I guess these could get up to the 150th floor to offer some assistance. If the building is on fire, there will be all kinds of up and down drafts happening, the turbulence will be a huge challenge. There will be soot and ash to plug up air filters.
Imagine being up 1500ft, when the engine suddenly is at 30% power. The air filter sucked in a pound of ash, and now you are heading down. The vehicle will be dropping maybe as slow as 40mph, but that is still gonna hurt when you hit the ground. They have ballistic parachutes, and they probably will open when deployed above 1000ft, but where will you end up? The turbulence around the building may suck you into the fire or may prevent the parachute from opening. I am guessing if the engine lost power gradually, the person driving would hesitate, try to troubleshoot the problem, and then pull the 'chute a lot below the 1000ft level.
These are fun but dangerous toys. I don't seem them as being tools.
So say the citizens of the world all have the NSA approved encryption with back doors that are super secret and the NSA is the only ones in through them.
Then along comes Dr. Evil and his group. They decide to use some non-NSA approved encryption, maybe something they made up. No back doors, and super long keys.
The NSA gets to look at our communications until the cows com home, but the bad guys still have encrypted stuff that no one can break for a hundred years.
The article talks about the "round dials", as if the 747's are all steam gauges. The 747-400 has a glass cockpit, and they even talk about the 747-400 simulator. The 747-8 is a modern jet, built about the same time as the 787.
Pilots say "scarebus" sometimes, and there is a rivalry between Ford and GM, like Boeing and Airbus.
More people fit on the 747 than on a 787, so it takes fewer trips to haul the same number of people. The 747 makes a better cargo aircraft for large items. It is complicated. They will continue to fly for the rest of my lifetime I am sure.
As a pilot, I don't want to bump into a drone of any kind. The actual damage/result is unpredictable. Will the drone hang on to something, will the drone cause damage to my aircraft. Where will the drone end up when the impact occurs? Will the guts end up in the air intake, causing my engine to quit? Will the drone crack a light, will the drone go through the window? F=MA and you can't change that, I am flying at 150mhp, your 5lb drone can do serious damage, bend metal, break plastic, or more.
Even if it doesn't cause a crash, it will likely cause damage to the aircraft. Think of you car being hit by a golf ball. It may break a window, or put a dent in the hood, causing the owner/insurance company to pay $$ for something that the driver was innocent of.
Imagine doing your job, and someone is throwing rocks and your have to go through the area. Sure the person throwing rocks isn't doing anything illegal, but they may damage you.
Fire fighting is dangerous. Firefighting in an aircraft is dangerous. Throwing extra objects in the air near the firefighting aircraft makes the firefighting even more dangerous.
The golden rule needs to apply to the drone operator and the firefighters.
Much of the modern C++ dialects seem to be a winner. Certainly smart pointers and templates can be good, and are an improvement over the older C++ concepts. C++11/14/17 add features that make writing broken code harder.
Like anything, with much power comes much responsibility.
Lambdas and templates when overused make debugging next to impossible. I was working on some code that was so far nested in a bunch of templates, I couldn't use GDB to make any sense of it. Eventually I tore apart the templates to find a small bug in one of them.
Also the G++ compiler errors don't often point to anything meaningful. Missing a semicolon can result in a paragraph of errors, one may point at the actual error.
Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate C++, but you earn your pay using it.
The Avionic box was probably designed in 1984, using hardened chips of the day. Chances are, it uses a 80186 or something of equal power, but no Linux, or Windows. Certainly there was never an IP stack in the OS, and there were never any ethernet connectors on the box. There is an ARINC-422 connection, which is mostly GPIO pins, not much serial.
Yes, there could be updates to the box, but the certification process is very time consuming. There are paths for software updates, but the hardware has almost no changes over the last 30 years.
Yes, Chris Roberts is full of Sh** and is causing peoples heads to explode for no good reason.
When I was 19 or 20 I was a whiny jerk to my professors. I let a couple cute girls copy off my test in a comp sci class they had no business being in.
When I went back to get more schooling at 30, I got really tired of listening to the 20 year old whiny jerks in the comp sci classes I was in, The professor basically gave up on the last two weeks of one course because the whiny jerks belittled him into not moving forward with the last part of his class. I wish he would have stuck with it, because about half the class would have failed that part of the final test.
