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Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

theguardian.com

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Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#141

Post by yardie »

smsm42 wrote: post #139
akiselev wrote: post #53

I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me: "Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes" You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the…

But do they really need to "operate" under these harsh conditions? They need to preserve the recorded data (which AFAIK with a suitable magnetic storage requires no processing power and no energy, just ability to stay mechanically together) and to do something to be found - like send GPS coordinates out on exceptional event and/or a loud radio ping that can be located by search teams after the crash. That shouldn't b…

A plane can be on fire and in flight simultaneously. If the compartment the blackbox is kept in is on fire or near the hotspot you don't want it cutting out too soon.

Blackboxes are equipped with a sonic and radio location beacon. Because of the remote locations they have to work in battery life is measured in days and hours since they have to send out a fairly powerful signal using the weakest antenna configuration.

GPS is out of the question for the moment. It requires a power hungry DSP and signal amplifier. Even now, most smart phones use the GPS occasionally then supplement that information with the accelerometer (ie, dead reckoning for smartphones).

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#142

Post by rukball »

The topic has been proposed periodically in the past (http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/beyond-the-black...). There are already systems in the market.

What is perhaps more boggling is that you just need a last seen GPS coordinate or set to help find the boxes and the plane - a GPS packet if you might call it. Similar emergency transmitters are already available for yachts and boats.

The mystery of MH370 may uncover a number of simultaneous problems or deficiencies of procedure.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#143

Post by phaemon »

akiselev wrote: post #53

I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me: "Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes" You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the…

> You're talking about the black box for a airline jet.

No he's not. He's talking about the "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit" that send the data to the black box.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#144

Post by masklinn »

akiselev wrote: post #53

I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me: "Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes" You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the…

> You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the ground going 100's of meters per second.

Just so everybody understands, here are the specs advertised by Honeywell Aerospace for the type of box on e.g. AF447 (the Air France flight which crashed in 2009):

    Advanced Recorder (AR):
        available as
            Cockpit Voice Recorder only (AR-CVR)
            Flight Data Recorder only (AR-FDR)
            Combined Digital Voice and Data Recorder (AR-DVDR)
        - Underwater Locator Beacon (ULB).
        - voice recording duration: 30, 60, 120 minutes.
        - data recording: 10, 25 hours.
        - Height – 6.1 inch; Width – 4.8 inch; Length – 9.49 inch;
        - weight: 8.8 pounds.
        - designed for data recovery even if subjected to
            * Impact Shock – 3400 G, 6.5 milliseconds
            * Penetration Resistance – 500 lb weight drop from 10 feet
            * Static Crush – 5000 lbs, 5 minutes
            * High Temperature Fire – 1100°C, 60 minutes
            * Low Temperature Fire: 260°C, 10 hours
            * Deep Sea Pressure and Sea Water/Fluids Immersion: 20,000 feet, 30 days

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#145

Post by masklinn »

phaemon wrote: post #143
akiselev wrote: post #53

I totally agree with making black boxes more advanced to phone home and such, but this line annoyed me: "Your iPhone is more powerful than the evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit. Simple changes could mean faster answers for plane crashes" You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. This thing is supposed to survive plane crashes; not just being dropped a meter off the floor, but smashing into the…

> You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. No he's not. He's talking about the "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit" that send the data to the black box.

> He's talking about the "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit" that send the data to the black box.

No, he's saying that collecting the black box is a pain in the ass so there should be a permanent data link to ground.

Plus his whole premise is wrong, as there already is one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Address... there just isn't enough bandwidth to send much more than basic systems failure data. Certainly not enough to send the kind of information stored in the black box, and not until the final moments of the plane either.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#146

Post by masklinn »

lgeek wrote: post #135
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing black boxes is not a good idea. Black boxes work when everything else has broken. We trust them to report when unimaginable edge conditions are breached. We should instead supplement our sturdy but silent black boxes with a chattier partner. The new device would not survive a catastrophic breakup. Nor would it receive the omniscient breadth of data trusted to a black box. Instead, it would (1) receive a sub…

> We should instead supplement our sturdy but silent black boxes with a chattier partner. The new device would not survive a catastrophic breakup. Nor would it receive the omniscient breadth of data trusted to a black box. Instead, it would (1) receive a subset of flight data (e.g. location, alerts, and pilot inputs) and (2) immediately send them to a ground-based datacentre. These data would back up air traffic cont…

What he's describing is closer to ACARS, which already exists but has very low bandwidth.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#147

Post by phaemon »

masklinn wrote: post #145
phaemon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're talking about the black box for a airline jet. No he's not. He's talking about the "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit" that send the data to the black box.

> He's talking about the "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit" that send the data to the black box. No, he's saying that collecting the black box is a pain in the ass so there should be a permanent data link to ground. Plus his whole premise is wrong, as there already is one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Address... there just isn't enough bandwidth to send much more than basic systems…

No, he's talking about "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit". I know that because that's a quote from the article. You can tell that because I used "quote marks".

He also says that there should be a permanent data link to ground. At which point you say (paraphrased), "there is one, except there isn't".

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#148

Post by ekianjo »

m4x wrote: post #130
ekianjo wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's pretty fucking simple for a computer to monitor the altitude of a plane and say "one of your planes has significantly deviated from it's target altitude". Look, read the AF447 case again and the reports of what happened in the cockpit! The pilots were not EVEN listening to the different alarms being triggered in the cockpit and did not realize that they were in danger no matter how many instruments they had in…

If a pilot on the ground had checked the telemetry and seen that a) the plane was stalled and b) the elevator was at max deflection, he would have asked why that was the case and the pilot who wasn't in control would have realised what was going on. We aren't talking about giving the flight crew another automated message or bombarding them with unwanted input, just allowing somebody in a more sterile/low stress envir…

The accident occured in minutes, there was no time for a potential operator to do anything about it anyway. Too many "if" in your scenario to make it sound plausible.

Re: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes

#150

Post by masklinn »

phaemon wrote: post #147
masklinn wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's talking about the "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit" that send the data to the black box. No, he's saying that collecting the black box is a pain in the ass so there should be a permanent data link to ground. Plus his whole premise is wrong, as there already is one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Communications_Address... there just isn't enough bandwidth to send much more than basic systems…

No, he's talking about "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit". I know that because that's a quote from the article. You can tell that because I used "quote marks". He also says that there should be a permanent data link to ground. At which point you say (paraphrased), "there is one, except there isn't".

> No, he's talking about "evidence-collecting computers in the cockpit"

No, he's mentioning them. He's not talking about them. You could know by having read the article and noted he says nothing about them outside of the subtitle.

> At which point you say (paraphrased), "there is one, except there isn't".

The actual paraphrase would be "there is one except physics". There is a link, it can't magick reliability which does not exist when the computer is a flaming ball of debris in a storm. His proposition boils down to "magick up a reliable connection and send a subset of the blackbox data over it" (note the part where changing anything to "evidence-collecting computers" figures nowhere in the proposal?)

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