Black Box Recovery - Why Not Transmit?
Scott M. Kozel
Newsgroups: alt.disasters.aviation
Subject: Re: Black Box Recovery - Why Not Transmit?
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 00:11:18 -0400
"Government Shill #2" <gov....@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:c42i35d0nqukdpods...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:39:01 -0700 (PDT), "alan...@aol.com"
> <alan...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>>If this has been addressed before I apologize. With all the
>>sophisticated electronics on a plane, can't the black box data just be
>>transmitted as it's occurring to a central processing station?
>>Wouldn't this be a viable solution to investigate crashes, and allow
>>new safety measures to be put in place faster? Why can't something
>>like this be implemented? Isn't the data digital? If not, could it be?
>>It would seem an easier, faster, more efficient method than all the
>>time and manpower and expense needed to find these black boxes.
>
> As electronics advances this could very soon be possible, if it's not
> already. However, stop for a minute and consider the 10s of thousands of
> aircraft airborne at any given moment in time. You are talking about a
> *lot* of data. Data that no one cares about, except in extremely rare
> circumstances.
1) To an approximation, the A/C was transmitting data to the home base.
That's the primary basis of what the guesses about what happened are about.
2) Since customers enjoy (and are willing to pay for) telephone and
internet services while in flight, there is the potential of having plenty
of bandwidth available to "maintenance." Data storage is cheap and
getting cheaper so at least a "data summary" can be kept 'just in case.'
There is a "privacy" question as to whether cockpit voice should be
automatically "phoned home."
3) It's clear from this accident that the whole issue of the "black
boxes" should be re-visited. First, how should the data recorder be
protected/packaged/and "beeped." What should be monitored? Should
the data be "processed" before being stored? When consumers routinely
store an hour of video on an inexpensive 'chip', the 'technology' of the
black boxes looks that something from a century ago.
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DevilsPGD
<koz...@comcast.net> was claimed to have wrote:
>2) Since customers enjoy (and are willing to pay for) telephone and
>internet services while in flight, there is the potential of having plenty
>of bandwidth available to "maintenance." Data storage is cheap and
>getting cheaper so at least a "data summary" can be kept 'just in case.'
Storage is a non-issue, you only need to keep blackbox data for a short
amount of time.
>There is a "privacy" question as to whether cockpit voice should be
>automatically "phoned home."
How so? The pilots are on duty, and as a result it's not unheard of for
them to be monitored. If there are any serious concerns about this, a
rule could be established preventing blackbox data from being accessed
except in case of an emergency event either as a matter of policy or
law.