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A 165-Mile Drone Superhighway Will Soon Be Built in the UK
- throwaway892238 4y agoWhy would you use drones for this when you can build a very small rail network? Drones can't carry very much, and they can have problems in flight that will lead to dropped/damaged goods, not to mention they'll require more energy. A small rail network could transport the same small goods over the same areas with less energy and no potential dropped/damaged goods. Their aerial route should ideally not go over forested or ecologically sensitive areas, in part to avoid contamination from crashed drones, and in part because drones push birds out of their nesting and feeding grounds, and territorial birds actively fight small drones.
- repiret 4y agoBecause it’s a lot less work to build out some ADS-B infrastructure and make some airspace rules than it is to build a railway. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that if they just have the drones fly at 2000’ AGL that would significantly reduce the impact on birds.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoFun story: why is the current rail system buckling and warping in the heat? Because someone in their wisdom decided to weld the expansion plates to stop trains going clickety-clack in residential areas. The noise is why you won't see much support for rail networks. I say bring on the rail infrastructure, it is the greenest method of moving freight.
- nyokodo 4y ago> it is the greenest method of moving freight. Water transport, where available, is far greener than trains for moving freight.
- rektide 4y agoAnything you can cite here? I think of water as extremely fantasically high drag. I know that scales inversely down proportional to size, but I still think of rail as the ultra-efficient best option. Would love to read more detailed review/analysis.
- CompelTechnic 4y agohttps://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of-transportation-ranked-by-mpg/#:~:text=Freight%20trains%20consume%20328%20BTU%20to%20move%20a,achieve%203262%20BTU%20per%20passenger-mile%2C%20or%2038.3%20pmpg https://truecostblog.com/2010/05/27/fuel-efficiency-modes-of....
- candiodari 4y agoThe TLDR is, on the surface of the earth the slower you're going, the more efficient it tends to be. That even holds for, for example, making trains or cars move slowly: they'll be most efficient at a pretty slow speed. Even planes are most efficient flying 0.0001% above stall speed, the slowest they can possibly go. Most energy in transport goes into moving the atmosphere out of the way. Planes fly high, but that really only makes them comparable to a car. Surprisingly that also means that for really long-range transports even rockets aren't as inefficient as you'd initially think.
- zmgsabst 4y agoThis thread made me curious, so I looked up engine sizes between trains and boats. A transport ship[1] can carry 9500 TEU with 53,000hp. That’s 190,000 feet of containers, or 36 miles. A train can be 1.5 miles with 4000hp per engine. (According to Google “facts”.) That’s 24 trains to move the same containers, with at least 96,000hp between them. (And that’s ignoring a 1.5mi train will have more than a single engine.) That trains use more horsepower to move the same freight suggests that they’re less efficient. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COSCO_Guangzhou https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COSCO_Guangzhou
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- Dma54rhs 4y agoClickety-clack is also bad for high speeds but Im not sure how fast are they in the UK.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoUp North they're not very fast, the rail network has a lot of tight bends that makes it unsuitable for high speeds, particularly around the coastal areas, this is even after giving up a lot of legacy routes and stations to improve efficiency. We don't do planning very well in the UK. Liverpool city centre is a prime example of poor road planning in particular. Complete spaghetti.
- alasdair_ 4y ago> Complete spaghetti. Birmingham is the OG of pasta-named roads however. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_junction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_junction
- hammyhavoc 4y agoToday I learned! Wow!
- nerdawson 4y agoOn the West Coast Main Line, one of two major routes that goes from north to south, trains run at up to 125mph.
- iggldiggl 4y agoI'm fairly certain that reduced noise is just a beneficial side effect and that the original motivation for continuous welded rails was less wear and tear, less required maintenance and better ride quality. It's also a necessary prerequisite for running at higher speeds, because a rail joint can only be subjected to so much forces before it starts failing at an accelerated rate, and dynamic impact forces while transitioning a rail joint naturally increase with speed.
- diego 4y agoFrom the article: > The Royal Mail is aiming to deploy a fleet of 500 drones to deliver mail to remote areas, starting with small islands like the Shetlands or Orkneys. Britain’s National Health Service is trialing drone delivery for medication, specifically chemotherapy drugs, to cancer patients living on remote islands; one such route would save patients a three to four-hour ferry ride to the mainland and back to pick up their medications.
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- oceanofsolaris 4y agoCouldn't this also be solved with a freezer on the island (+ shipping larger quantities of these drugs regularly via whatever process usually brings parcels onto the islands). I am not complaining about a drone highway, sounds great. It also sounds like quite an oversized hammer for that specific problem though.
- arethuza 4y agoShetland and Orkney are both made up of lots of islands - many of them inhabited.
- wink 4y agoSounds a little dangerous, if you're talking about mailing irreplaceable things (talking more like mementos or cheap collector's pieces, not something you'd actually insure and fedex) - or am I overvaluating a stray bird knocking down a drone over the sea, versus mail simply lost in transit?
- quickthrower2 4y agoOr even electric trucks (could be self driving eventually) on exisiting roads. Use transit lanes to prioritize sharing and more efficient use of said roads. It has to be more energy efficient. I get the drone idea for emergency medical supplies like blood, or even as an ambulance.
- labrador 4y agoThe Jetsons had it right all along
- olivermarks 4y agofeel bad for the people living in areas cited like Coventry and Rugby who will suddenly have far more air traffic overhead
- jfim 4y agoOn the upside they're not quadcopters, the noise from dozens or hundreds of those flying by daily would drive people completely insane.
- 8note 4y agoNo more than the thousands of cars, I imagine Cars and trucks are really loud
- Aperocky 4y agoquadcopters are pretty quiet if they are flying at a good distance, it's only the ones zooming in that are loud. Just be as far away as you'd like an actual highway, but in this case vertical space works too.
- saint_abroad 4y agoSound decreases by 6dB for every doubling of distance: https://www.airbornedrones.co/drone-noise-levels/ https://www.airbornedrones.co/drone-noise-levels/ So a typical 80db commercial drone flying at 300m (CAA minimum) would be 50db at ground level (closest point), or about a loud conversation (but less than quiet road traffic).
- Aperocky 4y agodrones noise are very directed, the side noises are much smaller than if directly below. Source: I did drone noise research a few years ago. It's almost impossible to detect via noise with decent distance (>100m) unless directly under.
- Brian_K_White 4y agoIt may reduce overall vehicle traffic if drone deliveries displace some car, van, and plane trips. Could be a win all totalled.
- WebbWeaver 4y agoI wonder what the cost savings are
- dvh 4y agoI see it similarly as bike/scooter sharing startups that popped up everywhere. Most of them didn't turn profit, investors lost money and the only one who made a profit was the factory that built them, they are now filling up some abandoned parking lot.
- ngcc_hk 4y agoWonder when reading about security data of police … could it be used to fly 16TB hard drive or solid state drive and faster than cables … you know say 2 hour flight time with 1 Gb/s * 7200s about 7000Gb or 700GB. Even if 100 Gb/s it would be 70TB. Sorry but for a guy who actually drive hard drive to update system in the older days I wonder whether this is still relevant thinking.
- ngcc_hk 4y agoHow it deals with vfr would be a big issue as you cannot easy see them I supposed https://www.bfgc.co.uk/VFR_Guide.pdf https://www.bfgc.co.uk/VFR_Guide.pdf
- NetOpWibby 4y agoWatch Dogs Legion is set in the UK.