Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 makes it clear: we need to rethink black boxes • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by SnowProblem » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:24 PM UTC

objclxt wrote: post #15

kevingadd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't satellites an obvious choice for this sort of thing? The link doesn't need to have the kind of low ping you expect for online games, and for low-latency communication they can use radio/radar - but that seems like it would have enough bandwidth for black-box style data, wouldn't it? Or does satellite communication generally suffer from problems with cloud cover, etc, even at the altitudes commercial airliners…

I pointed this out somewhere else, but satellites aren't particularly helpful because you won't be able to transmit to them when you most need it , which is when there are problems with the plane. It's still highly likely that you're still going to end up with planes going 'off the grid' so to speak. You could lose power, stopping you from transmitting telemetric data. Or there could be a cabin depressurization or br…

But if you were broadcasting location and velocity at all times, even if an aircraft lost power, you could project where the "unplanned water landing" would occur. That seems helpful.

I wonder if Google's Project Loon [1] would be of any use here.

[1] http://www.google.com/loon/how/

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

#42

Post by WalterBright » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:27 PM UTC

Zancarius wrote: post #24

WalterBright wrote: post #13

I'd also like to see, along with the cockpit voice data recorder, a video recorder of the last n minutes of the cockpit. Much accident investigation revolves around trying to reconstruct what the pilot was doing, looking at, etc. This would make it much simpler and more accurate.

I was hoping you'd chime in on one of these discussions, given your history in the aircraft industry. What are your thoughts on the rather knee-jerk articles as of late that seem to think that some form of streaming technology is somehow absolutely imperative, and how might that compare to the tried-and-tested flight recorders given what we know from AF447 sharing periodic updates as to its status?

My knowledge of what is and isn't practical with streaming technology isn't much better than that of a layperson.

I do find the aviation industry to be sometimes peculiarly behind the times. For example, a few years ago, I wondered online why airports did not have constant video recording of the runway and taxiways. Such would have been enormously helpful in solving many accidents, such as the SST crash.

But an airline pilot argued with me, saying that such would be cost prohibitive and thoroughly impractical. I was baffled by such statements, given that every 7-11 had constant video surveillance.

I do follow air crashes and the subsequent investigations, the engineer in me just cannot resist. The investigations are so thorough these days that it's pretty rare that the cause and chain of events are not thoroughly understood. The only issue is sometimes it takes years, which can get pretty frustrating for people (including me) who like instant answers. The mitigating factor is accidents are now extremely rare. I don't think that the cost of a live streaming system is clearly worth it.

The black box system has turned out to be probably the biggest single factor in improving safety ever devised. They work great, and the aviation industry is (naturally) very conservative about changing things that work.

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

#43

Post by michaelt » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:28 PM UTC

yaakov34 wrote: post #20

Let's start estimating the technical challenge here (we're supposed to be techies, after all). Bandwidth: quick googling shows that a flight data recorder records between 64 and 256 12-bit words a second, i.e. 1-3 kbps. Browsing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate shows that another 2-8 kbps is needed for voice recording (from one microphone). Let's call it 10 kpbs all together. Number of simultaneous connections:…

Part of the reason Iridium needs a lot of satellites is because they're in low earth orbit, to reduce latencies (800km instead of 42000km for geostationary orbits means round trip latency of 5ms instead of 280ms).

You might be able to lower costs by tolerating increased latency and using higher orbits. You'd still need something for pole coverage, of course.

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

#44

Post by yeukhon » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:29 PM UTC

colund wrote: post #11

Does anyone think this air crash investigation will be anything like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870 investigation? It also exploded over sea, pieces were found. First they thought it exploded due to a missile from a military jet. Then some engineers found out that the explosion was a bomb in a rear airplane toilet.

No one know yet. Until they found the aircraft and the blackbox, they can only suspect. There are reports of passengers checked in with stolen passports but the government and the airline think the possibility of terrorism is low. Let's hope we can discover the missing aircraft soon.

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

#45

Post by TillE » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:39 PM UTC

colund wrote: post #11

Does anyone think this air crash investigation will be anything like the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerolinee_Itavia_Flight_870 investigation? It also exploded over sea, pieces were found. First they thought it exploded due to a missile from a military jet. Then some engineers found out that the explosion was a bomb in a rear airplane toilet.

