6 ms·

I keep thinking they need to put a black box on the top of these planes that auto ejects at the first sign of crashing and can float etc.

rbf 10y ago
Or just continously upload the data to the internet, should be quite feasible these days with satellites everywhere.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  If they had sent position, altitude and heading every minute (which requires very little bandwidth) literally millions of dollars would have been saved with both AF447 (which had ACARS info every 10min) and MH370
  - lloeki 10y ago
    You seem to be underestimating the extent of areas in the world where bandwidth is effectively zero in all practical scenarios
    - ryanlol 10y ago
      Iridium is available pretty much everywhere, you don't need much bandwidth to transmit your location.
      - james32322 10y ago
        Or use inmarsat which is available precicly everywhere. They have 100% world coverage.
    - raverbashing 10y ago
      No I am not. You can use satellite communications for that. See this for possible alternatives: https://www.bea.aero/uploads/tx_elyextendttnews/flight.data.recovery.working.group.final.report.pdf https://www.bea.aero/uploads/tx_elyextendttnews/flight.data....
- lb1lf 10y ago
  >Or just continously upload the data to the internet, should be quite feasible these days with satellites everywhere. That would probably be a bit too much for existing satellite communication systems; while most flights wouldn't need to transmit such a signal most of the time (If a plane went missing over, say, the Midwest, we'd find it!), frequent transmissions from every flight over sea, for instance would probably overload today's networks - meaning you'd need to launch new satellites to provide this service, meaning it would be outrageously expensive, meaning it wouldn't happen. However, if we relax the requirement to, say, once every five minutes or so, at least you'll have a much better idea of where something went down than 'Probably somewhere in the southern hemisphere.'
  - cm2187 10y ago
    Over the midwest, the chances of survival are much greater than in the sea. Finding the wreckage immediatly is even more critical. Would a GPS coordinate every minute really be such a strain on the systems?
    - msandford 10y ago
      Make it every 5min or 15min and most of the technical problems drop right out. And it's still super useful for this kind of thing at 20% or 7% of the bandwidth.
  - nikanj 10y ago
    A quick googling tells me there are about 10000-15000 planes in the air around the world. GPS coordinates take less than 100 bytes, but let's give some headroom for plane ID, timestamp, etc. That would mean about 1.5 megabytes per minute, globally. I think the global satellite network is easily up to the task.
    - lb1lf 10y ago
      The raw data rate is pretty low, but keep in mind that there's all sorts of signaling traffic going on just to establish a connection, depending on protocol requiring multiple transmit/receive cycles - which in turn means waiting. Again depending on protocol, you may also have to handle collisions (more than one transmission in the same channel at the same time) etc - while still maintaining service for the network's regular customers. Multiple short transmissions are more taxing than a few long ones.
- dzhiurgis 10y ago
  Installation does not seem to be cheap. If you watch the timelapse [0], it does take a while to do that. Although I know Rolls Royce engines already do send their data to satellite, but I am not sure by which means. What I am interested, is feasibility this: nowadays you can buy sailor lifejackets with personal EPIRB which pings the satellite with your location. I am sure that is a lot of waste weight, but then, Lufthansa is still serving food with steel utensil, so maybe its not as bad. Also, randomly searching info about black boxes, I've found they have option for 90 day pinger batteries. Perhaps that could've aided MH370 search. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFvwtfxPwac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFvwtfxPwac
  - cm2187 10y ago
    All the planes that disappeared recently (MH370, Egyptair, or AF447) all already had txt based systems that were sending home txt based maintenance messages. All it would take is to also ping a gps coordonate every minute. Doesn't seem very complicated to me. Probably doesn't even require a hardware upgrade.
lb1lf 10y ago
The challenge would be to make such a device fully autonomous while yet being safe; someone intentionally trying to fly the plane into the great void, never to be seen again is an exceedingly rare scenario. It is, however, an option such a tracking device should try to stay on top of. Hence, it would be best if the crew could not disable it. The problem with that design decision made, of course, is that it would be a shame if a plane fell from the sky because of a failed tracking device which the crew couldn't disable (typically fire because of an electrical issue). However, there are intrinsically safe radio transmitters available for use in explosion-hazard environments, where fire obviously is a big no-no. Problem? It would need its own, dedicated power supply; probably a battery (which comes with its own set of challenges!) charged via solar panels and aircraft power. Making systems tamperproof and failsafe is hard. Should be doable, though, leaving the question of who is to foot the bill; chances are that will be a bigger problem to solve than the engineering side of it.
- ricardobeat 10y ago
  These "problems" are already solved in black boxes. What is actually missing is constant transmission of GPS data through every flight.
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    The black boxes do not start transmitting until after the plane has crashed. Also, I am pretty confident the crew can pull the fuse on the flight recorders if need arise.
- Mendenhall 10y ago
  Does it make sense to you to perhaps not make it a black box, but basically just a "loud" pinger that can help you find the black boxes ? I understand the vastness of the ocean but it just seems there has to be a way to at least get them quicker and closer to the original crash site, but I am ignorant of the technical side of such a thing as far as ranges etc.
  - lb1lf 10y ago
tim333 10y ago
Not sure how it would reliably detect the first sign of crashing given planes routinely fly through storms. You could make it detach under high pressure so it releases say 50m down if the plane is sinking.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Shivetya 10y ago
so how difficult would it be to have an autopilot system which can prevent off course diversions? As in, even when switched off it would prevent a plane from leaving a set area without ground clearance?
- patall 10y ago
  And once again, you gain a hackable component.
Mendenhall 10y ago
I posted this and when I checked today it was great to see the thought behind all the responses. It really is a pleasure to read such educated opinions, specially since this sort of thing is not in my wheelhouse. Just wanted to say thanks to those who shared their information, I learn a lot from this.

