Black Boxes for Spacecrafts

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."

Comments

Just make sure you don't put Windows on these

[Anonymous Coward]

The Blue Screen of Orbit Reentry is not a fun thing to experience.

Re:Good luck finding it

[nakly]

They've already thought of that. From the article:

The heat from the craft's explosion would trigger the boxes to detach - perhaps by melting the adhesive that fixes them to the CEV. Then, as they fall to Earth, the boxes would transmit their data, obviating any need to retrieve them later.

There I was ...

[s20451]

There I was, walking down the street, minding my own business, when .... BONK! Black box to the head.

Phone Home

[qw(name)]

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?

The plural of 'craft'

[tagish]

is 'craft', not 'crafts' :)

Slightly worrying for bees

[mrRay720]

"These things are so light and easy to attach, we would like to have several on everything that flies"

Try getting back in your hive now, bitch!

Re:This sounds fatalist

[Ronald Dumsfeld]

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.

Re:This sounds fatalist

[WolfWithoutAClause]

If we made stuff that never failed, how would we ever know we'd done it? We only learn that we haven't successfuly made things that never fail when things fail, and when things fail then we need the best evidence as to how they fail so we can stop it happening again.

Re:"When" they break up?

[Anonymous Coward]

For unmanned stuff, the goal is when, not if. You want this stuff to breakup on reentry so fewer (and smaller) pieces reach the ground, possibly causing damage.

Linux there too?

[ChipMonk]

I've heard of squeezing Linux into small devices, but a window manager on a space probe is a bit ridiculous, don't you think? TCP just isn't designed to handle that much lag time and network interference.

Re:Why just for recorders?

[YrWrstNtmr]

Because it would be too heavy to actually fly. A 1 cu ft box can be made out of whatever material you want. 1/2" thick steel, titanium, whatever. That can't scale up to the entire craft.

I've seen wreckage of large aircraft. A lot of pieces were very recognizeable, or still in one piece. Engine turbines, weapons hard points. But obviously, you can't make the whole aircraft out of that. It would never get off the ground.

"Aircrafts," eh?

[H_Fisher]

Obviously, the editorim didn't pay attentions to verb endae during their English classices.

I, for one, welcome...

[marcsiry]

...our new era of information saturation.

As sensors become smaller, lighter, and more networked, it makes sense to put recording devices on ANYTHING remotely mission critical, mainly because at a certain point it becomes negligent not to.

When I ride over the Queensboro Bridge in NYC, I stare up with apprehension at the thousands of rusting girders that hold that rattletrap together. The only thing forestalling a collapse is having actual dudes crawling over it all the time checking visually for cracks and obvious failures. The smart pebble technology previously mentioned on Slashdot - http://www.betterroads.com/articles/feb03b.htm - would make me feel more comfortable.

I feel the same way on airplanes- do I trust that a ground tech working for a lowest-bidder maintenance company has adequately checked the airframe? I sure would like real-time fatigue information being beamed to the pilot, so he can decide wether to fly or not based on risking his own skin.

The most amazing thing about our age of astounding engineering is still the amount of ignorance we maintain about our constructions (Bucky Fuller's famous, and unanswered question to an architect: How much does your building weigh?). Thus, safety margins, inspections, building codes, all serving as bandaids to a fundamental ignorance that bites back BIG when a failure does occurr (sure, the WTC can absorb the impact, but can it survive the potential energy bundled in a plane, including the BTUs in the fuel? Nope).

Privacy wonks will worry about networked sensors in their toilets watching them take a crap, but really, if anyone wants to see mine, they're more than welcome to it- I just don't want to hear about it (eeewwww).