Last December, Jeff Bezos raised the possibility of Amazon-branded drone based delivery.
I do love the impractical fantasy of that idea but, alas, the FAA has officially put the kibosh on it, in a document released Monday:
Under a graphic that says what is barred, the FAA mentioned the “Delivering of packages to people for a fee.” A footnote added, “If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose.”
“I do love the impractical fantasy of that idea but, alas, the FAA has officially put the kibosh on it”
Wouldn’t this delivery mechanism be incredibly practical for you? No offense intended, but hopefully Amazon and others who may utilize drones for better purposes than blowing people up won’t be so quick to just take the decision laying down. I wouldn’t want to live in a society where people aren’t challenging the decisions of the people in the top who frequently (and it feels like usually as of late) make arbitrary decisions impeding progress.
If drone delivery does turn out to be practical (I doubt it too) this could result in it being used in other countries. A few years or a decade of that, and it would probably be allowed in the US too.
“I do love the impractical fantasy of that idea”
Why is it impractical? It’s possible already with today’s technology which is relatively primitive. Imagine this technology in another 5-10 years. I think it’s extremely practical and could significantly change the way products are ordered and delivered.
While it seems a little silly at first glance perhaps, it’s actually very interesting to imagine completely automated delivery to wherever you are within hours requiring absolutely no human labor.
Your statement may come back to haunt you in a few years:
“No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame”
it seems impractical to me — my house is in an urban center were the kids were make it a goal to take these things down. i really dont see how one gets around that…
it wasnt an arbitrary decision. look up what that word means.
Well, that’s illegal. You arrest people who steal or vandalize cars, don’t you?
I agree it may not be practical for all people in all areas. But I think for a suburban house it makes sense if a drone could land in the driveway or backyard.
Certainly seems arbitrary. I don’t see any reasoning behind banning the commercial use of drones. Think of commercial photography or videography. They can obviously use all kinds of better cameras, mounts, steadi-cam types of rigs, but they can’t use a drone to get a better shot? That is something that, in theory, is also banned. Kind of seems arbitrary to outright ban a technology regardless of the use-case.
I’m pretty sure that Amazon’s vapor drones were just a smokescreen to cover up the real story that was released three days later about the horrible working conditions in their warehouses.
There goes my Amazon drone ransom business.
You are a perceptive individual
I think the regulatory agencies in the countries Amazon prefers to do business are even more apprehensive about large numbers of remotely controlled cargo-carrying airborne devices criss-crossing their skies.
I think it will die long before that stage; it’s probably just completely impractical. But some countries using it might be interesting/potentially hilarious.
I didn’t necessarily say this was or wasn’t arbitrary (though it certainly could be taken as such), I said that many regulatory decisions are and that Amazon and co should still pursue this further and that it looks poorly upon our society to just roll over to the whims of bureaucracy. See the decision to reverse allowing Leathermans on airlines again. This in particular is strange considering that personal drones still seem allowed, so why not commercial ones?
Seriously, does anyone besides the FAA really think Bezo’s $60-million-in-free-advertising-at-the-holiday-season is anything more than that? If Amazon were serious about this they would already be investing/supporting existing drone delivery that is delivering medications to remote areas of 3rd world countries. This is tax-deductible R&D that would put an exclamation point on legitimacy of this “concept”. So how much has Amazon or Bezos personally invested in these ventures? Crickets…