Amazon's Floating Warehouse

Amazon has designed a giant airship to deliver packages. Could it become the cheapest and fastest way to get consumers their goods? An enormous airship hovers eight miles above the city, its cavernous interior filled with consumer goods. Small drones spill out from it like candy from a pinata, delivering orders all over the city within minutes of customers’ placing them. The idea of a giant, floating drone-mothership seems unrealistic, but global retail behemoth Amazon seems to believe it realistic enough: The company filed a patent last year to do just that. It’s just one of several forward-thinking concepts the company may pursue in using drones to close the “last mile” delivery gap.

The patent is short on details, but it paints a picture of an “aerial fulfillment center,” basically a floating warehouse kept aloft by helium or hot air, which would hover at roughly 45,000 feet above sea level, above almost all commercial and civil aviation. The warehouse would, upon demand, deploy winged drones that would glide without power until approaching a delivery target; on approach, motor-driven propellers would slow them. (The target itself is the subject of another patent; it may transmit radio signals.) After delivery, the drones fly to a “shuttle replenishment area,” from which a smaller airship will eventually carry them, along with supplies and possibly workers, back to the floating warehouse. This is one concept that would fulfill Amazon’s vision of dropping things on us minutes after we order them. The online retailer has dreamed up a few others: Small drones that stop to recharge at lampposts, as the company described in another patent, or bigger ones delivering from the warehouse to a central zip code distribution point, where automated vehicles would take over. One trial is ongoing, though limited to a handful of people living a short distance from one big warehouse near Cambridge, England: Participants order online, place small landing pads with machine-recognizable patterns in their yards, and within half an hour a drone delivers their orders, then returns to base. Eventually, Amazon hopes, the company will replace the delivery companies that now make those last-mile deliveries (UPS, FedEx, etc.). Doing away with those services could reduce shipping costs significantly. Although Amazon has not giving a clear description of its concept, we can assume the company sees this delivery system as a potential cost saver. 

Airships achieve lift through the buoyancy of the gas in their envelopes, rather than through high-speed air moving past a wing. Any fuel they carry is used to move forward instead of just staying airborne. As a result airships are good at staying aloft for a long period of time, or traveling long distances without burning a lot of fuel. So not only is the method quicker and more cost efficient for Amazon, but it is also environment friendly, as the airships will not be burning nearly as much fossil fuels.

But the question still remains, is this method really the cheapest way for Amazon to archive a faster delivery system?

A floating warehouse could dispatch gliding drones up to 20 miles, but Amazon already has warehouses in major urban areas, and assuming drone deliveries from those places become widespread, the energy saved by gliding from high altitude probably doesn’t outweigh the cost. But the most important use of airships today is advertising. As companies that fly blimps over football games know, advertising services or goods on a giant, mobile billboard is a great way to reach large audiences. Just imagine if Amazon's floating warehouse was to be one of them, and instead of having to buy a hot dog or a can of beer from the man going around, you place an order online and the drone comes gliding down to deliver your request. All these futuristic technologies aren't that far away anymore, instead its just a matter of time until we finally get to enjoy these facilities.