[dylan604]

> Wouldn't delivery be done by quadcopter drones?

But if you drop them via cheap parachute, you wouldn't need anything to return. I bet they'd only be slightly less accurate delivery than what their "don't give a damn" delivery system in place now.

[jandrese]

Maybe, but as you point out you lose your pinpoint accuracy and also it consumes a parachute for every delivery. Your customers end up with a whole bunch of cloth to dispose of and you have to store enough for every delivery. The beauty of the quadcopter is that it is reusable. It can also use air brakes to help slow the descent and really only burn power on the very last bit of the delivery and then on the ascent back up, where it is no longer burdened by the package.

[dylan604]

You seem to be losing the spirit of the conversation, and that spirit is the idea is preposterous. In that spirit, being reusable is irrelevant. I'm sure if they wanted, they could figure out how to make a disposable parachute that can be composted or recycled. At that's a far as practical as I'm willing to go

[yellowapple]

> Your customers end up with a whole bunch of cloth to dispose of

We're coming up on Great Depression 2: Electric Boogaloo pretty soon [citation needed], so we could just do the same thing our ancestors did with flour sacks back in the day and turn them into children's clothes. Or maybe even tents for the ever-growing homeless camp-cities. The dystopian possibilities are endless!

[yellowapple]

Why bother with a parachute? Just redesign houses with bungee-net drop zones for packages. It'd probably result in less damages than the average FedEx delivery anyway.