When The Hell Are We Going To Get Full Size Drones??

When i see those tiny drones buzz past at 60mph, the only thing I can think of is when the hell am i going to be able to sit in one of them!?

Sure its fun to race drones. And its great that you can get an amazing drone for under 100 dollars. Its fun chasing the cat round the house. And its even fun crashing them into walls but when am I going to be able to catch one to the office or send it out to get me more beer?

I personally think the answer is …. not very soon.....but why do I want to sit in one anyway.

There’s a few reasons for this, here’s the top reasons we want full size drones we can sit in.

1. Drink driving is dangerous and illegal and nobody likes to walk back from the bar. Imagine being legless at a party and not even having to worry about getting home. You don’t even have to keep hold of your senses. You could get so drunk that you cant even control your legs and still almost guarantee that you can get home.
2. Public transport is awful. No more buses to work. No more urine smelling trains. I don’t really think this point needs any further explanation.
3. No more traffic jams. Traffic jam ahead. No problem, just go over it…..In fact the traffic jams won’t exist in the first place….There may be serious crashes as drones fall out of the sky….But who cares, there’d be no traffic jams!

I really can’t think of any more advantages, but is that not enough?!!

And now the bad news. These days of drunk flying are probably years off yet. There are serious technical issues with a full size drone.

Firstly, the battery power required to lift even a tiny human off the planet is ridiculous….And in fact, its not even the first problem, its actually the main problem. Modern batteries have advanced a fair bit but they still don’t have the balls required to get me off the ground for any length of time.

An electric glider is more realistic as the air helps lift you off the ground. But even that is probably years off and who wants to need a runway to lift off?? So just what is the issue with these damn batteries?

It’s a simple problem. Batteries are heavy. Really heavy. The more power you need, for longer periods, the heavier the batteries. And heavier batteries take more power to lift them so you need more batteries….And round in circles it goes. Modern batteries don’t offer long enough flights because you can’t just add more batteries to get longer flights because the extra weight only gives you more lift….There are people working on this problem.

And then there are the serious legal and security problems. If electric drones are widespread, then the entire population would have access to potential missiles. It would be a nightmare!

And then there is the safety aspect. There is no glide option on a drone. If the propellers stop, the drone falls out of the sky!

Who knows, I might be wrong, but I can’t see electric drones taking off any time soon.