rbf 10y ago

Or just continously upload the data to the internet, should be quite feasible these days with satellites everywhere.

raverbashing 10y ago
If they had sent position, altitude and heading every minute (which requires very little bandwidth) literally millions of dollars would have been saved with both AF447 (which had ACARS info every 10min) and MH370
- lloeki 10y ago
  You seem to be underestimating the extent of areas in the world where bandwidth is effectively zero in all practical scenarios
  - ryanlol 10y ago
    Iridium is available pretty much everywhere, you don't need much bandwidth to transmit your location.
    - james32322 10y ago
      Or use inmarsat which is available precicly everywhere. They have 100% world coverage.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    No I am not. You can use satellite communications for that. See this for possible alternatives: https://www.bea.aero/uploads/tx_elyextendttnews/flight.data.recovery.working.group.final.report.pdf https://www.bea.aero/uploads/tx_elyextendttnews/flight.data....
lb1lf 10y ago
>Or just continously upload the data to the internet, should be quite feasible these days with satellites everywhere. That would probably be a bit too much for existing satellite communication systems; while most flights wouldn't need to transmit such a signal most of the time (If a plane went missing over, say, the Midwest, we'd find it!), frequent transmissions from every flight over sea, for instance would probably overload today's networks - meaning you'd need to launch new satellites to provide this service, meaning it would be outrageously expensive, meaning it wouldn't happen. However, if we relax the requirement to, say, once every five minutes or so, at least you'll have a much better idea of where something went down than 'Probably somewhere in the southern hemisphere.'
- cm2187 10y ago
  Over the midwest, the chances of survival are much greater than in the sea. Finding the wreckage immediatly is even more critical. Would a GPS coordinate every minute really be such a strain on the systems?
  - msandford 10y ago
    Make it every 5min or 15min and most of the technical problems drop right out. And it's still super useful for this kind of thing at 20% or 7% of the bandwidth.
- nikanj 10y ago
  A quick googling tells me there are about 10000-15000 planes in the air around the world. GPS coordinates take less than 100 bytes, but let's give some headroom for plane ID, timestamp, etc. That would mean about 1.5 megabytes per minute, globally. I think the global satellite network is easily up to the task.
  - lb1lf 10y ago
    The raw data rate is pretty low, but keep in mind that there's all sorts of signaling traffic going on just to establish a connection, depending on protocol requiring multiple transmit/receive cycles - which in turn means waiting. Again depending on protocol, you may also have to handle collisions (more than one transmission in the same channel at the same time) etc - while still maintaining service for the network's regular customers. Multiple short transmissions are more taxing than a few long ones.
dzhiurgis 10y ago
Installation does not seem to be cheap. If you watch the timelapse [0], it does take a while to do that. Although I know Rolls Royce engines already do send their data to satellite, but I am not sure by which means. What I am interested, is feasibility this: nowadays you can buy sailor lifejackets with personal EPIRB which pings the satellite with your location. I am sure that is a lot of waste weight, but then, Lufthansa is still serving food with steel utensil, so maybe its not as bad. Also, randomly searching info about black boxes, I've found they have option for 90 day pinger batteries. Perhaps that could've aided MH370 search. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFvwtfxPwac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFvwtfxPwac
- cm2187 10y ago
  All the planes that disappeared recently (MH370, Egyptair, or AF447) all already had txt based systems that were sending home txt based maintenance messages. All it would take is to also ping a gps coordonate every minute. Doesn't seem very complicated to me. Probably doesn't even require a hardware upgrade.

lb1lf 10y ago

The challenge would be to make such a device fully autonomous while yet being safe; someone intentionally trying to fly the plane into the great void, never to be seen again is an exceedingly rare scenario. It is, however, an option such a tracking device should try to stay on top of. Hence, it would be best if the crew could not disable it. The problem with that design decision made, of course, is that it would be a shame if a plane fell from the sky because of a failed tracking device which the crew couldn't disable (typically fire because of an electrical issue). However, there are intrinsically safe radio transmitters available for use in explosion-hazard environments, where fire obviously is a big no-no. Problem? It would need its own, dedicated power supply; probably a battery (which comes with its own set of challenges!) charged via solar panels and aircraft power. Making systems tamperproof and failsafe is hard. Should be doable, though, leaving the question of who is to foot the bill; chances are that will be a bigger problem to solve than the engineering side of it.

ricardobeat 10y ago
These "problems" are already solved in black boxes. What is actually missing is constant transmission of GPS data through every flight.
- lb1lf 10y ago
  The black boxes do not start transmitting until after the plane has crashed. Also, I am pretty confident the crew can pull the fuse on the flight recorders if need arise.
Mendenhall 10y ago
Does it make sense to you to perhaps not make it a black box, but basically just a "loud" pinger that can help you find the black boxes ? I understand the vastness of the ocean but it just seems there has to be a way to at least get them quicker and closer to the original crash site, but I am ignorant of the technical side of such a thing as far as ranges etc.
- lb1lf 10y ago

tim333 10y ago

Not sure how it would reliably detect the first sign of crashing given planes routinely fly through storms. You could make it detach under high pressure so it releases say 50m down if the plane is sinking.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

Shivetya 10y ago

so how difficult would it be to have an autopilot system which can prevent off course diversions? As in, even when switched off it would prevent a plane from leaving a set area without ground clearance?

patall 10y ago
And once again, you gain a hackable component.

Mendenhall 10y ago

I posted this and when I checked today it was great to see the thought behind all the responses. It really is a pleasure to read such educated opinions, specially since this sort of thing is not in my wheelhouse. Just wanted to say thanks to those who shared their information, I learn a lot from this.