Amazon Imagines Whipping Satellites To Space In A Newly Discovered Patent

Aadhya Khatri - Feb 17, 2020


Amazon Imagines Whipping Satellites To Space In A Newly Discovered Patent

Since Amazon is a company working in e-commerce, it is amusing to think that one day, the company will use this method to whip cargo to its customers’ homes

In a patent recently surfaces on the Internet, Amazon outlines a new method to bring objects to the air, which uses a long whip fixed to a fleet of aerial craft. The patent was filed in 2017 but it was not until recently that we know about it.

The highlight of this idea is that it could offer an energy-efficient way to send a payload to low Earth orbit.

Amazon whip payload patent
The highlight of this idea is that it could offer an energy-efficient way to send a payload to low Earth orbit

The idea seems wild. Amazon’s patent shows a whip fixed to a boat with a winch. The other end is attached to an aerial vehicle with the payload onboard. Several aerial vehicles can be found along the whip to create additional waveforms as well as draw power from the whip.

Given that Amazon is a company working in e-commerce, it is amusing to think that one day, the company will use this method to whip cargo to its customers’ homes. However, from the patent, we can see that whoever designs this has thought about satellites as the payloads.

This method would be a great fit for Amazon’s idea of sending a fleet of satellites to provide Internet service, similar to SpaceX’s Starlink project.

Launching satellites to orbit is expensive and SpaceX is reusing rockets’ parts to cut cost. This patent of Amazon might be its answer to the challenge of cost reduction.

However, according to Amazon’s spokesperson, patents are not an accurate indication of the company’s roadmap. This is true considering the company has filed lots of patents in the past outlining products that may never make it to reality.

Some of the prime examples are the 2017’s delivery drone beehives, the 2016’s floating airship warehouse, and the 2018’s drones that responses to human voice.

>>> Mukesh Ambani To Take On Amazon And Flipkart, Announcing JioMart

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