FAA clears UPS delivery drones to fly beyond visual line of sight

cyu@sh.itjust.worksbanned from community to Technology@lemmy.world – 194 points – FAA clears UPS delivery drones for longer-range flights
theverge.com

Drones to fly without spotters on the ground monitoring route and skies for other aircraft

23

You are viewing a single comment
View all comments

Soon the sky will be full of these fuckers. I like the idea of them (edit: as in the utility of them), but can you imagine? Hundreds of them just buzzing around, constantly.

Is it really that different to the vrooming of cars that we have grown accustomed to?

Right? Cars are orders of magnitude louder, right in our face and constantly pump out reeking fumes. If these things reduce the amount of trucks on the road it would be a big win.

to be fair, at the height these things will be flying, you won't hear them on most days.

My mini drone can be heard from 200 feet up easily if you are underneath it. If its 100 or lower everyone around can hear it. 400feet is the maximum allowed height.

Pretty sure these have the new propeller shape that cuts noise by like 80% or something. See Mark Rober's video if you are interested :https://youtu.be/DOWDNBu9DkU?t=831

you won't hear them at 100ft especially if there's any ambient noise around you at all.

That must be one crazy loud drone.

All the ones I fly, including others are practically silent past 100ft...

What RPM/blade diameter is your mini-drone? the smaller ones are louder because of the higher RPM's

Mini 3 pro. Thats probably true about the rpm i have no idea tho

Have to remember too that carrying packages will require more thrust. Also, they would probably be large enough that big birds don't try or fail to take them down. I was flying a ~35g drone around my yard last year and a hawk of some kind snatched it right out of the air and tried to kill it on top of a tree. Thankfully got it back with some diplomacy (yelling at bird) and no one was hurt. Drone still flies to this day...

Got it on camera too, the claws look massive.

There's no way these things will last.
But it is kinda cool in a Jetsons type of way.