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Why don't they make black boxes floatable?
by raquo 17y ago
Why don't they make black boxes floatable?
- rossriley 17y agoI imagine that if they floated they would be carried far out of the way of the crash scene and thus much more difficult to find.
- rbanffy 17y agoThat's why they have radio beacons
- gvb 17y agoNo, no radio beacons. If they are on land, an exhaustive search finds them. For underwater search, they have battery powered "pinger" beacons. That is the cylindrical item in the picture on the Wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grossi-7.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grossi-7.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_box
- rbanffy 17y agoWow! Why no radio beacon?
- gvb 17y agoThe aircraft itself has a radio beacon that self-activates on a crash. Having one on the black box would be redundant and very likely ineffective since the black box is buried in the guts of the aircraft (e.g. if it separates enough to have a clear field of view for transmitting, it is probably going to be too damaged to transmit). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Position-Indicating_Radio_Beacon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Position-Indicating_R... The ELT is to locate the debris field. (OK, it is officially to locate the survivors, but they tend to be in the debris field.) If the crash is on land, another radio to locate the black box is unnecessary. If it is in the water, a radio transmitter is useless, but a pinger is very useful (see other debate threads why floating black boxes aren't a good idea, and impractical to boot - the armor is very heavy).
- DLWormwood 17y agoThey probably are, but they are stored inside of the aircraft, so if it goes down, it drags the box down with it.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- aconbere 17y agoI suspect that a floating object increase the range over which you have to search. If you object sinks to the bottom, at least you know about where it ended up.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- jules 17y agoLet it send a signal.
- anamax 17y agoWhy do you think that it doesn't?
- jules 17y agoI don't know whether it does, but it would be stupid to let it sink and send a signal.
- anamax 17y agoWhy? Sending a signal makes it easier to find - that's not stupid whether or not it sinks. Sinking means that it doesn't move much. However, since it's attached to the plane, it's likely to go down with the airplane whether or it it would sink on its own, whether or not it sinks on its own is irrelevant.
- raquo 17y agoIt does, and I think it is easier to pick up signal of a floating object than of an object 2 miles below sea level...
- ynniv 17y agoRadio doesn't work underwater. At 20 meters depth, a submarine can receive a 35 byte-per-second message using a long antenna, but it cannot transmit. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLF ]
- shader 17y agoThey would still probably be trapped under parts of the plane, and if it's floatable, it can be punctured/crushed.
- tybris 17y agoBetter yet, why don't they make them orange?
- raquo 17y agoThey ARE orange :) no idea why they are called 'black'...
- TriinT 17y agoSome are red...
- CyberFonic 17y agoThey do : take a look http://images.google.com.au/images?q=black+box+flight+recorder&oe=utf-8&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=hoEnSuD6Iozu6gPQz92LBg&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&resnum=4&ct=title http://images.google.com.au/images?q=black+box+flight+record...
- brandon272 17y agoFlight recorders, along with being incredibly durable, are also incredibly heavy. It would be difficult to provide a remotely reliable method of having the device float.
- rbanffy 17y agoOn the other hand, you could make the whole plane float and just let the blackbox sink ;-)