Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has opened a new front in its battle with Amazon.com Inc.
The world’s largest retailer has applied for a U.S. patent for a floating warehouse that could make deliveries via drones, which would bring products from the aircraft down to shoppers’ homes.
The blimp-style machine would fly at heights between 500 feet and 1,000 feet (as much as 305 meters), contain multiple launching bays, and be operated autonomously or by a remote human pilot. Amazon was granted a patent for a similar vessel in April 2016.
You can read the rest @
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-18/wal-mart-s-amazon-war-takes-to-skies-with-floating-warehouses
As I wrote before about the Amazon floating warehouse, the chief enemy of airships is the weather. And no control system, human or otherwise, can prevent these gas bags from eventually crashing due to bad weather.
I don't know about you, but I'm not in that much of a hurry to have my purchases delivered. So why are the retail giants going to such lengths to promote airborne delivery?
My guess is that we are headed into a future in which private ownership of vehicles will be drastically curtailed ... only the rich will own them, and they probably will be flying contraptions.
Welcome to the market-state.
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