Drones and Launchers

Welcome back friends and readers, I'm back from my temporary vacation/hiatus. I figured I could afford to take the past few days off for the holiday, but now I'm back and ready to get back into things.

Before I resume the story though I want to offer my comment to this FB post by my brother-in-law from another mother-in-law.

-Jerry Archer via Facebook:

Amazon thinks that by the year 2015, with the right governmental regulations in place, they will be delivering packages within 30 minutes of purchase via unmanned drones. Its illegal right now for an unmanned drone to fly out of the pilots sight, domestically. This will require Amazon to completely overhaul its distribution infrastructure. To me this is amazing and exactly the reason Amazon is so profitable. Thoughts anyone?

Sure, I'll have a go.

It's very interesting, but for me it raises a few questions: How fast do these drones go? What's their maximum payload? Maximum range at max payload? Will the drones be automated or remote piloted? If it's remote piloting are they hiring pilots? (And will it be a VR rig? And @Chris Swanson Where do I sign up?) If it's automated how will they refine delivery so that packages don't go to the wrong address? Will the drones read house numbers? What's to prevent people hijacking the drones and reprogramming them? Or just smashing them? Will it only be available to those places and people who are in range? Will it be incredibly expensive? Will it be somehow cheaper? 

So yeah, these are just a few of the logistics they will have to work out before they can fully implement the idea. Along with tagging items of the appropriate size and weight. 

On the other hand I think I might have an alternate idea. It's going to sound a little crazy, but hear me out on this.

Ballistic package drops. You literally shoot the package in a parabolic arc toward the destination.

You aim to overshoot of course, and you have stabilizers and fins to help guide the course, and of course a parachute for the final approach. Now of course you would need to know things like windspeeds at various heights, to plan the appropriate trajectories, and of course the weight of the package would have to be taken into account, but depending on how you launch, it would likely use only half the energy, because gravity's doing half the work for you.

But of course, that wouldn't be enough to get it to most destinations, which is why you would need a network. So at various strategic places across the country, you establish a ballistic launcher with a place to catch packages, and sort them, so that they can be launched to the next place in line. Then you wouldn't have to waste energy to bring a drone back. And all the electronics could be housed in one simple tiny throwaway chip.

So a typical delivery goes like this: you order something, like shoes for example. The shoes get packed into a simple cardboard tube, then the tube is sealed. That gets loaded into something approximately the same shape as a lawn dart, which then gets sent to the launcher. The launcher is constantly getting information about weather, and windspeeds, and is factoring that information every time it turns to make another launch, which it does about once per second. The shoes arrive, and a small RFID tag is scanned, which says where the item will go. The system has already planned it's route, so the launcher picks it up, and fires into the air. (I'm not sure if it should be compressed air or possibly some kind of mechanical means, or maybe even chemical propellant, I'm not an expert, just a visionary.) 

While in flight, the three fins, which move independently, correct any course deviations that occur along the way. Then the lawn dart descends toward the next launcher about ten miles away. About five ten feet up the parachute deploys, lowering the tube onto the next conveyer to the next launcher. Total flight time: 30 seconds. Then the process gets repeated about 175 times, assuming that the a average distance per shot is about 10 miles, to get from L.A. to Chicago, the whole thing would only take about 87 minutes. Then the final launch is local, and assuming you aren't blocked by trees or buildings, the package is dropped on your front porch.

Order to door, 1750 miles in under 2 hours. 

Ah well, I'm sure this idea has some logistical problems too.

Anyway, comments and suggestions welcome.

Thanks for reading.