Is this (organ transport) really an unsolved issue that some kind of "drone highway" would solve? I doubt it.

If you think transporting organs by car is a solution, then yeah, very much solved. But organs degrade every minute, so even a little speed up is very much worth it.

They transport them by motorbike at the moment, just because they can skip traffic much better.

But yes, quick delivery for organs is great - if this is enough commercial demand to make a drone superhighway worthwile/viable though is another question. Also these drone superhighways drop at a specific point at the end of the highway - so you still need to pick it up from the superhighway 'Skyway hub' and get it to the end customer.

When I looked at the Coventry Skyway project last it looked like it was started by a team who had nearly no experience in aviation or logistics so it did make me a bit sus.

Same with blood, when you need it you really need it.

There is an awesome (volunteer) organisation in the UK called Blood Bikes[1] that operate all over the UK.

The training is pretty intensive, it's something I'm considering doing after I get a full license (and 2 years and advanced) because it's an amazing thing to do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_bike

Then get a helicopter. ;-)

I have a medical helicopter flying over my house roughly every second day and that's more than enough. If all the cars marked as "organ transport" that I see around here went by helicopter instead I wouldn't be able to hear my GF talking at home... And of course - the cost and emissions, and the inability to land at small fields...

I don't see how a big, bulky, human-piloted helicopter could be in any way better than a specialized, lightweight unmanned vehicle.

I bet the money that will be wasted on this project (before it inevitable get shelved) will be way more than the costs of just buying out the land affected by the noise from helicopter organ transport so people that are bothered by it can move (and maybe resell the land at a discount to those who don't mind the noise, whether it's due to better soundproofing or converting it to office space that wouldn't mind it).

Yes, in the very long run, drone transport for these things would be better due to emissions/etc, but IMO the country has more pressing problems at the moment.

I live in the centre of a capital city. Not even the state could get enough money to buy the affected land here.

> Yes, in the very long run, drone transport for these things would be better due to emissions/etc, but IMO the country has more pressing problems at the moment.

A country always has thousands of more pressing problems, the issue is that nobody orders them the same way. The best you can do is to solve more than one problem at a time.

I think in the here and now, autonomous drones sharing airspace with other aircraft is not really a solved problems. Otherwise agreed.

Hence the "superhighway" to ensure the drones sticks to a pre-defined volume which other aircraft won't be straying into.

For what it’s worth, a lot of vehicles marked “organ transport” are just people trying to avoid speeding tickets and aggressive behavior from other drivers.

At current situation, reliability of transport. Drones may be 99% reliable (making up the number), but thats not enough when that 1% means somebody on waiting list is going to die due to failed transport.

Costs benefits are obvious but there are always drawbacks, especially when every fail may mean 1 dead person.

And that you bought your property so badly placed is unfortunate, but the result of your own choices (or more like lack of thorough research). If you bought it next to highway so should all car traffic in the area be banned?

> inability to land at small fields...

Helicopters can operate with VTOL.

Or just get an FTP account, mount it locally with curlftpfs, and then use SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem.

Helicopter pads are not available everywhere.

Where do you think an organ transport helicopter would need to land? In a larger hospital or next to your local butcher?

Almost every hospital, at least everyone that does transplants, will have a landing pad.

But that's the point - this would enable new use cases, like for example performing emergency organ replacement at a smaller hospital, when transport is too dangerous for the person, or when a helicopter is not available.

Also, you might be transporting organs from a smaller place to a big hospital - donors that got into an accident probably didn't take care to have it near a helipad.

> Almost every hospital, at least everyone that does transplants, will have a landing pad.

Perhaps before they had that, this same line of thinking might have concluded they didn't need one, as they already had a car park.

I suppose helicopter pilots are a bit hard to come by also

It is a race against time, with a life at risk, in adverse traffic.

Watch an actual organ being transported through London [1], back in the mid-1980s. Situation is worse today, if you talk to EMR drivers.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTN5X4JZFjU

What a riveting 30 minutes that was.

> Is this (organ transport) really an unsolved issue that some kind of "drone highway" would solve? I doubt it.

I didn't say it would solve it.

Organ transport might be a good application. That doesn't mean that we should allow drones for any other types of application without thinking it over very thoroughly.

And let's not forget to tax the damage they cause in terms of pollution. Keeping things in the air requires way more energy than moving them over land. And there are other negative externalities (noise and visual pollution), and also physical danger (these things might crash or collide).

> And let's not forget to tax the damage they cause in terms of pollution. Keeping things in the air requires way more energy than moving them over land.

What are you comparing this to? Does this include the energy and pollution needed to move a human, and a vehicle to safely accommodate that human?

> And there are other negative externalities (noise and visual pollution), and also physical danger (these things might crash or collide).

Are these not also the case for human-driven vehicles, which endanger more people (if a motorbike crashes then the rider has low odds), and create noise and visual pollution? I assume the latter means "I don't like how it looks"; if so then does a road look nicer than a drone your eye can't resolve unless you're fairly close to it?

Air transportation can only compete with cars in terms of pollution when a lot of mass is transported (e.g. for an aircraft with 300 passengers versus a 4-person car, pollution per passenger is about equal). For small transport, cars win by a large margin.

I think bikes might be better, than an organ stranded god knows where when a drone has fallen out the sky.

People will just steal the drones, I'm sure there's huge demand for organs.