The irony of a website telling the story of commercialization of climbing the Everest, and the risks involved, while bombarding you with full page ads to buy a climbing package every couple minutes…
I also wonder, with so much money going into these expeditions for many decades, how hard would it be to build some kind of safe house not too far from the summit, with oxygen / heating supplies delivered by drone?
Very very hard. Purpose built high performance helicopters can barely make it to the Everest summit on ideal days. The air gets so thin they struggle with lift while hovering which to need to land.
It can and is both imo. It's technically hard to get supplies up that high and culturally people wouldn't want so obviously lessen the accomplishment of getting to the summit.
On the other hand DJI has flown their regular consumer Mavic 3 Pro(although I bet it has been modified in some way) all the way to the top, so I have no doubt that with enough of them you could construct almost anything. Not that it would be allowed or even desirable by anyone there.
The helicopter flight that landed on the summit briefly was helped by some strong updrafts according to the pilot. It also looks like it was a number of flights.
I'd be concerned that if you make it too safe, people will find another hill to die on.
The density of the air on Mount Everest is about 3/8 of that at sea level. So getting enough lift would be difficult. To the sibling commenter's point, I think a drone would be a lot easier than a piloted helicopter, since you can make the whole thing out of beryllium if you have to.
That was my point, DJI already demonstrated a drone going all the way from base camp to the summit.
You also have a stream of hundreds of people climbing it daily. If each one carries a few hundred grams payload to help with construction, or a sherpa takes an extra O2 cylinder every once in a while...
I know nothing about climbing, but thought, given the volume of people and money, it doesn't look like a "greatest feats of engineering"-level project to save a few dozen lives.
I also wonder, with so much money going into these expeditions for many decades, how hard would it be to build some kind of safe house not too far from the summit, with oxygen / heating supplies delivered by drone?