This report is just a warning, then CNN gets it and asks broad questions "could someone do this??" and an expert who hasn't seen the architecture says, "sure, it could happen". He wants to say "but, in the real world, no!", of course the CNN anchor cut him off. It is possible that the pilots iPad may be connected to the passenger cabin WiFi if the pilot was connected earlier, but forgot to switch over. Connecting the iPad to the aircraft will only bring in power, nothing else. There is no way to control the autopilot from the iPad, no way to reroute the plane from the iPad.
Most connected aircraft will have two routes to the ground, the cockpit and the IFE (passenger cabin). There are many documents about the thoughts that the manufacturers have. Firewalls are good, and may be used in some cases, but so far that is rare.
On rainy and windy days, over farmland, during the holidays and in cities.
A little autonomous drones will be badly affected by wind and weather. Sure on sunny calm days they will work fine. Some stormy night and you want that tin of cavier delivered, and the drone will be wet and blown off course. What happens when they are struck by lightning?
Over farmland, the airspace starts at 0ft. Ag Aircraft are allowed to stay 500ft away from buildings and people, meaning over a random corn field, the aircraft can fly until their wheels touch. Bumping into a 50lb drone at 100kts will leave a dent in the aircraft, and probably destroy your package.
The world is mostly got paths clear around most houses, except during the holidays. A string of christmas lights may not be detectable by a drone, so what should it do when encountering it.
The cities are very dynamic. Delivery trucks, cats, dogs all change the terrain around your house. what happens when a delivery drone is being chased and caught by a curious cat. How about a large bird attacking it. Say the UPS driver just delivered a pile of packages to the front porch, and now there is no place for the Amazon drone to put something.
Then what about security? Certainly all a nefarious person would need to do drive around following drones, and collecting packages before the residents collect them.
How about people who live within 5 miles of an airport. Drones are not allowed there. No deliveries for you.
Lets say the FAA makes an error (IE no means for coordination between UAV and Manned aircraft). The consequences of the drone taking out the EMT helicopter are quite big. Maybe the EMT helicopter only kills everyone on board, and not all the rescuers on the ground, then I guess it isn't so bad.
No, let them go through the process and get it right. Your local EMT will thank you someday.
The US is very flexible when it comes to aviation regulations. When you hear on the news "No flight plan was filed..." it is because not flight plan is required for most flights. Aircraft are allowed to fly where they want most of the time (500ft away from objects, unless congested areas). Other countries are more constrained with current manned aircraft systems, so it is easier to control where the manned systems operate, keeping them away from the unmanned systems.
Now the UAS community wants to mix it up. Flying manned and unmanned aircraft in the same airspace, will be a challenge. Keeping them separated will take special processes and procedures. Quantified right of way rules, operating in see (sense) and avoid situations. Today the only technology that will keep UAS and manned aircraft systems separate are the eyeballs in the pilot/operators heads.
Then there are all kinds of considerations beyond that. Maintenance is a big one. The batteries in drones are similar to phone batteries. From the factory, they run for a day, but after a year of regular use, they don't have the same capacity, and your typical quad copter has only one mode when the batteries die, and it isn't a glide mode.
How about coordination with other operators. The big wreck on the freeway needs a EMS helicopter to evacuate a victim, but there are 6 UAS systems (3 TV stations, 2 newspapers and a dude with his for the heck of it) filming the carnage. How do you tell the UAS systems to get out of the way?
So to make all this work, there are operator training items to consider, maintenance requirements, communications requirements, accident reporting considerations, insurance and stuff most folks haven't thought about. If you think the FAA can knock that out in a weekend, you are fooling yourself. Go have a read of the proposed Part 107 regulations. Lots of things are missing, it is just a start, and it is well thought out.
Can you promise the drone, out of your site, will not run into another aircraft, person or building?
For experimental situations over known terrain maybe autonomous drones will work fine. For commercial operations in situations where other aircraft may be operating (IE EMS helicopters, AG aircraft, other drones, etc), the drone needs to operate under the same rules as the manned aircraft they are in the vicinity of. Manned aircraft have to see and avoid other aircraft. It doesn't always work, but certainly with two pilots looking gives a fighting chance of one pilot noticing. Today pilots have a hard time seeing birds, and putting drones in their way will cause more accidents.
Please consider aircraft of all sizes and types. Sure a 5lb drone may not hurt a 747, but a 5lb drone will probably go through the windshield of a small twin engine aircraft. If the drone were to be ingested by a turbine engine, it is likely to cause damage to the engine (and destroy the drone), but who gets the bill. If I were running an airline, I would certainly want the $millions to repair that turbine reimbursed.
