Re:FAA OKs first commercial drone flights over land
by stcredzero on Tuesday June 10, 2014 @02:41PM
(#7874496)
Cargo drones have interesting implications. When the requirement of a human pilot or crew/passengers of any kind at all disappears, the possible form factors increase greatly. So, just a wild first-draft brainstorm here: How about quadcopter drones that take off and rendezvous with an overhead aircraft? Perhaps they deploy a drogue chute or streamer drogue in front of the craft, which is equipped with something like the Fulton surface-to-air recovery system:
(Similar devices have already been used to retrieve satellites that have reentered the atmosphere.) Once the mother aircraft retrieves its assigned drones, it stores them away, climbs to 50,000 feet, orients itself, then fires rockets to put it on a suborbital trajectory. On such a trajectory, the mother aircraft could reach any point on the globe in under 2 hours.
After the mother craft has reentered, it returns to a normal aircraft flight regime, then releases the quadcopter drones to fly directly to their delivery coordinates. Voila: same day point to point (city to city) small parcel delivery anywhere in the world. (Perhaps even same morning or same afternoon.)
Obviously, there are a lot of potential problems. Lots more organizations besides the FAA would have to get involved. The system described above doesn't take into account international customs and the spread of invasive species. There is the potential that people would try to use the system to deliver bombs. Also, suborbital craft of such capabilities are basically ICBMs. Such concerns would mean that the mother craft would have to land at an airport and the cargo drones inspected before they are sent to their destinations. It might be better to have the mother aircraft remove a cargo pack then drop the drones, which would float away on the streamer drogue, re-furl the drogue and resume powered flight back to base. This would save the weight of the drone for the suborbital flight. Then customs could proceed at the destination country mostly as usual, then the small parcels could be re-dispatched on a different set of drones, or proceed by conventional delivery. (Which, by then, could be a self driving vehicle.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_...
(Similar devices have already been used to retrieve satellites that have reentered the atmosphere.) Once the mother aircraft retrieves its assigned drones, it stores them away, climbs to 50,000 feet, orients itself, then fires rockets to put it on a suborbital trajectory. On such a trajectory, the mother aircraft could reach any point on the globe in under 2 hours.
After the mother craft has reentered, it returns to a normal aircraft flight regime, then releases the quadcopter drones to fly directly to their delivery coordinates. Voila: same day point to point (city to city) small parcel delivery anywhere in the world. (Perhaps even same morning or same afternoon.)
Obviously, there are a lot of potential problems. Lots more organizations besides the FAA would have to get involved. The system described above doesn't take into account international customs and the spread of invasive species. There is the potential that people would try to use the system to deliver bombs. Also, suborbital craft of such capabilities are basically ICBMs. Such concerns would mean that the mother craft would have to land at an airport and the cargo drones inspected before they are sent to their destinations. It might be better to have the mother aircraft remove a cargo pack then drop the drones, which would float away on the streamer drogue, re-furl the drogue and resume powered flight back to base. This would save the weight of the drone for the suborbital flight. Then customs could proceed at the destination country mostly as usual, then the small parcels could be re-dispatched on a different set of drones, or proceed by conventional delivery. (Which, by then, could be a self driving vehicle.)