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Tour of the server room in the Airbus 350
- tluyben2 5y agoThat made me feel quite claustrophobic!
- possiblelion 5y agoCompared to many other planes it's actually quite roomy!
- nsbk 5y agoOk, so that’s where airplane noise comes from
- mnw21cam 5y agoYeah, I have been in a few server rooms that sound like a jet engine taking off. This server room actually sounds like a jet engine taking off.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoMore like the sound of the auxiliary power unit at the back of the plane ;)
- NordSteve 5y agoNo, it really sounds like a server room down there. You don't hear much of the APU, which is at the very back of the aircraft, ~60m away, with the exhaust pointed away.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoI’m almost certain it’s the APU. Notice how the sound and volume hardly change when he opens the door from the server room into the cargo area. 60m away isn’t all that far for a big turbine engine. Those things are deafening at idle speed.
- mnw21cam 5y agoYeah, I meant later on, when the jet engine is actually taking off.
- haunter 5y ago> unauthorized persons can not get there for reasons I will not show Not sure what else can be there, I mean it's already a critical infrastructure of the plane what we saw
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoFunny how it reads like he's keeping the reasons secret. The reasons are bloody obvious, who would want strangers poking around the blinkenlights.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoHe probably means there is some intrusion prevention mechanism that keeps people out.
- lbriner 5y agoHe might mean that what happens if you trespass won't be shown! There might be a gas release system that would neutralise an attacker or perhaps just open the door to the hold so they freeze!
- FearlessNebula 5y agoI doubt there’s actually a defense system. The only way inside from within the plane is from the cockpit and if there’s an intruder in the cockpit they can already do more damage without needing to go below.
- alistairSH 5y agoThere's a door from the cargo area into the server/electronics area. Not sure if there's a handle on the cargo-side, but the pilot uses the door in the video (opened it from electronics side). It appeared this cargo area is pressurized (door into electronics area didn't appear pressurized, nor did the hatch into the cockpit).
- t0mas88 5y agoThat cargo hold is pressurised and heated. Some animals would fly in it if not suitable to carry on the cabin.
- lolc 5y agoI'm wondering what part of that setup is necessary for flight. And what is entertainment for the passengers.
- formerly_proven 5y agoGoing to guess none of that is in there.
- durnygbur 5y agoThe entertainment electronics are in the headrests so that the kids behind you can regularly hit your headrest for your convenience.
- eb0la 5y agoI believe there are also some boxes under every other seat row that hold the small servers and disks for the thin clients in the headrest.
- durnygbur 5y agoI'm truly mindblown because of such a waste of luggage space, of general space, and of electronics. In recent years airlines have started to charge even for the small handbag fitted under the seat, while packing even more obsolete eletronics into it. I guess the lobbying of copyright, media, and entertainment industries simply prevails everything including reason and safety.
- jaywalk 5y agoAre there really airlines that have both seatback screens and also charge for a small bag that can go under the seat? At least among US airlines, those two things are generally mutually exclusive.
- durnygbur 5y agoThat's rather my collective experience. Cannot tell if a certain airline is simultanously having headrest entertainment system and charges extra for the little luggage. I'm certain though that easyjet and ryanair tightened spaces between the rows and were putting printed ads on the headrests, 40-50cm in front of almost every passenger's eyeballs.
- baybal2 5y agoWhy it is so big?
- pjerem 5y agoI 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).
- jfrunyon 5y agoCould be additional cargo space. Airlines would be quite happy, they could accept more cargo = more $.
- Symbiote 5y agoLook 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-the-crew-rest-area-on-the-a350-accessed https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/27419/how-is-th... [2] https://www.smartcockpit.com/docs/a350-900-flight-deck-and-systems-briefing-for-pilots.pdf https://www.smartcockpit.com/docs/a350-900-flight-deck-and-s...
- formerly_proven 5y agoThe extremely wide FoV in the video makes it look far bigger than it is.
- p_l 5y agoReplaceable, 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.
- midasuni 5y ago“First time OBE been here” Shouldn’t a pilot have been everywhere during training, before he takes charge?
- Arnt 5y agoWhy?
- lucioperca 5y agoTo slap the server with you hand in case of kernel panic.
- Arnt 5y agoDidn't Han Solo do that? Expect no less of airline pilots!
- jfrunyon 5y agoRight? Moreover: why is this guy who's never been in it before allowed to go down there and walk around, completely unescorted?
- kube-system 5y agoMaintaining and operating the plane are two separate jobs.
