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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In a lot of accident scenarios something unusual happens with severe weather or loss of control. Those things are also likely to disrupt a satellite link – it’s really hard to transmit through a thunderstorm and it’s hard to keep a microwave beam pointed at a satellite if you’re tumbling through the air.
In fact, navigation or flight-instrument problems make it hard to know where you are in relation to satellites, so in those scenarios you probably would lose the connection as well.
I think it could be worth trying but in many cases the data would be missing until you find the memory modules anyway.
There is a lot of land which planes fly over that has no wireless connectivity, and satellite data is expensive.
In a lot of accident scenarios something unusual happens with severe weather or loss of control. Those things are also likely to disrupt a satellite link – it’s really hard to transmit through a thunderstorm and it’s hard to keep a microwave beam pointed at a satellite if you’re tumbling through the air.
In fact, navigation or flight-instrument problems make it hard to know where you are in relation to satellites, so in those scenarios you probably would lose the connection as well.
I think it could be worth trying but in many cases the data would be missing until you find the memory modules anyway.
>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?
Because until very recently, we didn’t have the wireless bandwidth and satellite networks capable of doing that.
A more practical idea would be to have the data stored in multiple black boxes in various parts of the plane – maybe even one that floats and is automatically ejected if it winds up in the water.
There is a lot of land which planes fly over that has no wireless connectivity, and satellite data is expensive.
If it was possible someone would’ve done it already, cloud services are more than a decade old
>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?
Because until very recently, we didn’t have the wireless bandwidth and satellite networks capable of doing that.
A more practical idea would be to have the data stored in multiple black boxes in various parts of the plane – maybe even one that floats and is automatically ejected if it winds up in the water.
If it was possible someone would’ve done it already, cloud services are more than a decade old
If it was possible someone would’ve done it already, cloud services are more than a decade old
There is a lot of land which planes fly over that has no wireless connectivity, and satellite data is expensive.
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