• happybadger [he/him]
    ·
    6 days ago

    wot if a single one crashes and its lithium-ion battery goes off in a wilderness area that already has extreme fire conditions? thinking-about-it

    • bishbosh@lemm.ee
      ·
      6 days ago

      Honestly that's probably best case scenario, as we would already have thousands of ready drones in the imitate vicinity. Even if emptied from previous efforts, the drones would instantly know the loss of one or more drones need to be doused, and we can deploy another 10000 or so to solve the problem quickly and cheaply.

      • happybadger [he/him]
        ·
        6 days ago

        Those 10,000 then fly blind into an area with high winds that creates its own weather system, can melt them, and that flings flaming particles for miles through the air. That's playing Russian roulette with 10,000 more rounds in the gun-hubris gun.

        • GalaxyBrain [they/them]
          ·
          5 days ago

          If you're playing Russian roulette with that gun at least the bullet would be aimed away

          • happybadger [he/him]
            ·
            5 days ago

            Our only other options are trans-gun, the-doohickey, or automatic rifles. Apart from the gun that changes your gender none of them are adequate for Russian roulette.

        • bishbosh@lemm.ee
          ·
          5 days ago

          This is a false comparison, with the trivial axiom that less than half the drones are "loaded chambers", to use your metaphor, we could simply plot the asymptotic trend and find the number of drones at which it would be statistically impossible for the fires to not be covered. I've already spent all my image generation credits, so I can't provide a visual, but trust the logic is sound.

          • The_Jewish_Cuban [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            5 days ago

            How many drones make it statistically impossible?

            The point about fleet maintenance wasn't really covered and "build more" doesn't seem as logically sound to me as you present it.

            Edit: if we're upping capacity significantly wouldn't it also reason to increase the air fleet size of normal water tankers instead? I can't see how this is an improvement over such a vehicle. 10k things to go wrong and maintain.

      • TheDrink [he/him]
        ·
        5 days ago

        deploy another 10000 or so to solve the problem quickly and cheaply.

        I think you underestimate the cost of 10,000 drones and the infrastructure required to maintain them and refill them with water after every sortie.

    • UhhhDunkDunk [comrade/them]
      ·
      5 days ago

      I don't know all the details/specifics but USA wildland fire crews do have drone crews that use drones for mapping purposes- to aid direction of resources on ground, and monitor conditions. As you would imagine there are extensive bureaucratic procedures for any event where a done goes down/loses control/etc, it does happen- but my understanding is that it is never/rarely catastrophic failure.