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Comment by selectout | Hacker News Reader

Great to see efforts like this not primarily focused on just delivering books or groceries but being put to the use for AID and resources that otherwise wouldn't be able to get there in a practical manner.

I'm curious what kind of running time these have though and distance they can travel. Would be great if they could just have 2-3 go for a dozen roundtrips each in circumstances like Katrina.

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My feeling is that this is a 'social hack'. Talk about using the drones in special, humanitarian situations first. People will then be less likely to come out against their development and testing. Then, once you have proved the technology and it has developed some level of public trust, you can expand into other areas with broader application and greater commercial returns.

Larger sized RC planes like a Skywalker can usually run for around 40 Minutes to an hour and cover around 50 Miles in that time. There are examples of much longer flight times and longer distances but 50 miles seems about right in real world usage with a payload. As soon as it comes back you can swap out the battery and launch again, a 2 - 3 minute turnaround is easy.

> not primarily focused on just delivering books or groceries but being put to the use for AID

That is just their plan for getting regulatory approval: if you are against UAVs, you are against delivering life-saving medicine to disaster victims.

Couldn't it be both?

Yes, there's clearly nothing stopping them from carrying a wide variety of cargo. I'm sure the drones will end up delivering both life-critical and completely frivolous packages.

Drones doing food drops to long-distance hikers (e.g., PCT) would be great!

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