That is a fantasy. Class action suits only enrichen the lawyers running them. The lawyers get 30-50% of the settlement, where the other 100,000 have to split the rest of the settlement. Do the math quick, and a $20mill suit gets the lawyers say $5mil (40%). There is $15mil split between 100,000 folks or $150 per person. They probably don't even get that much when you figure what the administrative fees are.
I guess to Joe Sixpack, a free $150 will buy some beer, and make a weekend worth living again. Or maybe they will buy some protein shakes and bulk up to beat up the lawyer that promised 'em $millions.
Imagine a 15 car pile up on the freeway going to downtown. The newspapers and TV stations are real close, but they dispatch their drones out to get live action shots of the carnage. Now there are 8 drones maneuvering in the sky above the carnage. Sure they want to be in the 50-300 ft altitude region, "out of other aircrafts way".
Who should keep the drones from bumping into each other? Who insures the drones are maintained well enough so they don't rain down on the more healthy victims?
Now the medical personnel have asked for a couple medical helicopters to evacuate some seriously injured people. So the medical helicopters show up only to see 5 or 6 drones they must thread their way through (even though there are 8 up there, they didn't see all of them).
Who gives the helicopter pilots some priority? Who tells the drone pilots to get out of the way? How do you talk to the drone pilots? When the 3 lb drone gets sucked into the helicopters turbine engine, and that helicopter crashes, who pays for what?
No, the FAA has huge challenges and issues you and I haven't even thought of.
Current technology won't separate the aircraft well enough. The drones are not about to see and avoid like people. Think of control delays (speed of light seems pretty fast until you realize the pilot is thousands of miles away, you have to get the video image to them, and then the pilot has to react, then the reaction command has to get back to the aircraft, it isn't seconds, but certainly many milliseconds).
Then you can also see how fast the two aircraft are converging. It was easy to miss the little dot, and it was really darn big by the time the drone could make it out. Of course by then, there wasn't much either could do. And what is with that big antenna or whatever blocking the view?
One day a drone will hit a passenger carrying aircraft. Who is gonna scream then? Lets let the technology catch up, and not put these things in civilian airspace.
Oracle databases are maybe fast, and maybe allow more redundancy but that comes with extra work.
MySQL and most of the other commercial databases have richer data types allowing for more a more modern feel.
Sort of like IBM assembler vs. Java. IBM assembler allows screaming fast apps, but at a cost, when that cost approaches the complexity of a modern language, the playing field levels, and suddenly you are better off writing in Java, since you can maintain the code.
I was offered a chance to work on the "Crusader" program back in about 2001. A mobile howitzer. The idea is sound, but the program was pork all the way. One company doing the software in Minneapolis, another building the chassis in Oklahoma City, some assembly in Denver, basically parts of it were being worked on in all 50 states. So the lobbyest gets to tell the local congress critter that they will be loosing jobs in their state if they cut the program. Well the "Crusader" got cut, but go look at the "Non-Line-of-Site-Cannon", same technology, same do part in every state.
Find your favorite program that is happening in the defense industry. It probably falls in the same pattern, one or more contractor partners have work being done in several states they don't really need that much stuff being done but, it helps keep the lobbyests have a good argument to not cut the program.
The cost of a "program" like this is the lifetime. That is crew training, maintenance, fuel, and every dollar spent on the airplane over its lifetime. Buy several thousand, and guess what, it adds up to a trillion. How many cars are planned to last 30 years, but hey the F-35 variants will be around in 2043, just like the Harrier that was build in the 1970's is still around. It is a different mind set. Sure each new program will cost more than the last one, partially due to pork, but mostly due to simple inflation. The Harrier is really that old, and the F-35 makes a solid replacement for it. The F-16 is almost that old, and there needs to be something else in line for it's replacement (although one could argue, that the F-16 probably has 20 years left in it). The navy really doesn't need it, but it is probably cheaper to operate than an F-18. (It won't replace the A-10, no way, it is too fast, and I wouldn't fly that so close to the ground. The A-10 has more armor, and two engines, and a bigger gun, it just make sense to have a medium straight winged airplane that is built that tough helping the ground forces).
