Seeing this new Amazon flying warehouse idea leaves me with a question: how exactly are they going to restock it? The news stories I’ve read say that it’ll be restocked by a smaller airship flying up from ground-based warehouses. OK, but how exactly does that work?
The thing is, I have trouble seeing how you get a cargo from one airship to another. Will the ships fly side-by-side or one behind the other, somehow transfering cargo across the gap? How? A big conveyor belt stretching from one to the other?
Or will the large ship have such a large unobstructed gap between the gas bag and the gondola that the smaller one can fly into that gap and dock?
I don’t think the patent gave this kind of detail, so I’ll ask if there’s been any significant cargo transfer done with airships in the past? Maybe the Navy did something?
The pictures I’m seeing look like they have the warehouse suspended on cables some distance below the large airship, with room for the smaller airship to dock underneath the larger one, with its cargo area right next to or on top of the warehouse. Not that any of this is going to happen.
This whole delivery by drone idea is a non starter. Sure, the technology is, or soon will be there, but it is a logistical nightmare in any but the most remote locations; maybe Australia or some other sparsely populated parts of the world, bur definitely not in urban areas.
Just because Amazon obtained a patent on this idea does not mean that it’s a viable one. It might very well be unworkable, but having the patent will be helpful if anyone else has a similar idea.
That’s not a logistical problem, which is what bob++ claimed. And he said it was a problem with drone delivery in general, and drones normally don’t fly that high.
This might be a problem with the airship version, depending on how high the airships will be. I wouldn’t expect them to be anywhere close to that high.
I’m not bob++, but I’ll throw my $.02 in:
[ul]
[li]Unless the UAVs are large, as in automobile/pickup truck large, they’re only going to be able to carry a very limited number of packages (and small/lightweight ones at that) per flight. [/li][li]The bigger the UAV, the more power it will need to lift it’s own weight. More power required=more fuel required, whether that fuel is batteries or a petroleum distillate (simplified to “electric” or “gas” for the rest of my points). More fuel required=more power required to lift the fuel weight. The numbers escalate quickly.[/li][li]Larger UAVs will have a more difficult time safely maneuvering around urban obstacles like power lines, trees, cars & trucks, people, pets, etc. Maneuvering off the most direct flight path requires additional power to be budgeted into each flight plan.[/li][li]Whether electric or gas, there will need to be a way to refuel/recharge/swap batteries. It will need to be relatively close to the delivery area; as with any other means of moving cargo, running long distances without a paying cargo aboard is time and money lost.[/li][li]Current multirotor UAVs are not particularly tolerant of damage to their props/rotors. ANY bumping into obstacles will result in a blade loss, which at those rotational speeds means high-velocity shrapnel. Prop/rotor guards can be added, but they add weight, and we’ve already covered the road excess weight takes us down. Blade loss also means that motor/engine will need to be shut down, which gives a loss of thrust, degraded flight control, and additional power required from the remaining motors.[/li][li]At the sizes and power levels required, these UAVs are going to require regular inspection and maintenance, which adds a considerable logistics tail to any organization using them. Good for me, since I’m an A&P and will likely be able to find a job doing it, but our existing industry is already hurting for mechanics & technicians. Adding a large new segment will only make that worse.[/li][/ul]
That’s what I can think of off the top of my head.
The whole bit with reduced FAA oversight is based on devices small enough to not cause (much) damage when they fall out of the sky onto people & their stuff.
Right now 55 lbs is the limit; above that it’s regulated as an aircraft with all the costs of maintenance and operation you’d expect.
As **JHBoom **says, direct rotor lift is stupid inefficient. Anything with meaningful payload on Amazon’s scale isn’t going to use it.
It doesn’t. It’s one of the fundamental airship problems that actually causes real difficulties and made airships unsuitable for most cargo tasks: they sink when you add cargo, and rise when you offload cargo.
I guess that could probably be worked around by pumping some of the buoyant gas out and recompressing it into tanks (or vice versa), but the machinery to do that will weigh something, reducing the overall lifting capacity.
The idea of airborne warehouses isn’t practically realistic at all - it’s a promotional pipe dream - existing either to generate a buzz on social media, or, if ever implemented in any form, existing as a promotional stunt.
The events and venues mentioned in the blurb are accessible by road. Building a shop-in-a-truck (or multiple trucks) has got to be orders of magnitude more effective, in terms of supply logistics, than a shop-in-the-sky. Of course, trucks aren’t very exciting and futuristic.