The World's Fastest Delivery Drone Takes Off (technologyreview.com) 44
A couple of years ago, Zipline, a California-based startup, created a national drone delivery system to ship blood and drugs to remote medical centers in Rwanda. Now it has developed what it claims is the world's swiftest commercial delivery drone, with a top speed of 128 kilometers an hour (a hair shy of 80 miles per hour). From a report: Zipline is hoping its new fixed-wing aerial robot, which is both speedier and easier to maintain than its predecessor, will help it win business in an industry that's attracted plenty of big players. They include Amazon, which has been testing its Prime Air drone delivery service for years in the UK and elsewhere, and Project Wing, part of Alphabet's secretive X lab, which is using its drones to deliver pharmaceuticals and burritos in a pilot project in Australia.
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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"now that you mention it, theres a surprising amount of wicker in this marmalade..."
So there's a reasonable and expected amount of wicker to be found in jellies?
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"You want fries with that?"
"Yes"
* Blaaaapp! *
That could put an eye out (Score:2)
We don't necessarily want them fast, we want them safe above all. Stop thinking like Intel.
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Drat, didn't notice I'd been logged out and posted this as AC
Man Killed By Flying Aspirin Delivery (Score:4, Funny)
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An attempted joke...jokes are funny.
There are already faster drones... (Score:2)
Didn't Putin just happen to mention he has nuclear tipped hypersonic cruse missiles? Doesn't that qualify as a delivery drone?
Come to think of it, didn't we nearly go to WW3 over some missiles being placed 20 min away from DC when the Russians put them in Cuba in the 60's? Wouldn't that be faster than these?
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Voyager 1 for the win. Delivering lovely earth bacteria.
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Only two issues with that...
1. The payload won't make it. Bacteria is unlikely to survive in the interstellar environment long enough to "get there" (where ever there is), much less survive a reentry into a survivable atmosphere.
2. There is no desired destination. Voyager isn't actually pointed at some known destination at this point. It's headed to who knows where.
Wouldn't a deliver drone imply that it is designed to deliver a payload to a desired destination?
I will grant that Voyager 1 is going prett
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The payload won't make it. Bacteria is unlikely to survive in the interstellar environment long enough to "get there" (where ever there is), much less survive a reentry into a survivable atmosphere.
That might be true for extraterrestrial bacteria, but is rather unlikely.
We already know that earth bacteria survive vacuum, space trips, radiation, just fine.
How often actually do I need to tell you that you should refrain from posting about stuff you have no clue about?
No worries, not knowing that we know since
Interstellar germs [Re:There are already fast...] (Score:2)
The payload won't make it. Bacteria is unlikely to survive in the interstellar environment long enough to "get there" (where ever there is), much less survive a reentry into a survivable atmosphere.
That might be true for extraterrestrial bacteria, but is rather unlikely. We already know that earth bacteria survive vacuum, space trips, radiation, just fine.
Some of them survive for some time in a vacuum. They do not, however, metabolize in a vacuum: they ensporulate, or in another way go dormant. Result, they do not have any active cell repair mechanism running.
Over the length of time an interstellar journey would take, in the absence of cell repair, accumulated cosmic radiation damage would destroy pretty much any bacteria.
Uh, what did this have to do with the topic again?
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My bad.
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There hardly is any "cosmic ray" damage outside of the solar system.
But feel free to make an guesstimation.
(Yes, cosmic rays are something completely different than radiation from the sun ... but they are rare and hardly hit a microbe more than once in their "lifetime")
Cosmic ray flux [Re:Interstellar germs] (Score:2)
There hardly is any "cosmic ray" damage outside of the solar system.
Sorry, wrong. Check your numbers.
(Yes, cosmic rays are something completely different than radiation from the sun
Exactly. They are not from the sun, and therefore it makes little difference whether you are inside or outside the solar system. To the extent that it does make a difference, though, the sun's magnetic field tends to exclude cosmic rays, and so it's the opposite of what you say: there is more cosmic radiation damage outside the solar system.
