Original artwork - Matters of Conscience series
Congress recently tasked the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to draft regulations for operating drones in domestic airspace. There are, no doubt, many potential positive uses for drones in our airspace. For example, they could be used by farmers to monitor crops or livestock, by safety inspectors for infrastructure monitoring, by firefighters to track the progress of wildfires without putting persons at risk, or possibly even deliver goods to your doorstop (as Amazon has suggested). The Congressional request also asked the FAA to identify new zones in domestic airspace in which military drones could fly, zones that extend well beyond the restricted airspace into which they are currently constrained. The central figure in this painting was appropriated from Pierre Auguste Cot’s 1880 painting entitled "The Storm".