Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is confident that one day it will offer a delivery service by air even if its has to convince hostile regulators and a skeptical otherwise. In order to prove that its Prime Air service will one day be possible, Amazon is currently testing its courier drones in a British Columbia, Canada border town to eventually demonstrate to US authorities that the technology is viable.

According to a Guardian feature on the test site, Amazon engineers are conducting experiments with the drones to make sure that they can operate safely and autonomously. Amazon proposes that these drones operate between 200-500 feet and carry packages up to 5 lbs. The drones will have collision avoidance features, and will be able to operate without a direct link to its base. These critical features need to have every bug ironed out before Amazon appeals to the FAA to get the green light to fly.

“We think that this new technology will provide huge benefits for our customers, who we think will love it, and for society more broadly,” Amazon’s Paul Misener, the company’s vice-president for global public policy, told the Guardian. “Why would we wait?”

Safety first for Amazon Prime Air

While the FAA should have granted Amazon a license to perform testing in isolated, rural areas its concerns about the safety of wide scale drone delivery are valid. There are simply too many things that could go wrong to have the skies above a major city filled with autonomous drones. Each drone would have to have redundant mechanical and software systems to ensure that an engine failure or software malfunction doesn’t mean that it would drop from the sky.

Range anxiety

There is also the problem of range. A high-end consumer drone, such as the DJI Phantom, only lasts for 25 minutes in the sky with its 5200 mAh battery. Given current battery technology that’s affordable, drone manufacturers have a dilemma: batteries with a higher milliampere-hour and voltage to let the drone fly faster and longer are heavier, which require more energy to get off the ground. Bearing big jumps in battery or engine efficiency, don’t expect drones to go much further than this on one charge.

In many US cities, famous for their urban sprawl, 25 minutes is simply not enough for a return trip. In order for this to be viable, Amazon would have to build small warehouses throughout the cities and use predictive algorithms to stock them accordingly.

All this considered, wouldn’t it be more efficient to just deliver product by truck?

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The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) continues their attempt to exert control over all airspace, all the time. They conceded, however still holding a stiff rein, when announcing they would allow seven movie companies to fly unmanned aerial systems (UAS), for filming motion pictures and television programming in US airspace.

In a foiled attempt to regulate what goes on in our skies, this spring the FAA lost a decision by an NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) judge in FAA vs. Pirker. The judge decided the FAA had not properly filed regulations to control UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) – also called drones. The FAA was tripped up by trying to say they could control all access to the airspace, no matter what was flying. Their problem was they had never said anything about model airplanes. Today’s private use and commercial use drones are more similar to model airplanes than anything close to passenger carrying aircraft.

In the FAA Modernization Reform Act of 2012, Congress acknowledged the model airplane community has acted in a responsible manner. Therefore, model airplanes are exempt from FAA Flight Regulations because the Congress classified them as recreational – hobby use.

The Congress, as part of a budget bill passed in 2012, mandated the FAA to establish a roadmap for getting UAS integrated into the national airspace. Congress provided four years of funding for the agency work on developing the rules. In 2013, the FAA designated drone test sites in six states — Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas and Virginia. That program will run until 2017. Commercial and military drones are supposed to be granted expanded access by no later than Sept. 30, 2015.

In June, the FAA gave a special exemption for commercial drones in the Arctic to monitor oil pipelines and ocean wildlife. Thursday’s announcement is the first approval for commercial drones inside the continental US. Dozens of commercial applications have poured in to the agency since AeroVironment won approval to fly over land in Alaska to monitor BP (formerly known as British Petroleum) pipeline operations out of Prudhoe Bay.

At Thursday’s FAA’s announcement MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) CEO Chris Dodd said: “Today’s announcement is a victory for audiences everywhere as it gives filmmakers yet another way to push creative boundaries and create the kinds of scenes and shots we could only imagine just a few years ago.”

In spring of this year with assistance by the MPAA, seven Hollywood production companies requested regulatory exemption to allow them to use SUAS (small unmanned aerial systems) for filming. Those companies are Aerial MOB , Astraeus Aerial, Flying-Cam, HeliVideo Productions, Pictorvision, Vortex Aerial, and Snaproll Media.

The companies each said they would film on closed sets with extra safety precautions that will essentially be safer than using conventional aircraft. They plan to fly within sight of the remote pilot, with aircraft traveling no faster than 50 mph and no higher than 400 feet off the ground. The firms said the operators will hold private pilot certificates, keep the SUAS within line of sight at all times and restrict flights to the “sterile area” on the set. In granting the exemption, FAA accepted these safety conditions, adding an inspection of the aircraft before each flight, and prohibiting operations at night. The agency also will issue Certificates of Authorization (COA) that mandate flight rules and timely reports of any accident or incidents.

