| Mathew Crawford 9/3/2021 |
In the spirit of a love for learning, I present a uniquely valuable version of the lesson.
- Commercial Drone Technology. Some date the beginning of the drone technology timeline as far back as 1849. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued the first commercial drone permit in 2006. For eight years after, only two permits were issued per year. In 2013, Amazon announced their plan to develop a drone-based delivery system. After a seven-year process of studying safety and engineering in a feedback loop that advanced the goals of drone network development, Amazon won approval for its drone delivery fleet in 2020, which was two to three years longer than CEO Jeff Bezos had hoped. However, such approval was merely one step in the process after more than 500 safety and efficiency processes, and are now working on scaling the system, ensuring that the scaling process meets safety standards set by both it and the FAA, with multiple waypoints in the development process, each one of which has taken longer than expected due to the need to tackle challenges unknown at the outset of each stage of development. Research and development is taking time to scale to each new level, regardless of how well planned the process…