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Comment by mrinterweb | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine power companies would be ok with this. People go to jail for tapping into power lines. Energy theft from power lines is illegal.

Even if this was somehow allowed by power companies, I wonder if they would be any weight considerations if multiple drones hooked on to the same line span.

I see applications for this, but anyone operating these drones would need clearance from the power company they are tapping into.

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> "I can't imagine power companies would be ok with this. People go to jail for tapping into power lines."

Presumably it's the power companies (specifically, transmission network and distribution network operators) who will be most interested in this. They're increasingly using drones for infrastructure inspection, finding faults, etc.

1000%.

Funny enough my engineering capstone tried something very similar but much more stupidly complicated. Do it while flying a parabola with a winged drone. Never got the control system to work…crashed into a lot of local power lines.

Our assumed customer was power companies doing inspection.

For affordable long range assassination operations. Make it in clear matte plastic, quiet, low flying, add some obstacle avoidance and facial recognition perhaps. Quite a nasty package under 1500 dollars I bet. Could even be ultra small w poison darts too.

You had me until poison darts!

Shaped 10g C4 charges

Target may be able to duck in time and you'd only get one attack per drone. Maybe a gyrojet explosive tip munition with poison coating for the shrapnel, where the firing drone could time the tip detonation by tracking the projectile in real time after launch. That would be light enough to provide several shots or for multiple targets. With infrared target the jugular. Highly inconvenient to defend against with armor and the projectile will be incoming fast enough such that there's no opportunity to evade, assuming it can get in range quietly. There's a huge market for this. From nation states to divorcing couples

You know whats really quiet?

A supersonic missile.

Not getting that for $1500. Why spend expensive missiles on unimportant people? And of course, those leave a sky trail from the point of origin.

Why kill unimportant people at all?

If the FBI was going to kick down your door over this I think the $5 of energy you stole would be at the bottom of their list of concerns.

Power companies are really the only ones who care about inspecting power lines anyway...

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