We have so many people in the pentagon pushing paper these days, it is quite inefficient. Get rid of some of the extra reporting that congress has mandated and we could afford the F-35 and the next aircraft system. (I know people will argue that there will be no more manned aircraft, but I'd believe it when I see it.) I know there is a risk someone is going to take advantage of the guvnment, heck congress has been doing it for years, I guess they hate competition (or not being able to share in the wealth).
There is always a role for a manned aircraft, not just transport (do you really want 300 people riding in a UAV? I know about autopilots, don't give me that). Fighter escorts and close air support are still going to be done with people in the aircraft.
Lets say someone invents the best thing ever, better than anything you could imagine. This thing will make people want to be with you, or leave you alone, as your preference. It will make food taste better, and you will be happy for the rest of your life if you use this thing. This person gets a patent on it, and sets up a factory to build these things. This person has a perfect business plan, the product price includes the R&D costs, some blue sky, and he pays employees a fair wage.
Evil company X decides this product is easy to make (they read the patent, it was easy to figure out) so they set up a factory across the street, and sell the same thing at a lower price. They don't have any R&D (other than a read of the patent), they pay lower wages, and use cheaper packaging.
No big deal you say, he has a patent on it. Ok, he calls his lawyer, and says, I need an injunction, and I want an infringement suit and I want treble damages. Law being a civil profession, his lawyer calls the evil companies lawyer, and they go to lunch (which our hero is paying for). His lawyer comes back, and says evil company X wants to go to trial. Our hero believes he will win, so of course he says yes, lets do it, we will get the injunction, and treble damages, I'll borrow money from whoever to pay for this adventure.
The lawyers all have a few more lunches (not at McDonalds I can assure you), and they chat and scheme, and make a court date. Aha, in 7 months, there will be an initial trial to determine if the injunction can happen.
During the 7 months, our hero has to sell his house borrow against the factory, lay off employees and pay the rest a little less. Evil company X announces a HUGE profit, and is setting up a second factory in Europe. The evil CEO now wants to live in France to educate his daughter, so he buys a chateau.
Well the trial happens, and sure enough, our hero wins the injunction. Cool, now it is on to the civil phase, and the trial for the damages is scheduled for 9 months from now. The customers have all but forgotten our hero's products, and he doesn't have any money to advertise, or build new products, it is all tied up in lawyer fees (and lunches).
Well, dang, evil company X has also run out of money, since they could sell anything, and they have this factory, and a second one in Europe, lawyers and employees to pay. But the CEO didn't sell his chateau, or stop educating his daughter, he just let the corporation file chapter 7 sells the factories to pay the lawyers, while he kept his money separate. He has partnered with some middle eastern investors and is helping them start a lesser evil company Y that makes the same product. This lesser evil company will use a factory in France and build a new factory in India, selling all over Europe and Asia importing the product into the US.
The civil trial begins against evil company X, and no one from evil company X shows up. The judge rules in favor of our hero, awarding them 80 bazillion dollars, which becomes 240 bazillion dollars because it was willful infringement. Our hero is happy, and asks his lawyer to begin collection. The lawyer finds that evil company X has filed chapter 7 liquidation, and has no assets, so there will only be a judgment against them, but no real money will change hands. Because the liquidation happened before the civil judgement, it will be difficult to get anything.
Meanwhile lesser evil company Y is importing this wonderful product into the US advertising and selling in the same stores as our hero's product. Our hero asks his lawyer to get another injunction, but this lawyer is no fool, wants his money up front still. Our hero doesn't have the assets to get any more money.
Yes our hero was right, the patent protected him from honest people. The patent system doesn't protect anyone from a dishonest company. The legal system is slow, and painful. It can take years to be proven right, but still never see any money for being right.
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I guess these could get up to the 150th floor to offer some assistance. If the building is on fire, there will be all kinds of up and down drafts happening, the turbulence will be a huge challenge. There will be soot and ash to plug up air filters.
Imagine being up 1500ft, when the engine suddenly is at 30% power. The air filter sucked in a pound of ash, and now you are heading down. The vehicle will be dropping maybe as slow as 40mph, but that is still gonna hurt when you hit the ground. They have ballistic parachutes, and they probably will open when deployed above 1000ft, but where will you end up? The turbulence around the building may suck you into the fire or may prevent the parachute from opening. I am guessing if the engine lost power gradually, the person driving would hesitate, try to troubleshoot the problem, and then pull the 'chute a lot below the 1000ft level.
