Posted on 03/27/2017 4:49:23 PM PDT by COBOL2Java
The idea is simple: Shipping by air is fast, but expensive. Boat is much cheaper, but very slow. So why not send all those boxes and packages on an un-piloted, amphibious Boeing 777-sized drone that can fly point to point and eventually drop off as much as 200,000 pounds of cargo at a seaside port? It would carry that cargo at about half the cost of normal air freight thanks to a more efficient use of fuel and the lack of an expensive crew.
That’s the thinking behind Natilus, a Richmond, California-based startup that this summer plans on flying FAA-approved tests of a 30-foot prototype that’s about the size and weight of a military Predator drone. The flight will mark the first significant step toward upending the global freight forwarding industry. Eventually, CEO Aleksey Matyushev says, the company hopes to fly the prototype on 30-hour test runs, carrying up to 700 pounds of cargo, between Los Angeles and Hawaii.
Natilus, which has raised $750,000 from venture capitalist Tim Draper and was incubated at the aviation-oriented Starburst Accelerator in Los Angeles, will power its drones with turboprop and turbofan engines and standard jet fuel, sending them on missions at an altitude of approximately 20,000 feet. That’s well below commercial planes, but high enough to be fuel-efficient.
(Excerpt) Read more at fastcompany.com ...
What could possibly go wrong?
What is interesting about this concept is the regulatory hurdles it has to go through. The FAA will not allow unmanned drones to fly over US airspace, so it is limited to overseas shipping. It would be nice if they are successful, as they would be making progress towards unmanned aircraft in the US.
If you’re on a commercial flight and the landing is exceptionally smooth, it is probably not the pilot landing the plane.
Even without a crew or cargo, the rendering looks to be out of C.G.
I had an amphibious drone.....once.
Wasn’t supposed to be, but those little stick thingies are hard to use.
>>If you’re on a commercial flight and the landing is exceptionally smooth, it is probably not the pilot landing the plane.
<<
If you have ever read those really funny “squawk/reply” posts of pilot complaints and maintenance responses, my favorite is:
SQUAWK: Rough on auto-land.
REPLY: Auto-land not installed on this equipment.
“... What could possibly go wrong? ...”
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I came to this thread just to type those exact same words.
Yeah
Isn't that what Orville said to Wilbur?
Seems like they'd be less expensive to operate even with a two man crew. They also wouldn't have the additional potential failure points associated with landing and/or taking off from the water. Plus, with all the huge new natural gas finds, helium has to be readily available these days at a reasonable price.
I've been thinking that before long we'd hear about the plan for Amazon dirigibles doing this at lower cost even with Chinese flight crew provided through cooperation with the Chinese government.
Halve the cost? Is the pilot and copilot that much of the cost of a flight?
The biggest operating cost is not pilots but fuel.
How many millions (billions?) to develop such a plane?
Even if there are three crewmen (pilot, copilot, and flight engineer), They couldn’t add up to more than $500,000 per year. That is a fraction of the cost of operating the aircraft.
“The FAA will not allow unmanned drones to fly over US airspace”
They have allowed ...
Under what circumstances outside of a test range?
Perfection will not be attained, until every single human working is unemployed.
Watched a guy try out his two really nice model radio controlled amphibious airplanes from a lake during my Saturday morning run near a lake a number of years ago. I stopped and watched from a distance for a while. He took one out on his canoe and tried to have it take off from the water. Crashed it. Retrieved it and got the second one. Took it out on the lake. Same story. It was time to finish my run.
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