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Amazon Proposes Dedicated Airspace For Drones
An anonymous reader writes: Amazon has published two new position papers which lay out its vision for future drone regulation. Under Amazon's plan, altitudes under 200ft would be reserved for basic hobbyist drones and those used for things like videography and inspection. Altitudes between 200ft and 400ft would be designated for "well-equipped vehicles" capable of operating autonomously out of line of sight. They would need sophisticated GPS tracking, a stable data uplink, communications capabilities with other drones, and sensors to avoid collisions. This, of course, is where Amazon would want to operate its drone delivery fleet. From 400ft to 500ft would be a no-fly zone buffer between the drone airspace and integrated airspace. Amazon's plan also makes room for "predefined low-risk areas," where hobbyists and other low-tech drones can fly higher than the 200ft ceiling. "Additionally, it is Amazon's view that air traffic management operations should follow a 'managed by exception' approach. This means operators are always aware of what the fleet is doing, yet they only intervene in significant off-nominal cases."
That all sounds great, except that helicopter often operate at less than 500 feet above the ground.
What happens when EMS is flying at 300ft and crashes into their delivery drone?
What about law enforcement? Powerline and pipeline patrol? Aerial photography?
All of these things can and do happen at less than 500ft above the ground.
In the North East, they even harvest Christmas Trees off the side of the mountain using helicopters, and that is well under 500ft.
100 feet of buffer is inadequate. How the hell do you measure your AGL when you're flying? You either use a radar altimeter ($25K installed on an airplane worth $20K) or you use the baro altimeter, which has an acceptable calibration error, plus the local altimeter setting (atmospheric pressure) which has an error band, and there's error because you're not right over the reporting station. 1000' is the minimum instrument separation. Bezos just wants to steal a band of airspace. I say give him 0' to 10' AGL, just like a UPS truck.
No, but how bout you give him 20-30' so long as he stays over a road, and limit windspeed and weather conditions he can operate in? Sink a billion or so into detecting wires and other obstacles over roadways. Now you've got a second level road and he's flying higher than vehicles but lower than aerial vehicles. It's inefficient compared to full use of airspace but still faster than regular traffic.
This is another in a long line of corporate taking.
They want to take a huge swath of public space (the space between 200 and 400 feet across the ENTIRE UNITED STATES) for free, for their benefit and the benefit of the rich who can afford to pay for this-hour delivery, and deliver nothing back to the vast majority of the population.
screw'em
And the worms ate into his brain.
Slaughter of personal freedom? For nearly 150 years after the establishment of the United States, people were regularly put in prison for handing out pamphlets (think birth control or union advocacy). Free speech as we enjoy today was invented out of whole cloth by SCOTUS in the 1930s. For most of our history any speech which could plausibly cause civil unrest was considered legitimately subject to suppression by the state. Sort of like the rational basis test used today, which is the least restrictive judicial constraint on government power. By contrast, most state actions involving police powers were considered beyond the purview of judicial restraint, so any kind of test would have been considered quite strict.
Until only several years ago, the Second Amendment to the US Constitution was _never_ considered a personal right as a matter of law. At the beginning of the 20th century, many states had stricter licensing laws regarding hand guns than they do now. In the 1800s anti-knife laws were all the rage, and states out-right banned bowie knives.
For a thousand different reasons, you have much more freedom now than you ever did in this country. The only thing that has really changed is that enforcement is much stricter and penalties are insane. The rise of the regulatory state has created armies of law enforcement, and anti-discrimination laws mean that good-old-boys don't get a wink and a nod from the sheriff as much as they used to when violating the law. At the same time irrational public fear of crime (not unrelated to your own irrational fears) have caused penalties to skyrocket. The laws haven't changed so much as they're much more _ominous_.
Learn your history, and especially your legal history. I did. At one time I was beginning to become as outraged as you. Then I decided to learn history and learn the law (I actually took a break mid-career for law school). Quit your whining.