How many are in use or about to be in use in America? Check the 2012 FAA Drone List.
Who wants a drone? Forest service, police, traffic reporters, real estate firms, bird watchers and that weird guy with the funny glasses who lives down the street who oogles your wife occasionally.
Who else wants one? I do!!!!! Yeah, for $300 bucks I can buy my own drone with live streaming video and wi-fi! For hundreds more I can buy one that will fly 165 feet in the air and photograph anything!
Think of the thousands of domestic uses! Traffic reporters could have live clear images of traffic all over the city without the expense of a real helicopter. News reporters too! Bird watchers want to photograph eagles or other birds high up in trees. Geological survey companies and hunters. Even Paparazzis are using drones to photograph movie stars in their back yards or while proving to the world they put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us. See that thing flying outside your third story bathroom window? Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
Here is my prediction. Sometime within two years of this date, give or take a couple of years, a drone is going to crash into something, maybe a Southwest 737, a major power line, a giant cell tower or something and Ka-Boom!
Meanwhile, I am proposing a national law that gives anyone the free and legal right to shoot down any domestic drone they see anywhere! Heck, that might even get liberals to own rifles!
Welcome to 2013.
Some Blogging Guy
A brilliant post. Although your conclusion did not take a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon to figure out. Sooner or later something WILL go boom. Too bad the govt cannot see this coming. My idea is to only use them only to patrol the border for illegals and scrap the wall, although it may already be scrapped for all I know, and give the ICE people something to do. It would be much cheaper. In the meantime maybe texting will be out and “carrier drones” may be used to send messages back and forth to people you don’t like or maybe even nude pictures of yourself if you are so inclined. The I-phone will become old school and definitely prehistoric. The possibilities are incredible. And to think the people flying radio controlled airplanes had no idea what they were getting into. The information explosion we have going these days is like turning this country and maybe even the whole world into a “small town” where everyone knew everyone else’s business. I have trouble minding my own business without keeping track of everyone else. Besides, my brain can only hold so much so I have to make decisions about what’s important to know and what isn’t. As I said, a brilliant post about something most folks are trying to sweep under the rug!