text: If Drones Make You Nervous, Think Of Them As Flying Donkeys | Colorado Public Radio
  So he's taken to calling his drones "flying donkeys," as if they're merely airborne beasts of burden. It's the sort of metaphor the British citizen polished as a novelist and journalist, including a decade as Africa correspondent for The Economist magazine.
  And it isn't a dream that's 10 years away, says Ledgard, whose drones consortium is a spinoff of Afrotech, based at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. He says that the group will have a test route in place this year to fly medicines among several villages. Ledgard calls it an initial line for humanitarian aid.
  He predicts lines of commercial traffic will soon follow, particularly as drones grow large enough to carry bulkier cargo. Drones delivering cargo today might carry six pounds. In perhaps three years, they'll carry 22 pounds, and 44 pounds a few years later, Ledgard says. "That's the tipping point where commercial service takes off."
  Even "droneports" will be much smaller than today's cargo airports, including a droneport being built for this year's test line, Ledgard says. "They will sit very lightly on the planet." A droneport with room to store and repair eight to ten vehicles might operate in a quarter-acre plot.
  But drones do have an image problem. That's because they are often whirring, buzzing carriers of missiles that wreak death and destruction, as used by militaries in the United States and other countries. Such associations caused Kenyan authorities last year to postpone a demonstration "Flying Donkey Challenge" after terrorists attacked a Kenyan shopping mall last year.
  That's not the only concern about drones. Some argue that Africa should not be a testing ground. Its skies are less regulated than Western skies, making it attractive for drone experiments, says Kristin Bergtora Sandvik, director of Norwegian Centre for Humanitarian Studies in Oslo. But the lack of controls should not be seen as an advantage, she adds: "That is a bad thing for African aviation."
  The launch of a successful drone industry could spur lobbying against the sort of airspace controls that African needs to develop, says Sandvik, who has written about ethical issues raised by commercial and humanitarian uses of drones.
  "Long-term, I do think this is going to be viable and a good idea," she adds. "It just needs to be done appropriately."
  That's Ledgard's dream as well. Maybe one day, designers can fashion a quiet drone that evokes the beauty of a large bird passing overhead. If that's not achievable, he says, "We at least don't want people to hate it."