... but they are rare and hardly hit a microbe more than once in their "lifetime")
"lifetime" here means: the amount of time it would take a meteoroid to drift from one star to another. If it's a blazingly fast objec
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No worries, not knowing that we know since 40 years that earth bacteria survive in vacuum, and survive the reentry, does not make you look like an idiot, it only makes you look rather uninformed ;)
The nearest star to Voyager's path is 40,000 years away, which it will approach within 1.6 light years. NOTHING will be alive on the probe long before it gets there. Unless you are trying to claim that bacteria will be able to survive 40,000 years in the vacuum and cosmic radiation between now and then. In fact, I'd be willing to bet the probe itself will be but a shadow of it's current structure in that amount of time. If not, have your offspring contact my offspring to pay the bet.
This is a cruel har
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It's destination is a empty spot. Exactly where it is right....now. Done.
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Unless you are trying to claim that bacteria will be able to survive 40,000 years in the vacuum and cosmic radiation between now and then.
You don't know much about the topic.
The bacteria don't move there as bacteria, but as dried out spores.
As we already found billion years old really living bacteria inside of rocks on earth, I have no doubt that space faring spores/dried out bacteria can survive 40,000 in a vacuum. Why would they not?
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They are unshielded from cosmic radiation, high speed impacts with dust and other such dangers is why. Not to mention they are unshielded from the probe's own nuclear heat source which will emit radiation for thousands of years, the very kind of radiation that we use here on earth to sterilize medical equipment and supplies.
It's not the vacuum per se, it's the radiation over long periods AND the vacuum that's going to kill every kind of life possibly hitching a ride long before Voyager gets within 2 light
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"Wouldn't a deliver drone imply that it is designed to deliver a payload to a desired destination? "
Well, we have the same problem with the Natural Intelligence Delivery Syste.
The rules are simple, go to the indicated city, the indicated street, the indicated house number and deliver it to the person mentioned on the fucking label.
And still sometimes they get all 4 wrong.
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"Come to think of it, didn't we nearly go to WW3 over some missiles being placed 20 min away from DC when the Russians put them in Cuba in the 60's? "
Cuba? Sarah Palin can see Russia from her house.
"fast" is a relative term (Score:1)
Fast is a bit of a misnomer here. They squeaked in just above what multicopters are capable of and called it the fastest ever. There are plenty of faster aircraft already capable of delivery (and better designed for it). The real top speed for a delivery-sized drone is around 200 mph, not 80, it's just that people do system design studies and find that the extra cruise speed isn't worth it (faster doesn't save you any time during the loading/hover/unloading phases) when your range is limited to what batteri
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This is a fixed wing 'bomber', catapult launched, it drops it's cargo on a parachute. Great for what it was designed for (emergency medicine delivery in the third world). Useless as an urban commercial delivery system.
Also: Slow, but make it much faster and it's stall speed becomes a practical problem. Means you need to add landing gear. Faster still and you need a paved runway etc.
As a practical matter, this thing would be more useful, gas powered.
Can it ring my doorbell ? (Score:2)
I want to see a drone ring my doorbell, hand me my package, and then ask for my signature.
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Hahahaha ...
It will pester you for tips!!
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"I want to see a drone ring my doorbell, hand me my package, and then ask for my signature."
You obviously have to install a WIFI bell, duh!
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Yawn!!
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Software Certification Standards (Score:1)
Aren't you glad that the corporate oligarchs paid congress to prevent the FAA from imposing safety standards? Robust software certification standards for aircraft exist (DO-178 series), but doing things safely is much more expensive than doing them fast, and safety isn't important when it interferes with the race to the market.
Audio Jungle? (Score:2)
Did anyone hear the audio jungle sound watermark in the video? It appears someone could not afford $7 for a license...
Very specific deliveries (Score:1)