Previously we reported that Amazon was researching package delivery by drones. In Europe, the delivery company DHL has been testing their package delivery drone along the Rhine River. Today, DHL plans to start sending packages, medicine and other necessities by flying approximately 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from Norddeich, a village in northern Germany, to the island of Juist, a small island community off the north coast of Germany .

DHL’s parcelcopter prepares to take off

Many commercial drone companies say the FAA is a damper on them making money. Attorney Timothy Ravich, a Florida Board Certified Aviation Lawyer, made this important point at a recent “drone” conference in Los Angeles. He cautioned attendees that it “just takes one unscrupulous or sloppy or truly reckless UAS operator to ruin it for the rest of UAS operators who want to do the right thing and want clear guidance on how to accomplish legitimate business objectives”. Ravich explained that it is illegal to operate a SUAS for any commercial purpose unless there is an FAA Waver or COA. Agricultural use of drones has sometimes bypassed this by affiliating with a university or college agricultural research program.

Many pilots are opposed to SUAS’s because they are disruptive technology that could very well limit their job opportunities. Ravich said that today’s drones are much like the Internet was in the mid-1990s. They present a huge opportunity, for those that properly launch their businesses and do not become entangled in FAA regulations.

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According to FAA documents released, their Record of Decision, basically gives many details of SpaceX’s proposed spaceport located just outside of Brownsville, Texas. The proposed spaceport which was given FAA approval, pending some conditions are met and approved, is located in a small corner of South West Texas. This place, just outside of Brownsville, Texas basically sits between the city of Brownsville, the Gulf of Mexico, the border with Mexico and a small group of bays.

Proposed SpaceX Spaceport Launch Site

As you can see, they are neatly nestled away in that little corner of Texas which is known as the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area. Obviously, they are going to be limited exactly to what they can and can’t launch there, but they clearly have a pretty well established plan for how much area they are going to need to block off.

This launch site will be in addition to the launch site that SpaceX already has and currently uses on Vandenberg Airforce Base near Lompoc, California. This is a great strategy for SpaceX to have because it will enable them to maintain two launch sites for their rockets if they have to scrub a launch at another based on certain launch windows.

Additionally, having launch sites in two different states means that they aren’t beholden to one location being available based on weather conditions. After all, Brownsville is on the Gulf Coast which means it could be susceptible to hurricanes and other extreme weather, which is why the FAA is requiring they provide a hurricane plan in their follow up documentation.

Overall, this is great news for SpaceX and space travel overall because it will help the company to be able to launch more rockets and more payloads, increasing their overall capability. By doing so, they make themselves more competitive and hopefully more attractive to companies looking to find a good launch partner. We may also see SpaceX eventually launching astronauts from one of their two launch sites, which also makes it much more flexible for their customers (including NASA) to be able to launch from Florida, Texas or California.

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Remember that pre-Cyber Monday 60 Minutes puff piece about Amazon’s drone delivery? Well, Amazon’s most successful marketing ploy ever just hit a huge snag as the FAA has just banned drones from delivering packages. Sure, DHL is also testing such a service, but they’re doing so in Germany where no such laws currently exist to restrict it. The document that the FAA released today asks for comment on their interpretation of the model aircraft regulation law which they believe does not allow such aircraft to participate in commercial businesses as opposed to hobbying.

Frankly, the FAA’s interpretation of the model aircraft spec rule clearly indicates that they want nothing to do with drones flying over our skies. They may be justified in restricting such flights until real commercial and regulatory rules are employed in order to ensure safety and legality. However, many of the airlines may also be pushing for this because they all fly tons of packages over the air from city to city and if they have competition from drones there is a good chance they could see less air traffic from packages. Even though realistically most of these drone deliveries are short distance and should not compete with the airlines at all. But, the airlines may be arguing that the drones could endanger their planes, pilots and passengers if not properly regulated, which may actually be a fair argument.

Obviously, considering how many planes and helicopters we already have in the air every day there are certain restrictions that need to be put on drones and drone flight, but overly regulating them may also result in innovation being hampered. After all, there’s a good chance that developments in drone flight technology could help us eventually find a way to individual human flight. By restricting drone flight too much we risk the chance of missing out on a potentially large business and improving the overall efficiency and efficacy of shipping things short distances quickly. Especially when you think about places like New York City where automobile travel is almost worthless and couriers can barely carry one package at a time. A world where drones deliver packages to the roofs of buildings and then those packages are delivered within the building sounds far more efficient than having hundreds of couriers running around the city delivering individual packages trying to weave through traffic.

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