A Manna.aero drone delivers a package in Dublin, in January.
Photographer: Paulo Nunes dos Santos/Bloomberg
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Ice Cream and Thai Curries Are About to Fly Through Irish Skies
“In five years, it’s going to be the most normal thing you can imagine.”
In the suburbs of Dublin on a windy, overcast day in January, several alumni of Airbus and the U.K.’s Royal Air Force watched as a flying object, shaped a bit like a crouching frog, hovered about 10 meters (33 feet) up in the air.
The craft, called MNA-1090, opened its cargo bay door, and lowered a package — about the size of a shoebox — to the ground on a string. The robotics engineers who’d helped design the vehicle opened the carton, looked inside, and smiled: the dozen-or-so pots of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream were still perfectly frozen.