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Black Boxes for Spacecrafts

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the so-many-raunchy-jokes-to-choose-from dept.

karvind writes "NewScientist is running story about NASA's plan to put small, heat-resistant black boxes that will transmit data back to Earth when future space probes break up during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere. NASA will work with Aerospace Corporation to develop black boxes called Reentry Breakup Recorders (REBRs) weighing just 1 kilogram and spanning less than 30 centimetres."

4 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Phone Home by qw(name) · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's got to be a beacon incorporated into the design because if that thing (30 cm.) lands in a very deep spot in the ocean it's going to be hard to find!

    What good is a lost blackbox?
  2. Re:This sounds fatalist by Ronald+Dumsfeld · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Why not put more effort into knowing ways not to break up? on reentry its not like we have to die. So why not put the effort into fixing things beforehand unstead of how to find out how we killed people?
    Just like in aircraft, the more data you can retrieve from any accident, the better your chances of preventing the next one.

    Besides, they are planning on attaching these to unmanned craft first. This will give them a great deal of information about how the materials used react to reentry. This helps make things safer for people on the ground as they really can design craft that disintegrate on reentry.
    --
    Where's the Kaboom?
    There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
  3. Duh. by mtz206 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My Honda Civic has a black box to record crash data, but $100 million space craft don't. Um, duh.

  4. Re:a suggestion toNASA... by mnemonic_ · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe because the entire craft is subject to different performance requirements than the black box alone? You know, like low weight? And note that the survivability of the black box results from the survivability of the entire craft that houses the box. The black box only remains after most of the reentry energy has been used to burn up the rest of the craft.