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Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight

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Re: Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight

#181
post #111
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crashes caused by pilots failing to execute proper stall recovery procedures are surprisingly common, and similar accidents have happened before in aircraft with traditional control schemes, so I’m skeptical that there are any hardware changes that would have made much difference. The official report doesn’t identify the hardware or software as significant factors. The moment to avoid the accident was probably the ve…

True. I would say, however, that every "concept" of airliner flight deck has its own gimmicks that can kill. The Airbus "dual input" is such a gimmick. Even though there was, for example, an AF accident with a 777 where there was hardware linkage between yokes and the two pilots were fighting... each other. Physically.

There was more than one case where pilots would accidentally fight and break the linkage, or one would overpower the other.

One glider instructor talked about taking a stick with him in case of panicking student, so they could hit them hard enough so they would stop holding the controls.

Re: Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight

#182

What if future aircraft had "OTA" updates to software... using this as an example of avoidable downtime. OTA updates to cars makes me feel uneasy -- not knowing what new bugs it might introduce.

Updates are distributed online, but applied by technician with a portable data loader device (a computer with special - partially standardized - interface cable).

The actual update in this case is about 15 minute work, the often seen "2h" claim is the entire cycle of powering the aircraft down for maintenance, update, verification, etc.

Re: Airbus A320 – intense solar radiation may corrupt data critical for flight

#184

Intense solar radiation will be at a peak, since it is NOW the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle. Good related reading on this page .... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening ... includes a range of mitigation effects. ( I would be interested to find out how they actually test these systems. What combinations of hardware hardening and software logic. ALso do they actually subject to system to radiation as…

In early 1990s, when possibility of radiation caused upsets came to airliners, tests were conducted with various kinds of radiation including firing heavy ions from particle accelerators
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