Personal Experience at an Amazon Go in San Francisco

The Amazon Go stores have been open for two years in Seattle. The Amazon Go Stores in San Francisco have been open for a few months, since October, 2018. The Amazon Go store on Post street is open on Saturday and it is a few blocks from Union Square. Union Square is a major tourist and shopping destination.

There are cameras and electronics all over the ceiling. Those devices track you and your activity and purchases.

You first load the Amazon Go app onto your phone and sign in with Amazon account.

You can then scan and let guests like children go in first.

Walk around the store and select any items. Any items you or your guests walk out with are charged to your account.

The store is great for office workers. The prices for sandwiches, salads and sushi are good for the Union Square area. The prices for a variety of sodas is 69 cents per can. Other drinks and desserts are more expensive but reasonable.

I have now shopped at Amazon Go and the Amazon 4 Star store. The Amazon 4 Star store has products that are rated as 4 stars or higher on the Amazon website. Amazon 4 star has interesting electronics and was useful for Christmas shopping.

18 thoughts on “Personal Experience at an Amazon Go in San Francisco”

  1. It doesn’t have to look pretty (although I’m sure that Elon would like it to), just hold propellant and not come apart under flight conditions.

  2. Elon stated that it would be flying up to 5km altitude and faster than Mach 1. Agreed on all your points.

    This will hopefully be like the DC-X, “fly a little, break a little”

  3. It is fun … it is just a bit of hovering test apparatus. I don’t think it will go faster than a few hundred miles an hour. Up and down, sideways perhaps, and some hovering … ? They need practice controlling the engines and their swivelling mounts, and side thrusters, I suppose. Rather important. Monumentally important. Critically important … ! Best get in lots of practice with a cheap tin can of approximately the right shape and weight. And find out how much fuel the exercise uses up. And how damaged the engines get. And the vibration data. And the control electronics and equipment. And the test sensors. And the fuel tank and feed and cooling design – the fuel is going to slosh around. Lots to learn and improve and get right. Quite a challenge. I am sure we will see a couple of explosions! SpaceX seems to have got the knack of learning quickly from this kind of practical experiment.

  4. A lot of oilcanning in the sheetmetal panels. Probably doesnt matter for the Hopper mission but it doesn’t exactly look like Rocketship-XM either..

  5. Does this mean that the next SpaceX “rocket” will be a flying saucer? I mean, if we are going back the golden age of science fiction …

  6. Musk previously stated that the sheet metal is so wrinkled because it’s thinner than it will be on the final flight structure. The metallurgy in the Stainless Steel and temperature treatment is a relatively new process and (I’m guessing) they’re starting with the thinner material as they work out the temperature treatment process for thicker panels.

  7. ” Probably a bad welding job. ”

    Curious so many people are sure it isn’t exactly the way they believe they need it to be at this stage.

  8. Not just for looks, aerodynamics, too. They don’t need the aerodynamics to be perfect, but leaving out the sheet metal would throw it off too much for a good test; They wouldn’t function as fins!

  9. The metal sheet is there just for the looks. This one doesn’t go all the way to orbit, so it doesn’t really matter.

  10. Probably a bad welding job. The hard part is fit and thermal expansion. One technique is to tack in a lot of places before doing a full bead. Too fast and too few beads leads to uneven look. I think too is poor forming of the panels. Not that this is bad, just the inevitable first attempt crap-fest that won’t get better until the fifth try.

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