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While I find this technologically interesting, I wonder if a drone bucket brigade might not be a better use for a technology that can pick up 10 lbs at point A and drop it over point B. A five thousand such drones, even at $10,000 each or $50M could keep 3,000 gallons of water[1] per (speed/distance) seconds dropping continuously on a wildfire.

[1] That being somewhat more than a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_S-64_Skycrane skycrane can deliver, and with better failover characteristics.




The current quads/drones have problems with naturally occurring thermals in calm weather and the slightest winds - they don't come close to surviving the climate surrounding a wild fire.

When the tech and price scale are right for this application, you'll definitely see it as it has been discussed and is actively being worked on.


I can't say anything about wild fire conditions, but even a decent hobbyist drone will not have problems with thermals in calm weather or slight winds. A commercial drone will be even better.


Unfortunately the thermals rising from large fires can be ridiculously powerful.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrocumulonimbus_cloud:

"On the 18 of January 2003, a supercell thunderstorm formed from a pyrocumulonimbus cloud associated with a severe wildfire, during the 2003 Canberra bushfires in Canberra, Australia. The supercell resulted in a huge fire tornado, rated at EF3 on the fujita scale, the first confirmed violent fire tornado. The tornado and associated fire killed 4 people and injured 492."


Now I know the third movie in the Sharknado series, Sharknado vs Firenado.

That is an interesting link. Reading about the Australian fires an interesting question comes to mind which is this, "If we engaged these fires at the outset with a constant suppression/extinguishing scheme, would they still get to the size and ferocity that they do today?" that is something I don't know. CalFire jumps on fires pretty quickly to keep them under control, especially near structures, and those fires then evolve slowly. Unlike say the Yellowstone fire a decade or so ago which was left to burn 'naturally' and it got quite large.


The generally accepted idea of Eucalyptus fires is that you need to manage the fuel load on the ground. Regular burning off, maintenance of fire trails, clearing undergrowth around populated areas etc. is really the only way to control a plant that uses fire as part of it's reproductive cycle. Ignoring it for 10 years inevitably sets up a literally deadly fuel load which will be completely uncontrollable if it starts burning.

I grew up in the Australian bush, and it, like the Californian Eucalypt forests, is prone to burn at the slightest provocation. Add dry, windy conditions and it's a recipe for disaster.


Call up a squadron of K-Max's with a suspended water bucket and that's a very interesting experiment.

Small electric stuff will be limited by charging infrastructure and plain availability; it'd be fun to see a future where various commercial swarms exist and they're taken over for disaster relief.

"Hey, where's my burrito?"

"Sorry sir, all our BurritoCopters[tm] are attending the San Bernardino Valley Fire at the moment, per civic ordinance K-34. Your burrito's right here if you want to collect."


I'm sometimes wondering, couldn't we repurpose rockets for that? You could make some cheap water dropping short-range ballistic missiles, each carrying 200+ kg of cold water.

Or, to push this idea further, maybe we could repurpose artillery and just shoot water buckets from long range? I wonder if this or the missiles would have lower fuel cost than Skycrane or drone operations.


Rockets are inefficient atmospheric vehicles. You use rockets to get to space because you need to get out of the atmosphere as quickly as possible.

You also use them for single-use things (missiles) because the value in making a thing blow up at a distance is a lot higher (a $5 million dollar tank, for example) then the rocket itself.

But they're terrible for when you're into purely shifting mass. Air-breathing propulsion with aerofoils is absurdly better. It's why hypersonic flight and things like the Skylon are a big deal.


Artillery is an interesting one, back in the Cold War there were biological/chemical weapon 'dispersal' shells which would explode over the ground and leave a wide dispersal footprint of their chemical. Fill them with fire suppressant and shell the fire might do some good.




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