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Hobbyists Selling Tesla Coil Kits To Fund Drone Flight Over North Korea
An anonymous reader writes Imagine for a moment having at your fingertips the ability to send a small robotic messenger — a minion if you will — virtually anywhere in the world and back. Sure, you've seen those fun little drone toys at the mall and perhaps you have had a friend that likes to tinker around with model airplanes, but what you are about to see unfold here is genuinely an unprecedented work of good 'ol fashioned American ingenuity. Apparently a group of hackers has started a kickstarter to build and fly a small drone over North Korea and back and is selling mini tesla coils to do this. "All of the money from this project will be used to extend the distance our drone can fly, so the more backers we have, the farther it will be able to go," they say.
From FKP
We do understand that the legality of sending a drone on an intercontinental flight may be dubious. We will work with authorities to try to make our flight happen.
Good luck with that.
All of the money from this project will be used to extend the distance our drone can fly, so the more backers we have, the farther it will be able to go!
Ok, now I know it's a hoax/scam.
Seriously, what is this doing on Slashdot? It's not even April 1st, yet
You can buy "poke the bear with a stick" kits on Ebay, medical and political fallout insurance not included...
You mean they're going to send it from the US, not South Korea?
From TFA:
In other words, we want a drone to be able to fly from coastal California all the way to Pyongyang. This is a feat that would make even Kim Jong Un jealous.
Uh, yeah, that would probably make the US air force jealous if you're going to make it a round trip without refueling. I have no idea how far the big ones go but cross-pacific round trips without refueling generally involve spacecraft.
If all you wanted was some pictures of NK, it would make far more sense to launch the thing from South Korea.
Uh, yeah, that would probably make the US air force jealous if you're going to make it a round trip without refueling.
The Global Hawk has a range of 8700 miles, and NK is only 5600 miles from CA. Being able to do this as a round-trip, no refueling, with a budget of a lot less than $10k[1], and before the end of 2015 is going to take some major amounts of magical unicorn shit, so I don't think that the USAF is going to be jealous anytime soon.
My take is that this is pretty much a scam wrapped in an appeal to magical thinking.
[1] KS project is for $10K. From that they need to build, package and ship the Tesla Coils. And I just saw that you don't actually get a Tesla Coil unless you pony up at least $55.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Just to put this silliness into perspective, the current distance and duration records for a model aircraft are held by The Spirit of Butts' Farm, built by legendary modeller Maynard Hill. The model took 38 hours, 52 minutes, 19 seconds to fly the 1,881.6 mi (3,028.1 km) from Cape Spear, near St. John's, Newfoundland, to Mannin Beach, near Clifden, Ireland.
This was their fifth attempt to complete the trip. The longer trip across the Pacific, against the wind one way (the proposal is a round trip!), would seem to be far outside the meager budget of the Kickstarter guys.
Who knows what nutty reaction this might invoke from them... It might be a good time to tap the brakes on such private provocations...
Anyone who has raised children can tell you that you don't prevent tantrums by caving in to them.
I have kids and I agree, you don't cave into an ongoing tantrum. However, that does NOT mean you don't go around avoiding situations that cause the tantrums.
For example, if your kid throws a snit in the cereal isle of the store because they want the latest 90% sugar offering in the bright box at their eye level, and you don't need cereal today, you don't go down the isle. Or if the tantrums happen when they are tired, you make sure they get enough sleep and go to the store when they are well rested. Not that you walk on eggshells, but you don't go looking for trouble if you can avoid it.
No need to poke NK with a private drone flight, so why provoke the tantrum?
Actually, the issue with NK is more about the Kim dynasty and preserving the forces that keep Kim in power. Their external activities are just designed to enforce the dominance of the Kim in power and how they can spin the events to benefit Kim's grip on power. So, as long as the reaction can be couched in "Kim outsmarts the world" or "NK has the dominate military" they will react. So if they shoot the thing down, it will be billed as a glorious triumph of Kim's efforts to protect NK from the evil USA...
Much of the "nuttiness" of NK's foreign policy revolves around the stuff going on INSIDE the country and less about actually dealing with foreign nations. It's about the Kim's staying in power and keeping up appearances to the internal audience and not really about constructively engaging with other countries. The problem with all this is that it's hard for people who are OUTSIDE the country to understand because we don't see the internal propaganda machine, or understand how the average NK citizen sees things.
Actually, this really should scare everybody, but not for the obvious reasons. Once the Kim's loose their grip the resulting internal struggle will be extremely quick and bloody, and we will be lucky if the collateral damage is confined to just China and South Korea. It will be hard to keep the conflict under control, especially if NK really does have a nuclear device or two, because you can bet Kim won't be reluctant to use them to try and stay in power.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101