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Comment by enos_feedler | Hacker News Reader

I believe the next big thing will be the productization of building a home anywhere, without requiring municipal infrastructure. There is still a ways to go in terms of technology to make it all happen and make it affordable. But at some point, it will really reconfigure where and how we all live.

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I really hope that this will happen, but I'm skeptical. The push to cluster around big cities is still accelerating and land scarcity around big metro areas is what is driving out affordability. Utilities connection constitutes a small and almost insignificant cost of total urban residential construction. If a global pandemic couldn't stop this trend, then I don't think we will ever live in an affordable distributed civilization.

This is something I have been think about for the past 10 year as well. If we can get enough cheap power production, incinerating toilets seem interesting. And the growth satellite internet is a big win for this area.

And then we have companies like Space Mobile trying to essentially put cell phone towers in low earth orbit which will (hopefully) enable 4G/5G coverage all over the globe.

Including water and sewer?

I can envision local electricity generation and wireless communication. But not every home can support a well and septic system.

I just installed incineration toilet at my cabin. Works great and burns the shit to ashes. Works with a gass balloon and a 12V battery. 220V option being available.

I guess a well and a septic tank? Lived that way for awhile up in the mountains and it was tough

I mean, I grew up with a well and septic tank and my life was literally no different than living in an apartment in the city. It’s not like a radical off-the-grid thing millions of homes are this way.

Particularly when you look at modern septic which do tertiary treatment with inputs of power and a chlorine block every six months.

How will transport work? One of the big issues with homes built in distant areas is the expectation of roads (and car dependency in general)

Fixed wing drones are becoming super cheap, and are far simpler than their copter-classed counterparts. While handover needs smoothing out, delivery will thus be easy for items of daily use. Less so for furniture, appliances, etc. However, if you are willing to deal with foam furniture, earth building or felling a couple of trees on site, robotics could still have you covered.

I'm convinced that fixed wing drones will dominate the drone delivery market. The payload capacity difference for size and cost is just too large. Barring some truly revolutionary step change in power storage density, any battery improvements that benefit the multirotors will benefit fixed wings even more.

It's a tradeoff. The problems with fixed wing are difficulties maneuvering in crowded low-altitude urban airspace, energy and space required for takeoff, higher speed and mass thus force of impact, and at the point of delivery there's no easy way to hover without going hybrid and the alternative of simply dropping people's goods to the ground with parachutes doesn't result in an ideal delivery experience. This is often fudged with extra packaging, which is environmentally irresponsible as well as spatially constraining for payloads on already limited airframes. Copters are roughly superior in all these regards, but can't go very far due to energy inefficiency and tend to be noisier. I think copters will dominate urban/precision/high value or theft risk, and locally sourced retail such as food, whereas fixed wing will be suburban/semi-rural/rural/industrial/low precision/low value or theft risk, and further sources retail such as hardware, commercial and industrial supplies. It's been somewhat amusing to see the huge amount of money in the space and watch the strategic directions of Amazon Prime Air (hexacopter; 5lbs max payload; 'drop' strategy), Google Wing (hybrid + 'lower on a cord' strategy; numerous designs), Manna (quadcopter), Zipline (fixed wing + 'parachute' strategy; larger payload).

I agree with your breakdown of which model dominates which segments, though I expect that in-city drone never takes off except for extremely time sensitive/high value missions (organ delivery or something similarly extreme) because figuring out things like where to land tons of drones in downtown Manhattan just so I can get shake shack slightly faster without leaving my apt. My bet is that drone delivery will really shine when it provides next day for areas that have week-long lead times which is going to have to be fixed wing (or a really good hybrid) because of the ranges inherently involved.

I'm a huge fan of Zipline, I imagine they'll refine the parachute element of the operation.

Do you foresee fixed wing drones also displacing cars? Would be awfully nice to no longer need to build highways and roads...

No. Maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground-effect_vehicle A 2014 study by students at NASA's Ames Research Center claims that use of GEVs for passenger travel could lead to cheaper flights, increased accessibility and less pollution. https://youtu.be/3heh9swH2Zw?t=66

Interesting, what about whole villages or modules of a town. Kickstarter, where if everyone commits a certain cost a whole new concept village or town is built somewhere.

Cities at sea may need something like this to get going.

A company wanting to build a plant next to a resource they need could acquire a town for its workforce.

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