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"      Give Jeff Bezos credit\u2014he&amp;#039;s certainly committed to the idea of near-instant gratification. The Amazon founder made a huge media splash today with his latest idea to get your online purchases to you as quickly as possible. He went on 60 Minutes Sunday night to say his company is researching drone delivery. The idea is called Prime Air, and Bezos says small octocopters could fly purchases right to your front door. It&amp;#039;s certainly possible\u2014we&amp;#039;ve already seen novelty drone delivery demos. But Prime Air is not going to happen soon. As we mentioned prominently in our recent cover story on the drone future, the Federal Aviation Administration is under Congressional order to start revising the rules governing American airspace by 2015 to make way for more unmanned aircraft. That 2015 date makes it sound as though Amazon&amp;#039;s drone fleet could be right around the corner, but the FAA isn&amp;#039;t going to flip a switch and change the rules in a couple of years. That&amp;#039;s the beginning of the process, and it&amp;#039;s more likely that drone certifications under the new regulations will begin closer to 2020. Until things change, we&amp;#039;re stuck with this complicated map showing who gets to use what airspace, and how. Hobbyists are allowed to fly small planes in the zone below 1200 feet, but those radio-controlled aircraft are mandated to stay within sight of the operator. CNN Money reports that there&amp;#039;s no guarantee the FAA will give on this point when it updates the rules and allow for a company like Amazon to fly self-piloting drones. Even if the rule changes make Amazon&amp;#039;s plan feasible, it still probably won&amp;#039;t be cost-effective, at least for a while (though Bezos has never been afraid to operate in the red). There&amp;#039;s safety to consider, and the company&amp;#039;s potential liability if one of its unmanned aircraft collided with another drone, or, more seriously, hit a person. There are plenty of other unanswered questions, too. (What if people try to steal the drones?). And Amazon simply sells so much stuff that the skies could be crammed with aircraft if the company actually followed through on sky delivery. So what is Bezos up to, besides coming up with a clever way to dominate the news cycle on Cyber Monday? The Wire speculates that Amazon drones could be an end in themselves rather than the means\u2014that is, by researching and investing in cheap drones to deliver its products, Amazon will be in an excellent position to sell cheap drones directly to consumers (perhaps by flying them right to your doorstep). Either way, we hope Prime Air is just the beginning of the crazy, innovative proposals we&amp;#039;ll hear as more drones enter American airspace. And if I don&amp;#039;t have to stay home to try to catch the UPS guy, so much the better. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/drones/a3040/drone-delivery-is-crazy-and-amazon-should-try-it-anyway-16224567/?click=pm_latest>