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A comment on Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design. Parent comment

Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by hooloovoo_zoo on Sunday November 29, 2015 @06:40PM (#10646671)
I suspect this will be limited to urban areas, like all of Amazon's premium delivery options. 30 minutes of flight time at 30 mph means you could cover the entire city of Houston (the largest city by area in the U.S.) with about 4 warehouses. I think you're much better off trying to increase the range of your drones than using carriers because your coverage area is quadratic with your drones' range but linear with your number of carriers.
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Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by mapt on Sunday November 29, 2015 @08:31PM (#10647091)
Drones have got to get back in addition to getting to the target, and you only get 30 minutes if most/all of your payload is dedicated to battery. The drone has a fairly short range while fully loaded, and a lot longer range while empty.
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Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by shiftpgdn on Sunday November 29, 2015 @09:07PM (#10647196)
86% of Amazon's deliveries are under 5lbs AND a glider style drone has way longer flight times than a traditional quad/octocopter.
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Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by mapt on Monday November 30, 2015 @04:40PM (#10652077)
5lbs is a large number in this context.
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Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by drbillnye on Monday November 30, 2015 @12:39AM (#10647955)
What we need is a sort of tcp/ip network for drones where they understand where charging stations are along the way, and other brands delivery drones would eventually be able to participate in the network as well which would spur growth. I'm good for a few charging / delivery stations in my neighborhood
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Re:Amazon Shows Off New Prime Air Drone with Hybrid Design by leni536 on Monday November 30, 2015 @03:35AM (#10648401)
> coverage area is quadratic with your drones' range but linear with your number of carriers.

How running cost scales with drones' range? If it's also quadratic or worse then there is no reason to increase it.

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