These are fun but dangerous toys. I don't seem them as being tools.
So say the citizens of the world all have the NSA approved encryption with back doors that are super secret and the NSA is the only ones in through them.
Then along comes Dr. Evil and his group. They decide to use some non-NSA approved encryption, maybe something they made up. No back doors, and super long keys.
The NSA gets to look at our communications until the cows com home, but the bad guys still have encrypted stuff that no one can break for a hundred years.
How does having NSA approved encryption help?
The article talks about the "round dials", as if the 747's are all steam gauges. The 747-400 has a glass cockpit, and they even talk about the 747-400 simulator. The 747-8 is a modern jet, built about the same time as the 787.
Pilots say "scarebus" sometimes, and there is a rivalry between Ford and GM, like Boeing and Airbus.
The 787 may seem more economical, being a twin, vs the 4 engines, but it is complicated. See: http://flyingandtechnology.blo...
More people fit on the 747 than on a 787, so it takes fewer trips to haul the same number of people. The 747 makes a better cargo aircraft for large items. It is complicated. They will continue to fly for the rest of my lifetime I am sure.
As a pilot, I don't want to bump into a drone of any kind. The actual damage/result is unpredictable. Will the drone hang on to something, will the drone cause damage to my aircraft. Where will the drone end up when the impact occurs? Will the guts end up in the air intake, causing my engine to quit? Will the drone crack a light, will the drone go through the window? F=MA and you can't change that, I am flying at 150mhp, your 5lb drone can do serious damage, bend metal, break plastic, or more.
Even if it doesn't cause a crash, it will likely cause damage to the aircraft. Think of you car being hit by a golf ball. It may break a window, or put a dent in the hood, causing the owner/insurance company to pay $$ for something that the driver was innocent of.
Imagine doing your job, and someone is throwing rocks and your have to go through the area. Sure the person throwing rocks isn't doing anything illegal, but they may damage you.
Fire fighting is dangerous. Firefighting in an aircraft is dangerous. Throwing extra objects in the air near the firefighting aircraft makes the firefighting even more dangerous.
The golden rule needs to apply to the drone operator and the firefighters.
Much of the modern C++ dialects seem to be a winner. Certainly smart pointers and templates can be good, and are an improvement over the older C++ concepts. C++11/14/17 add features that make writing broken code harder.
Like anything, with much power comes much responsibility.
Lambdas and templates when overused make debugging next to impossible. I was working on some code that was so far nested in a bunch of templates, I couldn't use GDB to make any sense of it. Eventually I tore apart the templates to find a small bug in one of them.
Also the G++ compiler errors don't often point to anything meaningful. Missing a semicolon can result in a paragraph of errors, one may point at the actual error.
Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate C++, but you earn your pay using it.
The Avionic box was probably designed in 1984, using hardened chips of the day. Chances are, it uses a 80186 or something of equal power, but no Linux, or Windows. Certainly there was never an IP stack in the OS, and there were never any ethernet connectors on the box. There is an ARINC-422 connection, which is mostly GPIO pins, not much serial.
Yes, there could be updates to the box, but the certification process is very time consuming. There are paths for software updates, but the hardware has almost no changes over the last 30 years.
Yes, Chris Roberts is full of Sh** and is causing peoples heads to explode for no good reason.
When I was 19 or 20 I was a whiny jerk to my professors. I let a couple cute girls copy off my test in a comp sci class they had no business being in.
When I went back to get more schooling at 30, I got really tired of listening to the 20 year old whiny jerks in the comp sci classes I was in, The professor basically gave up on the last two weeks of one course because the whiny jerks belittled him into not moving forward with the last part of his class. I wish he would have stuck with it, because about half the class would have failed that part of the final test.
This is the CNN piece that takes a warning the government prints and gets everyone all excited, "OMG, hackers will kill us all".
Read it as a warning, what could happen if people aren't careful, but today with the aircraft that are flying, it won't happen.
This report is just a warning, then CNN gets it and asks broad questions "could someone do this??" and an expert who hasn't seen the architecture says, "sure, it could happen". He wants to say "but, in the real world, no!", of course the CNN anchor cut him off. It is possible that the pilots iPad may be connected to the passenger cabin WiFi if the pilot was connected earlier, but forgot to switch over. Connecting the iPad to the aircraft will only bring in power, nothing else. There is no way to control the autopilot from the iPad, no way to reroute the plane from the iPad.
