eli5 Why can’t black boxes in Aeroplanes update data to a cloud throughout a flight or after a crash has occured? why do we need to find the physical box?
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Well, imagine you’re playing a game of catch with your friend. Your friend throws the ball to you, and you catch it. Now, imagine if you and your friend are on opposite sides of a really big room, and you can’t see each other.
In this scenario, it would be really hard for your friend to throw the ball to you because they can’t see where you are. It’s kind of the same thing with black boxes in airplanes. The black box is like a really important ball that has a lot of information about the flight, and it needs to be thrown to someone (like investigators) so they can see what happened during the flight.
But the problem is, when a plane crashes, it can be really hard to find the black box. It could be in a remote area, or buried under rubble. So, if we could update the data from the black box to the cloud throughout the flight or after a crash, that would be really helpful. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as just throwing the ball to someone else in the same room.
There are a several reasons why it’s difficult updating the data to cloud. First of all, airplanes fly at high altitudes, and there’s not always good connection to internet or other kind of networks. Second, there’s lot of data that needs to transmit from the black box, and it would use alot of bandwidth to send it. Finally, it would be really expensive to install the necessary equipment to every airplane.
So, for now, we still have to find the Black box after a crash.
E1: Fixed typo updateing to updating
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