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I think this is the question everyone is wondering. But even in a minute a plane travels a huge distance. And also keep in mind the height at which they fly so
by deanclatworthy 12y ago
I think this is the question everyone is wondering. But even in a minute a plane travels a huge distance. And also keep in mind the height at which they fly so assuming the planes don't stop going forward they can travel huge distances on their descent to the ground.
Nevertheless, I also wonder why this couldn't work and just send the data more frequently. I don't know anything about the GPS consumers connect to but if my TomTom can connect to a satellite in space and give me my location down to a few metres at a regular interval then why can't a plane do the same?
- SapphireSun 12y agoFor what it's worth, GPS works because the satellites are broadcasting signals to earth, not your phone to space.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago> But even in a minute a plane travels a huge distance. And also keep in mind the height at which they fly so assuming the planes don't stop going forward they can travel huge distances on their descent to the ground. Even a few dozen bytes worth of data every minute about current position, heading, airspeed, heading and speed of the wind is enough to reduce this theoretical "huge distance" (that is much smaller than what people have to deal with without tracking data) to a relatively small cone that can be searched effectively.