Most connected aircraft will have two routes to the ground, the cockpit and the IFE (passenger cabin). There are many documents about the thoughts that the manufacturers have. Firewalls are good, and may be used in some cases, but so far that is rare.
On rainy and windy days, over farmland, during the holidays and in cities.
A little autonomous drones will be badly affected by wind and weather. Sure on sunny calm days they will work fine. Some stormy night and you want that tin of cavier delivered, and the drone will be wet and blown off course. What happens when they are struck by lightning?
Over farmland, the airspace starts at 0ft. Ag Aircraft are allowed to stay 500ft away from buildings and people, meaning over a random corn field, the aircraft can fly until their wheels touch. Bumping into a 50lb drone at 100kts will leave a dent in the aircraft, and probably destroy your package.
The world is mostly got paths clear around most houses, except during the holidays. A string of christmas lights may not be detectable by a drone, so what should it do when encountering it.
The cities are very dynamic. Delivery trucks, cats, dogs all change the terrain around your house. what happens when a delivery drone is being chased and caught by a curious cat. How about a large bird attacking it. Say the UPS driver just delivered a pile of packages to the front porch, and now there is no place for the Amazon drone to put something.
Then what about security? Certainly all a nefarious person would need to do drive around following drones, and collecting packages before the residents collect them.
How about people who live within 5 miles of an airport. Drones are not allowed there. No deliveries for you.
Yea, lots of work, for little payback.
Lets say the FAA makes an error (IE no means for coordination between UAV and Manned aircraft). The consequences of the drone taking out the EMT helicopter are quite big. Maybe the EMT helicopter only kills everyone on board, and not all the rescuers on the ground, then I guess it isn't so bad.
No, let them go through the process and get it right. Your local EMT will thank you someday.
different rules for different folks.
The US is very flexible when it comes to aviation regulations. When you hear on the news "No flight plan was filed..." it is because not flight plan is required for most flights. Aircraft are allowed to fly where they want most of the time (500ft away from objects, unless congested areas). Other countries are more constrained with current manned aircraft systems, so it is easier to control where the manned systems operate, keeping them away from the unmanned systems.
Now the UAS community wants to mix it up. Flying manned and unmanned aircraft in the same airspace, will be a challenge. Keeping them separated will take special processes and procedures. Quantified right of way rules, operating in see (sense) and avoid situations. Today the only technology that will keep UAS and manned aircraft systems separate are the eyeballs in the pilot/operators heads.
Then there are all kinds of considerations beyond that. Maintenance is a big one. The batteries in drones are similar to phone batteries. From the factory, they run for a day, but after a year of regular use, they don't have the same capacity, and your typical quad copter has only one mode when the batteries die, and it isn't a glide mode.
How about coordination with other operators. The big wreck on the freeway needs a EMS helicopter to evacuate a victim, but there are 6 UAS systems (3 TV stations, 2 newspapers and a dude with his for the heck of it) filming the carnage. How do you tell the UAS systems to get out of the way?
So to make all this work, there are operator training items to consider, maintenance requirements, communications requirements, accident reporting considerations, insurance and stuff most folks haven't thought about. If you think the FAA can knock that out in a weekend, you are fooling yourself. Go have a read of the proposed Part 107 regulations. Lots of things are missing, it is just a start, and it is well thought out.
Didn't their stupid one click patent fall apart, mostly, for being unspecific?
I still won't buy anything from Jeff Bezos on purpose.
I've been following this project for a while, and there seemed to be little new information since Dayton 2013.
Kits or fully populated boards would be awesome.
Lets do it, and get the volume up, maybe the price can come down.
Can you promise the drone, out of your site, will not run into another aircraft, person or building?
For experimental situations over known terrain maybe autonomous drones will work fine. For commercial operations in situations where other aircraft may be operating (IE EMS helicopters, AG aircraft, other drones, etc), the drone needs to operate under the same rules as the manned aircraft they are in the vicinity of. Manned aircraft have to see and avoid other aircraft. It doesn't always work, but certainly with two pilots looking gives a fighting chance of one pilot noticing. Today pilots have a hard time seeing birds, and putting drones in their way will cause more accidents.
Please consider aircraft of all sizes and types. Sure a 5lb drone may not hurt a 747, but a 5lb drone will probably go through the windshield of a small twin engine aircraft. If the drone were to be ingested by a turbine engine, it is likely to cause damage to the engine (and destroy the drone), but who gets the bill. If I were running an airline, I would certainly want the $millions to repair that turbine reimbursed.
