I always wondered: what would it take me to fly in the cockpit? I'm not a pilot, but I'm willing to be subjected to any amount of security/background check that'll let me witness the machine in action, end-to-end.
Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
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Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#72Why it is so big?
Replaceable, modular designs, space for modifications, etc.
Also some sensors are pretty big (laser gyroscopes, for example which are part of ADIRU - air & intertial reference system.
Then you have the central computer clusters which might be separated physically (several computers running in a setup somewhat similar to statically assigned kubernetes) which run all kinds of software from lights management through navigation to brake control.
You also have a bunch of non-computer parts like power distribution units and such, which in a DC might be hidden elsewhere and you wouldn't notice it if you just looked at typical colocation cage.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#73I always wondered: what would it take me to fly in the cockpit? I'm not a pilot, but I'm willing to be subjected to any amount of security/background check that'll let me witness the machine in action, end-to-end.
It’ll never happen on an airliner. Even most private jet charters no longer allow pax up front after a business jet crashed in Colorado. Turned out the customer was running late and rushed the pilots in poor weather conditions.
If you want to see the cockpit, I’ve gotten permission to enter twice while the pilots were on the ground waiting for passengers to board. Beyond that you can also take an intro flight lesson at your local school.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since we don't know anything about the internals, it's safe to say the goal was "good enough and certified" vs. "snappy but no guarantees it works correctly 100% of the time". This is an airplane after all, not a consumer-grade gadget.
They might have different standards and I'm not a pilot, but in my opinion having multiple seconds of UI lag in vitally important interfaces is not good enough nor deserves certification.
it's not considered vitally important interface, that's probably even the reason for the lag - higher priority tasks preempting it.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#75Later in the video at 4:48 approx he demonstrates the nav computer GUI in the cockpit and I cringed when he used the touchscreen and there was a lag of about 2-5 (!) seconds after every interaction. My... god.... I kind of almost heard the mechanical drive seeking and reading and searching the heavily fragmented map data...
Probably because it is 10 year old older hardware but thoroughly tested. Using Chrome/JS/CSS on the latest Ryzen might be neat but when you need to transport 300 passengers daily around there is other sort of concerns then taking up 3 folks to the ISS every 6 months.
spacex already disproved this myth
have a look at the last manned mission they did. Glorious touch screen displays with all the bells and whistles.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#76Later in the video at 4:48 approx he demonstrates the nav computer GUI in the cockpit and I cringed when he used the touchscreen and there was a lag of about 2-5 (!) seconds after every interaction. My... god.... I kind of almost heard the mechanical drive seeking and reading and searching the heavily fragmented map data...
Seriously, for $329 you can get an iPad with Foreflight that’s 100x smoother.
Professional Garmin equipment is already orders of magnitude more expensive though.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't Uber or Tesla, they don't move fast and break things here.
They sure do move fast - almost supersonic. But yes, they're really trying not to break things.
That's not why the person you're replying to means - 'move fast' means developing fast.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#78I wonder would it be possible for these servers to be replaced by cloud infra? Then they can save space and only have network connection.
The infra is already above the clouds. They only need an upgrade.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#79I always wondered: what would it take me to fly in the cockpit? I'm not a pilot, but I'm willing to be subjected to any amount of security/background check that'll let me witness the machine in action, end-to-end.
You need very good contacts inside an airline. Personal contacts with captain and the like. Sometimes you still can get jump seat flights (a rather uncomfortable seat used for ferrying extra crew) in the cockpit.
Re: Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it’s because anyway there is space under the cockpit and that’s structural. So there is no reason nor incentives to make those machines smaller while sacrificing fixability. It’s either that or seats or kerosene. There is not enough room for seats, and it’s not an acceptable place to store kerosene (too dangerous in case of crash and can cause stability issues as the volume of kerosene decreases while flying)…
Could be additional cargo space. Airlines would be quite happy, they could accept more cargo = more $.
Look at the diagram on [1], it's a fairly small space. Other diagrams [2] suggest it's also a weird shape.
[1] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/27419/how-is-th...
[2] https://www.smartcockpit.com/docs/a350-900-flight-deck-and-s...