and studies being done, does anyone know? I.e., accidents per 100,000 miles or something along those lines.
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For that you'd have to define a payload, as that will determine how heavy and powerful of an aircraft you need to transport it.

If Amazon was using RC aircraft that are supposed to be unregulated (and last I heard the courts said the FAA does NOT have the authority to ground these aircraft commercial or not, not sure how that changed), then they are under 50lbs flying below 400 feet (as a guideline not law) and thus wouldn't be carrying more than lightweight packages, unless they are going to use "team" software for say four light drones to pick up a heavier package when needed. More likely is that for range limitation issues, these would be delivering things like lightweight electronics and the like (iPhone/ RAM/ SDHC cards/portable hard drive/USB sticks/ routers/ tablets / etc) and not delivering your new Samsung refrigerator.

So safety should be a non-issue, at least compared to the alternative of a 15000 pound vehicle driving up to 65mph and through residential streets where they have and surely will continue to run into pets and children from time to time as road accidents are unavoidable. A huge waste of manpower and resources for small packages.
 
Hmm, not sure how safety is a non-issue; a 50lb object flying, say 25-40 MPH and at a height of several to dozens of stories high...definitely could be lethal in an accident. While your hypothesis is that it's clearly safer, without a good idea of how often they fall from the sky, we can't know.
 
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