That is a fantasy. Class action suits only enrichen the lawyers running them. The lawyers get 30-50% of the settlement, where the other 100,000 have to split the rest of the settlement. Do the math quick, and a $20mill suit gets the lawyers say $5mil (40%). There is $15mil split between 100,000 folks or $150 per person. They probably don't even get that much when you figure what the administrative fees are.
I guess to Joe Sixpack, a free $150 will buy some beer, and make a weekend worth living again. Or maybe they will buy some protein shakes and bulk up to beat up the lawyer that promised 'em $millions.
There is over regulation, making sure the stuff in the bottle is the exact same as what the label says.
Then there is casual regulation, where there is stuff in the bottle and a label, and you get money for it.
You want to see 3D with something strapped to your face, Google Cardboard is the tool to compare this to, not Google Glass.
If you are comparing prices, well, maybe Glass is what to compare it to.
The NASA budget sounds like a lot of money, but it is very small (about 2%) compared to say military.
Some of the big ones (http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/p/nasa_budget_cost.htm):
DOD $756.4 billion
Health and Human services $73.7 billion
Education $68.6 billion
NASA $17.5 billion
Okey, so it is more than department of interior ($11.5 billion) but not by much.
you just gotta look, and geeks like numbers.
Imagine a 15 car pile up on the freeway going to downtown. The newspapers and TV stations are real close, but they dispatch their drones out to get live action shots of the carnage. Now there are 8 drones maneuvering in the sky above the carnage. Sure they want to be in the 50-300 ft altitude region, "out of other aircrafts way".
Who should keep the drones from bumping into each other?
Who insures the drones are maintained well enough so they don't rain down on the more healthy victims?
Now the medical personnel have asked for a couple medical helicopters to evacuate some seriously injured people. So the medical helicopters show up only to see 5 or 6 drones they must thread their way through (even though there are 8 up there, they didn't see all of them).
Who gives the helicopter pilots some priority?
Who tells the drone pilots to get out of the way? How do you talk to the drone pilots?
When the 3 lb drone gets sucked into the helicopters turbine engine, and that helicopter crashes, who pays for what?
No, the FAA has huge challenges and issues you and I haven't even thought of.
Pick another ISP.
Current technology won't separate the aircraft well enough. The drones are not about to see and avoid like people. Think of control delays (speed of light seems pretty fast until you realize the pilot is thousands of miles away, you have to get the video image to them, and then the pilot has to react, then the reaction command has to get back to the aircraft, it isn't seconds, but certainly many milliseconds).
Then you can also see how fast the two aircraft are converging. It was easy to miss the little dot, and it was really darn big by the time the drone could make it out. Of course by then, there wasn't much either could do. And what is with that big antenna or whatever blocking the view?
One day a drone will hit a passenger carrying aircraft. Who is gonna scream then? Lets let the technology catch up, and not put these things in civilian airspace.
Oracle databases are maybe fast, and maybe allow more redundancy but that comes with extra work.
MySQL and most of the other commercial databases have richer data types allowing for more a more modern feel.
Sort of like IBM assembler vs. Java. IBM assembler allows screaming fast apps, but at a cost, when that cost approaches the complexity of a modern language, the playing field levels, and suddenly you are better off writing in Java, since you can maintain the code.
I was offered a chance to work on the "Crusader" program back in about 2001. A mobile howitzer. The idea is sound, but the program was pork all the way. One company doing the software in Minneapolis, another building the chassis in Oklahoma City, some assembly in Denver, basically parts of it were being worked on in all 50 states. So the lobbyest gets to tell the local congress critter that they will be loosing jobs in their state if they cut the program. Well the "Crusader" got cut, but go look at the "Non-Line-of-Site-Cannon", same technology, same do part in every state.
Find your favorite program that is happening in the defense industry. It probably falls in the same pattern, one or more contractor partners have work being done in several states they don't really need that much stuff being done but, it helps keep the lobbyests have a good argument to not cut the program.
