Look, Up in the Sky! It’s a Can of Soup!
news.yahoo.com
COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Exactly a decade ago, Amazon revealed a program that aimed to revolutionize shopping and shipping. Drones launched from a central hub would waft through the skies delivering just about everything anyone could need. They would be fast, innovative, ubiquitous — all the Amazon hallmarks. The buzzy announcement, made by Jeff Bezos on “60 Minutes” as part of a Cyber Monday promotional package, drew global attention. “I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,” said Bez

Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can’t weigh more than 5 pounds. It can’t be too big. It can’t be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can’t fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy.

You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn’t make off with your item or that it doesn’t roll into the street (which happened once to Lord and Silverman). But your car can’t be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees.

Amazon has also warned customers that drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery.

  • Dicska@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Yeah, as I was writing that, I was thinking about '80s flying car lanes. It’s like a flow of cars with constant speed. But the ‘drunk flyers’ bit meant that we are humans. You’re also not allowed to drive drunk on the roads. That doesn’t prevent people from still doing that.

    Good that you’ve mentioned the F-16, I’m just watching a video on them by Real Engineering on YouTube. I can only recommend the channel, and I’m not even an engineering nerd. Well, not yet.

    EDIT: Yeah, a few more minutes into the video I think we both watched the same : ).

    • merc@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I haven’t watched a video on the F-16 for ages. I am just an aviation fan and have heard many stories of the F-16 over the years.

      I don’t know if it’s mentioned in that video, but the early days of the F-16 were really interesting. It was the first ever fly-by-wire fighter, so there were lots of design issues to work out. The very first versions of the F-16 (maybe still the YF-16 at that stage) used a side-stick that didn’t move at all, it was designed to be pressure-sensitive so pilots could pull lightly to put a little bit of elevator pressure on, or pull hard to go to the elevators’ max deflection. The problem was that pilots never knew when they had reached the limits, so they pushed as hard as they could on the stick. Observers said that you could actually see a twitch in the control surfaces when pilots were at the max, and the twitch was due to being able to see the pulse of the pilot.

      After a short time, General Dynamics switched to a side stick that had some range of motion, so that pilots knew when they were at the limits of the controls and didn’t keep pushing.

      • Dicska@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, they mentioned it in the video. That whole plane is just an awesome thing. It’s crazy how many modern sounding features they could shove into it so long ago.

        As for the stick, AFAIK the pilots couldn’t tell the difference between moving it with 40% or 60% of the force needed, and the feedback loop was delayed.

        I guess it’s just the timing then, because these were the main points of the video too.