TWA 800 is perhaps the more familiar example, at least to anyone in the New York area. Plenty of theories about a missile in that case too, but the actual cause was an electrical fault.

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

#46

Post by AmVess » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:41 PM UTC

pcurve wrote: post #23

brandon272 wrote: post #7

I'm seeing a lot of armchair criticism aimed at the air travel industry about how these aircraft should be able to be tracked more effectively given "modern technology" and they reference things like broadband in cars, WiFi on flights, etc. What they seem to ignore is that many of these things only work effectively on land in populated areas. Drive your car out to the South China Sea and let me know how well the in-c…

In both Air France 447 and Malay Air MH370, local authorities found traces of crash / wreckage within 1-2 days. People don't fully appreciate how difficult it is to find anything in the middle of ocean when there's no visual trace. Even if you can narrow down the point of impact within a few square miles, you won't know for sure until you get underwater equipment. When you're dealing with deep underwater recovery, al…

It's difficult even on land. I recall an accident that involved a twin engine light aircraft that vanished in the middle of the night in Alaska perhaps 20 years ago.

Search parties searched for quite some time, but gave up. Five years later, the plane was found in the woods some 100 meters away from a fairly frequently traveled two-lane road.

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

#47

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:43 PM UTC

brandon272 wrote: post #7

I'm seeing a lot of armchair criticism aimed at the air travel industry about how these aircraft should be able to be tracked more effectively given "modern technology" and they reference things like broadband in cars, WiFi on flights, etc. What they seem to ignore is that many of these things only work effectively on land in populated areas. Drive your car out to the South China Sea and let me know how well the in-c…

> There was an article on reddit questioning why we can track a rover on Mars but not a commercial airliner on Earth.

We have billions of dollars of equipment focused on tracking that rover, and we still lose contact with it sometimes.

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

#48

Post by rjzzleep » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:48 PM UTC

brandon272 wrote: post #7

I'm seeing a lot of armchair criticism aimed at the air travel industry about how these aircraft should be able to be tracked more effectively given "modern technology" and they reference things like broadband in cars, WiFi on flights, etc. What they seem to ignore is that many of these things only work effectively on land in populated areas. Drive your car out to the South China Sea and let me know how well the in-c…

as i mentioned below, some engines already send flight data to satellites. ironically some of these newer engines also have much higher failure rates.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/airbus-engin...

http://atwonline.com/engines/final-qantas-a380-engine-failur...

http://www.rolls-royce.com/about/technology/systems_tech/mon...

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

#49

Post by dap » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:48 PM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #40

dap wrote: post #37

What's the actual problem here? How many fatal crashes of commercial airliners with black boxes have ultimately not been root-caused? I don't think it's very many. Is the problem that it doesn't happen quickly enough? Is the fear that another plane might crash for the same cause while people are still investigating the first one? I'm not sure this is based on anything rational.

How many fatal crashes of commercial airliners with black boxes have ultimately not been root-caused? I am not sure what you are trying to say. The blackbox is like your log file on a server: the flight recorders (flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder) in aircraft, (wiki). So if you want to know what happened to the aircraft, whether after a fatal crash or after a hijack or after emergency landing, the blac…

I'm saying that if black boxes are sufficient to root-cause the vast majority of commercial airline crashes, what problem are we trying to solve by "rethinking" them? The only one I can think of is speeding up the process, but it's not clear that that's actually a real problem rather than just disappointing to someone in the news industry who wants answers within a few news cycles.

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

#50

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 09, 2014, 10:48 PM UTC

kevingadd wrote: post #9

brandon272 wrote: post #7

I'm seeing a lot of armchair criticism aimed at the air travel industry about how these aircraft should be able to be tracked more effectively given "modern technology" and they reference things like broadband in cars, WiFi on flights, etc. What they seem to ignore is that many of these things only work effectively on land in populated areas. Drive your car out to the South China Sea and let me know how well the in-c…

Aren't satellites an obvious choice for this sort of thing? The link doesn't need to have the kind of low ping you expect for online games, and for low-latency communication they can use radio/radar - but that seems like it would have enough bandwidth for black-box style data, wouldn't it? Or does satellite communication generally suffer from problems with cloud cover, etc, even at the altitudes commercial airliners…

[deleted]