A Silicon Valley for Drones, in North Dakota | Hacker News Reader

A Silicon Valley for Drones, in North Dakota

nytimes.com

64 pointskloncks30 comments

I think a serious benefit ND has, aside from the established reputation and money put in is space. I can't really think of somewhere in Silicon Valley (or near by) that has the lack of population, lack of airspace traffic, and lack of local / state / federal ordinances that would allow this degree of freedom.

Silicon Valley has it's strengths, but it can't be ground zero for everything.

Honestly, if the NUMI plant wasn't in Fremont, I could see the majority of Tesla being not in the bay area (one could argue the battery plant in NV is such a shift).

"I can't really think of somewhere in Silicon Valley (or near by) that has the lack of population, lack of airspace traffic, and lack of local / state / federal ordinances that would allow this degree of freedom."

Southern California has Mojave Air and Space Port, which is, among other things, a flight test center for civilian aircraft. Scaled Composites flies from there, and SpaceShip One was launched from there for the X-Prize. They have a test pilot school. Lots of exotic aircraft activity takes place there. Read their "Why Test Here" section.[1] Three of their features: "Welcoming attitude toward imagination and experimentation", "Huge airspace away from populated urban areas", and "Should you ever need it, a sophisticated Aerospace Rescue and FireFighting operation". This is useful for larger or longer-ranged drones. QF-4 drones, converted from F-4 fighters, are built and tested there.

[1] http://www.mojaveairport.com/why-test-here.html

Nevada is closer and seems to have most of North Dakota's benefits?

I also wonder if Nevada's climate would make it a better choice too. The Dakotas have some of the most extreme weather in the US - hot summers, frigid winters, severe thunderstorms, and wind - there were a lot of windy days when I lived in North Dakota. Would days with subzero high temps and 30 MPH sustained winds be a useful environment for drones?

One thing that really seemed to help the Silicon Valley get started was how away it was from everything - particularly the establishment on the east coast. I do wonder if the next big thing will be started somewhere that is similarly away from Silicon Valley - somewhere no one would expect, like North Dakota.

Nevada has two big minuses - Las Vegas and the amount of planes going in and out plus the Air Force has a rather large base in the state that is a bit more... secure than anything in ND.

The extreme weather (hot, cold, windy, etc.) is a bonus for drone testing since they have to operate in those conditions in the real world.

ND has Minot AFB and is also peppered with missile silos that have very precise airspace restrictions. With B-52s and Minutemen missiles, it all sounds like cold war relics, but they are adding new MOAs to this day plus NOTAMs that pop up daily.

The weather is so extreme that it often manages to simulate the north pole and other tundra. If that's your aim, then it's a goldmine.

Example of a newer wide area air restriction in the state: https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2012-06-20/pdf/2012-15008.p...

A lot of the missile silos are now empty in ND and Minot is a distance from Grand Forks.

> The weather is so extreme that it often manages to simulate the north pole and other tundra. If that's your aim, then it's a goldmine.

Oh come on, we've actually had better weather than SD and MN for the last couple of years. Its not that horrible, it just has horrible moments. Poor people can get their car too and fro, so its not that bad.

> Example ....

That's from 2012 and for Devils Lake, ND. The range is pretty small and they were talking about the firing range. Heck the same document tells of scheduling with local crop dusters. I work 10 miles from there and the local airport is within 8 miles of the place. Mostly they are doing construction training and now a bit of drones themselves.

One could argue that extreme climate swings might make for an _ideal_ development environment. Environmental extremes would better model real-world conditions.

I have sometimes wondered if where a company is based forms their products.

While wikipedia now says that Subaru has their HQ in Tokyo, i could have sworn they were initially based on Japan's northern island. And they seem to make some damn fine cars for winter roads.

Similarly both Korea and Finland gets damn cold during winter, and thus both Samsung and Nokia may have ignored capacitive touch screens since they don't work too well with thick gloves.

Yeah, but you don't want that during prototype times. You'd want to test that under controlled times when you feel you have a better product.

Isn't a lot of the em[ptyt open space in NV under BLM control, and therefore off limits to "drones"?

(Also, good luck getting your experimental UAV back when it mysteriously goes down over Area 51...)

I'm pretty sure BLM means open for drones... It's national parks that are off limits. BLM is the "everything else" of US land and in general has the most relaxed rules. Like, you can land a plane anywhere on a dry BLM lakebed, for one.

Ahhh, you're right (here from .au I kind of automatically substitute "National Parks" for "BLM", cause that's a reasonable close translation to our local government nomenclature. I forget Natioanl Parks and BLM aren't synonyms.)

Although ND has crop dusters which will be an interesting conflict.

How often do crop dusters usually fly? I feel like that's a problem that could be solved by a bit of communication.

Over a given field, once or twice per year at most. Most farms probably do not use aircraft for spraying at all. They use ground equipment: tractors pulling sprayers. Granted that my experience is a different part of the world, but crop dusters are really rather rare.

I lived in the Dakotas for 20 years and crop dusters were present, but not terribly common. Ground spraying equipment was way more common.

As an aside, the City of Fargo uses crop dusters to spray for mosquitoes in the summer - which is either super cool or super annoying, depending on your opinion of airplanes :)

Not in ND, they are fairly common. [edit: I'm in the NE to N central]

It's seasonal, but they fly at altitudes a lot of drones fly at.

As someone who used to travel the back rural roads of North Dakota, I can confirm this. I've been buzzed a time or two from crazy crop dusting pilots.

It scares the bejesus out of you if you're not ready for it.

Yeah, they'd definitely be at the same altitudes. I moreso meant do crop dusters fly daily, weekly, etc. Probably pretty crop dependent.

As the jobs are contracted, so daily in season, chaotically.

Replace the crop dusters with drones?

.... and watch your drones get shot down. I don't think anyone trusts a drone to do proper crop dusting or replace humans in that way.

Stupid behavior like this is the reason for which drones will find progressively more regulation and resistance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmD3rXUR1Tw

The supply of idiots seems limitless.

The aviation school at Grand Forks, ND is well known and the article is not kidding about the number of countries it attracts. It was a natural fit to move into drone piloting.

That aviation school appears, in detail, in Miss Pilot, the Japanese drama. Episodes 5 and 6 are set there.

(That drama was made with the total cooperation of ANA, and the aviation details are accurate.)

Maybe Stillwater, OK with the first UAS graduate program will vie for that title.

https://unmanned.okstate.edu

Embry-Riddle in Daytona Beach Florida seems far more likely. http://daytonabeach.erau.edu/

Also tons of near by land and open ocean, as well as NASA and government contracting engineers already co-located and a bunch of other great universities nearby or with satellite campuses in and around Orlando / Daytona.

Being able to fly 365 days a year helps too.

Realistically, the Pacific Ocean and insanely high concentration of engineers in sv seems like the most likely place for long-term drone innovation.

Weren't quadcopters formerly developed by boston dynamics ?

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