3 ms·

I find it, well, interesting to read that the "Fail Safe" mode is to deactivate all power systems on the plane.

• noir_lord 12y ago
  They probably decided that started from a known state after a major problem was better than starting from an inconsistent state.
• sitkack 12y ago
  I find it troubling that the generators can't reboot w/o continuing to supply power, that reboots aren't staged to ensure that the plane continues to have power and that power from the generators it necessary to control the aircraft. Isn't there battery backup to enable the plane to continue operating normally while the generator reboots? From the article it looks like their whole failsafe/redundant system architecture is flawed. Just like buffer bloat, reboot times and corruptible system state are a chronic systemic flaw in modern technology. The only stuff that works is the stuff that is used all the time. Look towards crash only software [1] and microreboots [2,3] [1] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotos03/tech/full_papers/candea/candea.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/hotos03/tech/full_paper... [2] https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi04/tech/full_papers/candea/candea.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/osdi04/tech/full_papers/... [3] http://dslab.epfl.ch/pubs/perfeval.pdf http://dslab.epfl.ch/pubs/perfeval.pdf
  • VonGuard 12y ago
    The actual reboot takes something around a minute, and the plane is designed to keep flying while rebooting. It's during take off or landing that this would be a real problem. Think Starship Enterprise. You can't turn off the whole ship, or everyone suffocates. You run diagnostics system by system and keep the warp core online as much as possible so you don't run out of power.