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Why do we still need to hunt for black boxes in accidents?

SantaC

Member
I dont get it. As soon there is a major accident there is still in need of search for a black box of important recordings in a wreckage.

Why cant these pilotrecordings be uploaded online and saved on cloud (the pun) storage? I mean it is 2021 and not 1981 anymore.
 
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TheInfamousKira

Reseterror Resettler
Because all the money that could potentially go into black box equivalent technologies and mass production of said technologies instead goes to developments regarding making planes crash less, thus negating the need to make the black box better
 

th4tguy

Member
In all seriousness we could install black boxes with wireless senders so we could show up to a crash site, connect, and download the data without actually having to locate the box under lots of rubble and debris.
 
You ever tried to use a phone underwater?…..phone or wireless signals don’t work very well underwater is my understanding and it’s also one of the reasons why they lose submarines as they can’t communicate unless they are close to surface or have their Antenna topside
 
There was a joke somewhere about a guy who said the first thing he would do in a planecrash was find the black box and grab onto it for dear life. Because that sucker wasn’t going to break 😂.
 

T8SC

Gold Member
Why don't they make planes out of the same material the black boxes are made of?

think-use-your-head.gif
 

SJRB

Gold Member
Because the amount of sensor data that would have to be streamed to "the cloud", plus the uninterrupted infrastructure it requires is not only crazy expensive but neigh impossible in upkeep.

It's a practical solution.
 

Tams

Member
Why cant these pilotrecordings be uploaded online and saved on cloud (the pun) storage? I mean it is 2021 and not 1981 anymore.
Ah, another naïve, ignorant comment about 'Why aren't we using The Cloud™ for x?!'
 

Ionian

Member
They should just make it so that the wireless can be switched on wirelessly when they need it.

5 cats, one meal. Guaranteed the winner rats. No need for wireless plus they have those Mario 100 coin bonus lives in spades. (Next Elon Musk project).

Cable will be massive but we'll have affordable crashes on Jupiter's belt, which is mineral rich so pays for itself. (Shall probably need a robotic dog for retrieval).
 

trikster40

Member
One of the main purposes of the black box is to capture data without it being compromised. Any kind of stream, upload, etc could be intercepted and/or manipulated, causing the data to lose its validity.
 

HoodWinked

Member
They already track flights so this is something that they probably will do eventually when they automate the piloting. There would need to be infrastructure and standards developed and reliable satellite internet. If starlink works it would get the ball rolling.

But also the current system is pretty efficient low cost and low maintenance. Also crashes are still extremely rare so any push to updating the system is minimal.
 
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