WASHINGTON, USA

A small, four-rotor drone hovered over the Washington Nationals baseball players during spring training in Florida last month, taking publicity photos. But no one got the Federal Aviation Administration’s permission first.

The drone flights ceased the next day.

“No, we didn’t get it cleared, but we don’t get our pop flies cleared either and those go higher than this thing did,” a team official said when contacted by The Associated Press. The official wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be named.

The FAA, which contends it controls access to the nation’s air space, bars commercial use of drones. The lone exception is an oil company that has been granted permission to fly drones over the Arctic Ocean — and it took an act of Congress to win that concession.

FAA officials say rules to address the special safety challenges associated with unmanned aircraft need to be in place before they can share the sky with manned aircraft. The agency has worked on those regulations for the past decade, but is still months and possibly years away from final rules for small drones, those weighing less than 55 pounds. Rules for larger drones are even further off.

But tempting technology and an eager marketplace are outrunning the aviation agency. Photographers, real estate agents, moviemakers and others are hurrying to embrace drone technology. Drones have been used to photograph the two apartment buildings that collapsed in New York City this past week and a car crash in Connecticut. The AP is one of several news organizations studying the possible use of drones.

Worldwide sales of military and civilian drones will reach an estimated US$89 billion over the next decade, according to the Teal Group, an aerospace research company in Fairfax, Virginia. The FAA estimates as many as 7,500 small commercial drones will be in use by 2018, assuming the necessary regulations are in place.

The use of commercial drones, most of them small, is starting to spread to countries where authorities have decided the aircraft presents little threat if operators follow a few safety rules. The drone industry and some members of Congress are worried the United States will be one of the last countries, rather than one of the first, to gain the economic benefits of the technology.

“We don’t have the luxury of waiting another 20 years,” said Paul McDuffee, vice president of drone-maker Insitu of Bingen, Wash., a subsidiary of Boeing. “This industry is exploding. It’s getting to the point where it may end up happening with or without the FAA’s blessing.”

In Japan, the Yamaha Motor Company’s RMAX helicopter drones have been spraying crops for 20 years. The radio-controlled drones weighing 140 pounds are cheaper than hiring a plane and are able to more precisely apply fertilizers and pesticides. The helicopters went into use five years ago in South Korea, and last year in Australia.

Television networks use drones to cover cricket matches in Australia. Zookal, a Sydney company that rents textbooks to college students, plans to begin delivering books via drones later this year. The United Arab Emirates has a project underway to see if government documents like driver’s licenses, identity cards and permits can be delivered using small drones.

In the United Kingdom, energy companies use drones to check the undersides of oil platforms for corrosion and repairs, and real estate agents use them to shoot videos of pricey properties. In a publicity stunt, a Domino’s Pizza franchise posted a YouTube video of a “DomiCopter” drone flying over fields, trees, and homes to deliver two pizzas.

But when Lakemaid Beer tried to use a drone to deliver six-packs to ice fishermen in Minnesota, the FAA grounded the “brewskis.”

Andreas Raptopoulous, CEO of Matternet in Menlo Park, Calif., predicts that in the near term, there will be more extensive use of drones in impoverished countries than in wealthier nations such as the U.S. He sees a market for drones to deliver medicines and other critical, small packaged goods to the 1 billion people around the globe who don’t have year-round access to roads.

Later this year, Matternet plans to start selling a package that includes a drone and two landing pads. On the return trip, the drones can carry blood samples bound for labs and other packages.

Germany’s express delivery company Deutsche Post DHL is testing a “Paketkopter” drone that could be used to deliver small, urgently needed goods in hard-to-reach places. Facebook is in talks to buy Titan Aerospace, a maker of solar-powered drone-like satellites, to step up its efforts to provide Internet access to remote parts of the world.

There is also a strong business case for urban drones. “If you look at the economic footprint and CO2 emissions,” Raptopoulous said, the drone “beats the truck hands down.”

Jim Williams, head of the FAA’s drone office, said writing rules for the U.S. is more complex than other nations. The U.S. has far more air traffic than anywhere else and a greater variety of aircraft, from hot air balloons and old-fashioned barnstormers to the most sophisticated airliners and military and business jets. At low altitudes, the concern is that a small drone could collide with a helicopter or small plane flown by a recreational pilot.

Yet the FAA permits hobbyists to fly model aircraft that have so improved in technology that they’re little different from small drones. The FAA has issued voluntary guidelines for hobbyists, including staying away from airports, flying no higher than 400 feet and staying within the line of sight of the operator.

Sean Cassidy, senior vice president at the Air Line Pilots Association, said he worries that commercial drone users will be less willing than hobbyists to abide by restrictions.

Drones are “becoming so prevalent and affordable that something has to be done to make sure they’re not being used in a reckless manner,” he said. “There could be very dire consequences.”