Hacker News Reader

Comment by jessaustin | Hacker News Reader

This type of incident seems unlikely to happen by accident.

Against a commercial airliner you'd pretty much have to be flying right near the runway of the airport, but for a GA Cessna those can be flying pretty much anywhere.

I can easily see how a small plane could accidentally hit a drone.

yeah and on 9/11 they had to fly right near the twin towers.

That's a good point - you don't even have to kill anyone to effect a pretty significant scare. How much would it cost to buy enough drones to shut down an airport by having them hover in front of the runways? And how quickly could they be taken down?

Unless the drones have onboard AI, all you'd need is to jam the signal.

It can't be that hard to shut down drone frequencies seeing as how they have gear to shut down cell phones (to prevent them being used to set off IEDs).

In my particular movie theater plot, I'm assuming they've been loaded with firmware to just keep station at a particular location in space.

Plus, how long would it take to get signal jamming equipment to the runway? Can it be used safely around an airport? Etc, etc. Novel-research stuff.

They'll run out of battery before someone gets equipment in place to jam the signal.

As the technology stands right now, the "fun" will be limited with the battery life.

If you had reasonable battery life, and on-board independent flight capabilities, then you can probably play tag with the staff all day all night.

Shotguns. 12 gauge, shooting at a stationary target. Easy.

If you're talking about the Cessna planes I think you're talking about, this test doesn't apply because those don't travel at 238 mph. Actually I think that speed is typically subject to altitude requirements that would exclude most drones?

But also we're talking about tiny objects traveling through a giant 3-D space. If they meet, it was on purpose.

4D. Space + time. The odds of a collision are astronomically low outside of an airport's restricted zone. There are 1.5 billion cubic miles of atmosphere between the Earth and the maximum altitude of a commercial jet (7.8 miles).

In 4D the drone is not "travelling through", it's instead a static and enormously long curve that has to avoid touching any other aircraft curve at any point.

It would even be really difficult to do on purpose.

If you use more then one drone, you create something similar to a mine field, you don't have to hit the tip of the wing, a hit in the engine or cockpit can also cause damage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com