The cost of a "program" like this is the lifetime. That is crew training, maintenance, fuel, and every dollar spent on the airplane over its lifetime. Buy several thousand, and guess what, it adds up to a trillion. How many cars are planned to last 30 years, but hey the F-35 variants will be around in 2043, just like the Harrier that was build in the 1970's is still around. It is a different mind set. Sure each new program will cost more than the last one, partially due to pork, but mostly due to simple inflation. The Harrier is really that old, and the F-35 makes a solid replacement for it. The F-16 is almost that old, and there needs to be something else in line for it's replacement (although one could argue, that the F-16 probably has 20 years left in it). The navy really doesn't need it, but it is probably cheaper to operate than an F-18. (It won't replace the A-10, no way, it is too fast, and
I wouldn't fly that so close to the ground. The A-10 has more armor, and two engines, and a bigger gun, it just make sense to have a medium straight winged airplane that is built that tough helping the ground forces).
We have so many people in the pentagon pushing paper these days, it is quite inefficient. Get rid of some of the extra reporting that congress has mandated and we could afford the F-35 and the next aircraft system. (I know people will argue that there will be no more manned aircraft, but I'd believe it when I see it.) I know there is a risk someone is going to take advantage of the guvnment, heck congress has been doing it for years, I guess they hate competition (or not being able to share in the wealth).
There is always a role for a manned aircraft, not just transport (do you really want 300 people riding in a UAV? I know about autopilots, don't give me that). Fighter escorts and close air support are still going to be done with people in the aircraft.
Lets say someone invents the best thing ever, better than anything you could imagine. This thing will make people want to be with you, or leave you alone, as your preference. It will make food taste better, and you will be happy for the rest of your life if you use this thing. This person gets a patent on it, and sets up a factory to build these things. This person has a perfect business plan, the product price includes the R&D costs, some blue sky, and he pays employees a fair wage.
Evil company X decides this product is easy to make (they read the patent, it was easy to figure out) so they set up a factory across the street, and sell the same thing at a lower price. They don't have any R&D (other than a read of the patent), they pay lower wages, and use cheaper packaging.
No big deal you say, he has a patent on it. Ok, he calls his lawyer, and says, I need an injunction, and I want an infringement suit and I want treble damages. Law being a civil profession, his lawyer calls the evil companies lawyer, and they go to lunch (which our hero is paying for). His lawyer comes back, and says evil company X wants to go to trial. Our hero believes he will win, so of course he says yes, lets do it, we will get the injunction, and treble damages, I'll borrow money from whoever to pay for this adventure.
The lawyers all have a few more lunches (not at McDonalds I can assure you), and they chat and scheme, and make a court date. Aha, in 7 months, there will be an initial trial to determine if the injunction can happen.
During the 7 months, our hero has to sell his house borrow against the factory, lay off employees and pay the rest a little less. Evil company X announces a HUGE profit, and is setting up a second factory in Europe. The evil CEO now wants to live in France to educate his daughter, so he buys a chateau.
Well the trial happens, and sure enough, our hero wins the injunction. Cool, now it is on to the civil phase, and the trial for the damages is scheduled for 9 months from now. The customers have all but forgotten our hero's products, and he doesn't have any money to advertise, or build new products, it is all tied up in lawyer fees (and lunches).
Well, dang, evil company X has also run out of money, since they could sell anything, and they have this factory, and a second one in Europe, lawyers and employees to pay. But the CEO didn't sell his chateau, or stop educating his daughter, he just let the corporation file chapter 7 sells the factories to pay the lawyers, while he kept his money separate. He has partnered with some middle eastern investors and is helping them start a lesser evil company Y that makes the same product. This lesser evil company will use a factory in France and build a new factory in India, selling all over Europe and Asia importing the product into the US.
The civil trial begins against evil company X, and no one from evil company X shows up. The judge rules in favor of our hero, awarding them 80 bazillion dollars, which becomes 240 bazillion dollars because it was willful infringement. Our hero is happy, and asks his lawyer to begin collection. The lawyer finds that evil company X has filed chapter 7 liquidation, and has no assets, so there will only be a judgment against them, but no real money will change hands. Because the liquidation happened before the civil judgement, it will be difficult to get anything.
Meanwhile lesser evil company Y is importing this wonderful product into the US advertising and selling in the same stores as our hero's product. Our hero asks his lawyer to get another injunction, but this lawyer is no fool, wants his money up front still. Our hero doesn't have the assets to get any more money.
Yes our hero was right, the patent protected him from honest people. The patent system doesn't protect anyone from a dishonest company. The legal system is slow, and painful. It can take years to be proven right, but still never see any money for being right.