Also, fixed-wing aircraft can still take off even if their thrust-to-weight ratio is less than 1, because they generate lift from forward motion.
Basically you sacrifice accuracy for capacity, but with the unpredictability of winds over wildfires, I doubt how much accuracy you'd truly gain using a drone.
I don't think there's a particular reason why you couldn't equip a 737 with the remote controls of a Predator drone and fly it like that, but the question is would moving the pilot from the cockpit to a ground-based control center be worth the cost of R&Ding such a system.
Also, fixed-wing aircraft can still take off even if their thrust-to-weight ratio is less than 1, because they generate lift from forward motion.
Basically you sacrifice accuracy for capacity, but with the unpredictability of winds over wildfires, I doubt how much accuracy you'd truly gain using a drone.
Could you hypothetically use a drone plane (instead of a quadcopter?)? (Or a drone helicopter) (ignore the silly rich man image in OP)
I don't think there's a particular reason why you couldn't equip a 737 with the remote controls of a Predator drone and fly it like that, but the question is would moving the pilot from the cockpit to a ground-based control center be worth the cost of R&Ding such a system.
Potentially 100 liters of capacity if the pilot weighs 100 kilos.
Which the computer systems would probably weigh a bit but I think that'd be marginal in comparison
Surely such a system already exists to test new plane prototypes?
nope, drones if anything were first developed to fly the old planes as target practice