- t0mas88 5y agoThe avionics bay is for maintenance, pilots don't get to touch any of it ever. And pilot training covers the systems not in a physical sense but in a logical "power is supplied to this system via the secondary avionics bus which is fed via this breaker from the generator on the left engine or via another breaker from the main avionics bus" so you can debug and understand what it means when some bus fails or you loose a generator. But we really don't know where the actual wire is or even whether the schematic we learn about different buses is really wired that way or only behaves that way.
- 5y ago
- curiousDog 5y agoSo the next breed of terrorists will likely be those who’ll take over the flight avionics while on the plane? Laptops to be banned soon
- iSnow 5y agoHow would you plug your Macbook into the plane's network?
- dvh 5y agoCouple of 0-days
- petercooper 5y agoYou say that, but I'm always astounded when they talk about cyberterrorists being able to get into the power networks and similar bits of national infrastructure which really shouldn't be connected to the public Internet at all.
- buro9 5y agoSCADA based on Windows exist and are connected to the internet via telnet and FTP. These things were deployed 20 years ago and are still in operation.
- withinboredom 5y agoGet some buddies to load some luggage. Walk in while loading luggage?
- mschuster91 5y agoLuggage is rolled in with containers and then locked in place (to prevent them rolling around), that's what the rails at the bottom are there for. You would not be able to get out again.
- technothrasher 5y ago
- l33tman 5y agoLater 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...
- tibbydudeza 5y agoProbably 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.
- rbanffy 5y agoIt was certified as testes, so the lag has been there for the whole 10 years.
- sslayer 5y agoDependability and reliability override responsiveness
- netr0ute 5y agoIronic, because responsiveness might inherently make it undependable because if you really needed to know where you are right now, that multiple-second delay isn't going to help.
- p_l 5y agoAviate, Navigate, Communicate, in this order. And the map isn't even part of the primary navigation method, plus with multi pilot crew usually you can offload slower, less time critical tasks to copilot.
- jeltz 5y ago
- Nohortax 5y agoIt is far where we had to turn the propeller ourselves! Nice and interesting visit.
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoDamn, having that sort of view like at timestamp 3:52 [1] from your workplace makes me jealous... Here's another jealousy-enducing video of pilots looking outside (from 4:23 onwards)[2], it says "Middle East" but they were flying over the East of China and the Aral sea... [1] https://youtu.be/241-5DZyons?t=232 https://youtu.be/241-5DZyons?t=232 [2] https://youtu.be/6KRZEZTTcWk?t=263 https://youtu.be/6KRZEZTTcWk?t=263
- ohadron 5y agoEven assuming quadruple redundancy, seven nines uptime and resilience to extreme conditions and cosmic rays, this looks way way bigger than it should be. One explanation could be that the certification process for anything aviation related is so expensive and slow that we're actually looking at tech from 15+ years ago.
- lbriner 5y agoIf you mean physically bigger than it is certainly true that avionics, like automative, uses larger components with higher ratings and avoids a lot of high pitch integrated circuits. This makes things easier test and likely to be more reliable. It also means you might have a single euro-card just to handle the input from a single airplane sensor even though in the non safety-critical world, we would easily mux them onto a single interface.
- RL_Quine 5y agoLike in medical gear, avionics also has a lot of redundancy and "useless" circuitry to allow for assurances. I've opened some hardware designed for unsafe environments that was absolutely packed with fuses, for seemingly no purpose other than to assert that limits were being followed in the design. I don't imagine avionics is any different, but I've only seen the inside of 60s-70s aircraft gear.
- jareklupinski 5y agoI love the hardware/software analogy of a fuse to an assert statement; going to remember that while writing tests :)
- lm28469 5y agoThis isn't Uber or Tesla, they don't move fast and break things here.
- ohadron 5y agoThey sure do move fast - almost supersonic. But yes, they're really trying not to break things.
- chinathrow 5y agoIn related news (same aicraft type involved), Airbus is working with their existing A350 customer Cathay Pacific to explore single pilot operations while in high altitude cruise. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/exclusive-cathay-working-with-airbus-single-pilot-system-long-haul-2021-06-16/ https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/exclusive...
- kayodelycaon 5y agoWonderful. A number of airlines have a two person in the cockpit rule so one of the pilots can’t deliberately crash the plane because they are suicidal. Which has happened a non-trivial amount of times.
- hliyan 5y agoI always worry around this type of mess-of-wires setups, especially if it's in cramped space where an errant elbow can dislodge something. Shouldn't there be covers on these things?
