This "worst-case scenario" kind of logic keeps on being posted as an argument against what are perceived to be overly stringent FAA regulations. People need to understand that the FAA and all other airspace regulators base most, if not all, of their regulatory framework on exactly that - Worst Case Scenario.
Yes, I understand that. My problem with it is that there is no end to it.
Is there any hazard whatsoever that will be allowed, or are we going to keep adding more limits, based solely on a person's ability to dream up a scary scenario, not matter how remote? With most other hazards regulated by the government, such as lead in drinking water, the government attempts to find a threshold, below which the hazard is "acceptable."
There seems to be no attempt to find such thresholds, limits, or boundaries with drones, other than the excellent rules about altitude and distance from airport.
The issue isn't just the FAA and the potential of taking down a plane full of people (i.e., the worst-case scenario), but so many other facets of our life which are increasingly regulated.
Also, the drone seems to have been singled out even though similar, and equally hazardous, objects have been sharing the same space with aircraft for decades. I'm thinking specifically of model rockets, some of which are MUCH larger than the drones most of us are flying, and all of which achieve altitudes far beyond the puny 400 foot limit for drones.
When I was a kid, I grew up in a house about two miles directly the the southeast of O'Hare's runway 32L, the main runway. When the airport was converted from military to commercial in the late 1950s, we suddenly had a huge increase in traffic overhead, and because ILS systems were primitive, the planes sometimes flew so low over our house that we could see the people's faces in the windows.
My friends used to launch rockets from the fields adjacent to our house. None of them were as large as what is shown in the picture, but some of them were as big as my
M2P.
I'm not aware that the FAA has issued any rules for rockets that are similar to, or as stringest as, drone rules.