Amazon Is Considering Drone-Friendly Floating Warehouses

gunsmoker said:

There's no way that blimps floating in the sky could ever be economically viable as warehouses for deliveries .
Not without subsidies from some big federal agency or maybe a private intelligence gathering information bureau.
If we ever see zepplins floating around allegedly for Amazon deliveries, I think they're probably going to be doing double duty as spy ships and intelligence gathering posts-- watching the population from above.
And the gov. is going to be financing them.

Click to expand...

I have some extra tin foil laying around if you need it. Your hat is apparently not thick enough./sarcasm

Seriously though that is a thought to ponder.

I can see the profit margins in shipping up charges for rapid response delivery on the other side of the coin as well. There are some of us idiots that would rather get the merchandise a day earlier by paying more than double and sometimes more than triple the regular rates to save a day of waiting. Stuff I can get from Amazon on prime with free shipping tomorrow can be had within a couple of hours for a $30 up charge on the shipping. I can order it today and most of the time within an hour a Uber driver will show up parcel in hand for only $30 shipping up charge. We haven't graced the inside of a grocery store in a couple of years due to Amazon having a lot of the things we use on same day delivery. Who wants to go out drive around a parking lot trying to find a place to park, grab a cart with wheels that don't roll properly and you have to fight it to keep it going straight, push the beast up and down the isles crowded with people, stand in line at the check out for another hour, fight the rolling beast out to your vehicle, unload it and then push it half a mile to a cart return? When you get out of the parking lot and get home you have to unload your vehicle and pack it all in the fridge and cupboards. For a few dollars more an Amazon Uber driver will deliver your groceries to your front door packed in PAPER bags and all you have to do is carry them in and put them away. In the end it didn't take 2 or 3 hours out of your life to get groceries. My time is money and the extra cost of Amazon is far less than the value I place on my time.

If they were not making money at this they would not still be doing it.

ARE they "doing it" or just taking out a PATENT on it-- getting the rights to use this idea-- this business model-- for the future?
And blocking any of their competitors from doing it, years in the future?

Let's see if Amazon is actually going to develop this and put it to use in the real-world to make a profit.

REAL LIFE ANECDOTE:

A county here in the Atlanta area has a sign ordinance.
It generally bans electronic lighted signs that have a moving or blinking message.

But there are two exceptions, where such a sign could be allowed.

One is if the sign's message only changes once in a long time-- several minutes. So most people passing by the sign will see it only as a fixed-image sign.

The other exception is if THE SIGN OWNER LETS THE GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER THE SIGN AND USE IT TO PROMOTE THE GOVERNMENT'S MESSAGES related to public safety and such. Then, when you turn over control of your private property to the government, you can flash your messages more brightly or change the text more frequently. The government lets you do this all the time, not just on those rare occasions when it is co-opting your sign and making you play the government's broadcast.

SO, WITH THAT IN MIND, is it really hard to envision a situation where the government says "Amazon, your blimps cannot go over Area XX, or fly at any altitude other than YY, and your drones' flights must be limited to Z minutes, UNLESS..
... unless you agree to install some tracking programs, spy cameras, infrared or thermal imaging, etc. All of which we promise will only be used for public safety purposes-- in case the police get into a gunfight, in case a terrorist is on the run from the FBI, in case a truck bomb is headed to City Hall.. or any other situation that we deem sufficient to use your blimps for law enforcement purposes. But if you agree to share your equipment with us, you can have a much freeer hand to run your package-delivery operations how you see fit the rest of the time."