Air France flight. / black box question...

[Mojo_electro]

I have wondered this several times. I'm sure there's a reason why this isn't done, though I'm not sure why.

The cockpit voice recorder record events which takes lace on flights, but when they are needed, (when a plane gets lost) they have to be searched for and recovered, oftentimes very difficult.

What would the technical limitations be to streaming that data in real time from the plane to ATC or some other place on the ground where the data would be recorded and could be retrieved if needed. could then be negating the need to recover the boxes in cases where the boxes are lost.

In a case like this where the black box may be lost on 25000(?) feet of water. Plus, they could begin looking at that data which may provide valuable clues as to the precise location of this accident.

Is it a bandwidth issue on their communication? Because with the tremendous amounts of data being streamed to and from our huge cloud of satellites, I can easily imagine how this would be feasible. Seems like it would be one constant audio stream, along with the very small stream of data for the Flight Data Recover info.

Maybe it's a cost thing? That might make sense.

I it's a storage issue, they could just erase and re-use the space when a flight has safely landed.

What'ch'all think?

[lapfog_1]

1. I have been suggesting this for nearly 10 years.

Near my last days at NASA, this was one of my "parting thoughts" (I left NASA in 2000).

The volume of data (voice recordings from the cockpit, flight control movements, etc) isn't terribly large, however, for domestic flights, it is substantial considering the number of planes in flight at one time. However, for domestic flights, the common routes could be covered by a series of, essentially, cell towers. For areas not covered by cell towers, satellite relay would be the way to go.

Certainly within our grasp at this point.

BTW, I would not get rid of the "orange box" recorders on the plane, they would simply become redundant backup sources of data.

I added this to another thread on the subject.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5781006&mesg_id=5781072

[Turbineguy]

2. I suggested that to the FAA almost 8 years ago.

[Mike 03]

3. This is a great question, and I think this case will be the trigger

that makes the "black box" a virtual instrument that records from afar.

I also think this should be done with respect to police car maneuvers.

Great question.

[NightWatcher]

4. they have one that ejects/deploys upon impact and floats

and it on most of our military jets and is being tested for airliners

[Johonny]

5. Would it be cost effective?

How often are the black boxes not recovered? It would cost a lot of money to put into space a large array of communication satellites to record and send information from a small amount international flights. Flights that don't crash that often and even less often don't have their black boxes recovered. For an industry that already has trouble making money, I don't see the cost benefit from the move.