What do you think the odds are of them finding the balck box from the downed Air France flight? They are racing technology to the site for the search but the depths are extreme and the clock is ticking. Finding the large tail piece section I would think would help narrow the scope of the area needing to be searched. But how far debris be spread gliding 2+ miles to the ocean floor from the surface? My gut feeling is they manage to narrow the scope of where the ping is coming from and ultimately find the black box. It sure would be interesting to see a documentary on the efforts being made to find the black box. I personally hope for the family members they can indeed find the box, just because I think there is some solace in "knowing what happened" to loved ones who have died, rather than not knowing. But that's may just be me. Anyhow do you think they will find it or not?
Summer..I think the odds are against finding the box. The "ping" is a very weak signal to begin with and the battery is designed to last about 30 days. I have to assume that the cold temperatures at the bottom of the ocean might reduce the battery life. I think your idea that a large section of tail may have come down in one area may be the best hope. That would at least narrow the search area. Without the black box info there is not much hope of finding out what happened. There may be enough info on the ACARS transmissions to make the guess a little more educated.
I will be surprised if they find it, but I agree that I think finding out what happened would be of benefit to airbus, airfrance, future travelers, and most importantly the families of those lost. This is such a baffling catastrophe. Seems that probably are on the right path with the computer errors sending signals that likely caused the demise of the flight while in the air.
I guess it might depend a LOT on what the bottom is like there. I would think that with our military applications we could probably zoom in fairly quickly on the area but how deep are our convetional subs designed to operate? I know we have deep water submarine rescue vehicles, but I don't know how good our deep DEEEEEEPPPP water subs can salvage at the extreme depths.
The black box is at the bottom of the ocean where the Mega Shark & Giant Octopus will be preying on those who try to retrieve it.
I'm still amazed that "black boxes" weren't designed to float and that salvagers have to search for them on the bottom of the ocean!!! Who designed these pieces of garbage? An aggie?
What if it's inside an intact section of the plane? It's still going to sink. I'd say in 90% of the cases the black boxes would go down with the plane anyway.
1) Redundancy does not work in aerospace applications. Weight is king. For every redundant black box, you're also going to have to wire up those boxes which adds more weight. As it is, aircraft wiring is a mess. 2) A black box will not fit in the skin of an airplane. It will either bulge outward which will kill your aerodynamics or it will bulge inward reducing the already valuable passenger space. 3) You probably want to house the black box inside the structure where it will be somewhat sheltered from impact. I think they're in the tail cone which is the most likely part of the plane to survive impact. 4) Plane crashes are rare and crashes in the middle of the ocean are extremely rare. Does it make business sense to set up new black box requirements for something that happens so rarely? 5) Black boxes are made to be extremely durable. Making a structure lightweight so it can float and strong enough to survive the impact of crashing into water is not trivial. I'm not writing this to say no improvements can be made to the current system. I'm writing this to briefly describe the complexity of engineering in aerospace applications. In fact, I believe there was a project that ejected black boxes (or similar flight data recorders) from the aircraft if sensors indicated a crash was imminent. No idea what came of it or if it is still under consideration.
I flew in Navy EP-3s. The plane that crash landed in China in 2000 (I also spent a lot of time on the staff of a carrier air wing and a tour as a threat instructor studying foreign aircraft at a Hornet squadron). I've spent most of my adult life flying in and being around and analyzing aircraft. None of these counterpoints are prohibitive from making a device that will perform like I described. The float/durability tradeoff is the biggest issue but that can't be a problem we can't solve. So make a non-bouyant box and a floating box. The claim redundancy doesn't work in aerospace is nonsense.
Every black box doesn't need to have the "computers" and signal processors. Or the beacons or ... The second or tenth one could be not much more than a non-volatile memory stick in a tough "container".. It could be tiny.
Other than the WTC flights, I don't recall a case where the black boxes weren't recovered. This one still has a few weeks to go before hope is lost. The black box program has been almost a total success as is.
Looks like this is the last week. It appears the crew was caught "offguard" since their seats were found folded up. Link
