I can tell you the fundamental problem.

All of aerospace safety is based on the probability of various outcomes and the severity of those outcomes. For example, a 'catastrophic' event is one in which all, or most occupants of the aircraft die and the hull is lost. This has to have a probablity of occurence per aircraft of one in one billion flight hours, this means it's pretty much never going to happen and why all the crashes on TV are terrorists/pilot error/bad luck but almost never failure of the machine itself. There is a sliding scale of decreasing severity and correspondingly higher probability of occurence. There is an insaneamount of work goes into making aircraft safe.

So here's the problem: Drones don't carry people. So the old ways of calculating what's acceptable don't work anymore, yet the FAA will be eviscerated if they set up a code that suddenly causes four or five deaths per year from a sky filled with, maybe a few thousand drones one year, then a million the next causes hundreds of deaths. The numbers will still show that air transport is safer than staying in bed, but the press will not see it that way.

Troll

But I'll bite. Becaiuse the kid playing in his backyard shouldn't have to expect a car driving through his sandpit, nor a 50lb machine with face-cutting rotary knives (no longer) holding it aloft dropping into it from the sky,

Well, you are arguing my point. Build the drones to FAA civil aerospace standards and maintain them to keep them in flying condition, then get people to fly them who have gone through the same checks and training as FAA certified pilots and you have a safe system. Guess what: costs more than a truck with a driver.

Good point. Military standards are appropriate for military use, whereas civil standards are appropriate for a very litigious civil environment. I should have been clearer: If we are going to have drones routinely flying at 50mph 200 ft above heavily populated areas then they need to have at least the kind of reliability you get from a military drone (you don't throw away $4M Predators if you don't have to) if they want to avoid the lawsuits.

The FAA are actually very good at setting commercial aerospace standards (Disclaimer: I work in civil aerospace certification) which is why most of the World copies the FARs or at least standardises with them. The FAA don't yet allow drone flights like this and that pretty much means it isn't yet acceptable safe.

55lbs at 50mph will kill a child or pet quite comfortably, and seriously injure an adult. There are places for autonomous drones: battlefields and the outback, delivering either information or medecine in places you couldn't otherwise get to.

If this is a serious proposal it is just to scrape a few more tenths of a percent out of the delivery costs, or it's just a publicity stunt. Any drone flying in urban areas should be built and controled to military standards in order to be safe and THAT does not make it a cheap option

eh?

I doubt it worked flawlessly, but certainly to get back to Earth in a servicable state has to be a major part of its success criteria. It is an amazing machine, just sad that we can't get a 'Popular Mechanics' cutaway to drool over.

The days of human pilots are certainly numbered.

The AC has it right.

A result of the thousands upon thousands of war simulations will have shown that a space recovery system has a tactical advantage. If the advantage is sufficient, then you build yourself one. War is a numbers game.

It would have been more correct for me to say that I just didn't agree with their actions, rather than to asign a political subtext.

I'm sure that the vast majority of the RSPCA works purely in the interests of the animals but the problem with fox hunting in particular is that is has been hijacked as a 'class war' issue. This has resulted in a decision being taken for reasons that have nothing to do with the welfare of either the foxes or their prey.

FWIW I beleive the wrong decision was taken.

This is certainly my own perception. I'm usually an early adopter of all things tech, but I really can't get excited about smart watches at all. I have to say the only interesting product I've seen in this whole arena is the Microsoft Band; at least it isn't pretending to be a watch, but is trying to be somewhat useful.

Yes I ordered one (I was drunk) and I'm something of an MS fan, but even for me and for this product my enthusiasm level is 'meh'

... and the other two refer to a poor choice of shirt?

Slashdot should just close down now.

The fact that we know that this comet is a thing is amazing in itself. The fact that we sent a probe to intercept it, orbit it and make these kind of measurements is beyond amazing.

Nitrogen is one of the main constituents of biological chemistry; knowing where it came from and how it affected Earth's, hence our, development is more interesting than apparel choices.

Sheesh

Yes, this.

It used to be that the machinery that was needed to create lots of LPs or even CDs was expensive and the few bands that made it mega paid for the studios, who then could record and release music from all the other 'hopefuls,' who might one day also be mega.

Well guess what? Technology means it is now trivial to record and publish music; there is no longer a need for the industry at all. We are back to musicians making music because they want to, the good ones will be able to make a living and the very good ones might get rich but there is no need for the machine and all those music execs will have their snouts pushed out of the trough just like the buggy whip ones.

I read Engineering at Cambridge 1984-87. So far as I know there were about six women in 300 students.

We had a really cute librarian, I asked her out; expecting to be shot down as the 100th person to try that week. When I asked her she told me that not only was I the first person from the department to ask her out, I was the first person to actually talk to her about anything except books.

I had no mod points tonight Sara. Sorry.

Ragardless of your views on climate change, this man degrades the word 'whore,' and his very existence further prevents a reasonable debate on the subject.

I no longer make any charitable donations to left-wing-infiltrated organisations ike Greenpeace or the RSPCA, despite a deeply held beleif in their original charters; they have no interest in the environment or animals, just politics.