- qayxc 5y agoFirst of all this place isn't meant to be occupied by people on a regular basis. Other than for safety inspections, maintenance and repairs, no one is supposed to be in there, especially not during flight. Secondly, covers would introduce a lot of problems: additional weight, additional points of failure (e.g. damaging wires if broken/loose somehow), the need to be fireproof and not emitting toxic smoke if getting hot, accessibility issues (covers need to be fixed and removeable), longer inspection times (need to remove covers before inspecting cables), etc. In this particular environment, covers are unnecessary and introduce more problems than they solve; as mentioned above, no one is supposed to be in there during regular operation.
- spyder 5y agoThird: If something gets disconnected than the computer knows about it, and reports it. Forth: It's probably not that easy to dislodge anything because in flight it has to survive more than an elbow. Fifth: there are covers on the devices and cabels where they think it's necessary because of human movement, you can see it in the video here: https://youtu.be/241-5DZyons?t=152 https://youtu.be/241-5DZyons?t=152
- seedless-sensat 5y agoIt will take a lot more than an elbow to dislodge an avionics wiring harness. These things are tough
- Aardwolf 5y agoNice, I'm getting some "2001: A Space Odyssey" movie vibes from that!
- jeffrallen 5y agoWhat I want to know is why are there no Monkey fighting snakes on that Monday to Friday plane? https://youtu.be/yl9C67asV6o https://youtu.be/yl9C67asV6o
- tailspin2019 5y agoThanks for slipping in that reference to the greatest film ever made.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- daveslash 5y agoNot surprising. You need a lot of server power to run X-Plane 11 with top notch graphics. Still, kudos to this guy ~ very impressive home-built cockpit simulator for X-Plane 11! /s
- avml 5y agoI wonder would it be possible for these servers to be replaced by cloud infra? Then they can save space and only have network connection.
- qaq 5y agoloose connection plane goes down sounds like a good plan :)
- franky47 5y agoWhat would happen when you lose the connection ?
- iveqy 5y agoYou've good visuals, so you just aim for the nearest cloud to reconnect.
- RL_Quine 5y agoI can’t tell if this is satire or not.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- durnygbur 5y agoThe infra is already above the clouds. They only need an upgrade.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- marderfarker2 5y agoThe flight servers are technically already in the cloud, when it’s up 35,000 feet in the air.
- penguin_booze 5y agoI 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.
- FearlessNebula 5y agoIt’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.
- p_l 5y agoYou 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.
- aivisol 5y agoI very much hope that is not the case. As a passenger I would not be very happy seeing pilot's friends going in and out of cockpit during the flight.
- Symbiote 5y agoPre-2001, it wasn't unusual for children to be shown into the cockpit during the flight. (Although, prices were higher back then, so it was less common for children to fly anyway.) I saw the cockpit of an American Airlines plane when I was about 11 years old, and disappointed the captain when I was confused by his American humour.
- t0mas88 5y agoIt's still allowed, the passenger gets a temporary airline ID to wear around their neck so passengers don't get confused. And typically you close the forward galley curtain before opening the door, same as for crew entering and leaving the cockpit for in flight rest etc. Edit: I'm in Europe, not sure how American airlines handle it.
- j1elo 5y agoNice to learn that all the noise I've always heard when flying was actually a server room and not turbulences outside!
- tilolebo 5y agoI wish I did not see this video. Knowing that the plane I'm flying in relies on an actual server room is super scary...
- catern 5y agoYeah, you'd think they'd have moved to the cloud by now.
- juancb 5y agoJust wait until you find out they run on software, some of it with bugs that they won’t fix. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycle_51_days_stale_data/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theregister.com/AMP/2020/04...
- SwiftyBug 5y agoLink without Google AMP: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycle_51_days_stale_data/ https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/02/boeing_787_power_cycl...
- cm2187 5y agoHe shot that while in flight? I would be terrified of tripping over a wire and causing a major system to fail.
- momothereal 5y agoI think you can see that the shots in the server room were done on the tarmac
- SwiftyBug 5y agoAlso, it is very unlikely that there would even be a loose wire around where one could trip on.
- selljamhere 5y agoI wonder what sort of security measures are in place to protect the server area from unauthorized access in the cargo hold entrance.
- chx 5y agoDuring flight, you can't gain access to the cargo hold. On the ground, unauthorized personnel gaining access to the cargo hold could leave a bomb there so they really try disallowing that. I doubt there's special concern here.
- closeparen 5y agoI always thought that location in the movie Flightplan was made up. I guess the size was exaggerated but it’s otherwise pretty close.
- billyruffian 5y agoWhy is the hatch hinged in the most awkward way possible? If the hinges were on any other side, it would be so much more accessible, there must be a reason for this?