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Robots Find Wreckage of AF447
Last week we reported on an army of robots searching for Air France 447 over a nearly 4,000 sq mile patch of the Atlantic ocean. Today
mriya3 noted that "BEA, the French air accident investigation office, reports that the wreckage of Air France flight 447 has been found. The plane, an Airbus A330, crashed June 1, 2009 while flying from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Investigators hope to find the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder. A press conference will be held today."
The flight recorder box is made to withstand deep sea pressure according to this article.
It isn't a sure thing; the entropic forces of the uncaring universe are almost poetic in their creative destruction; but black boxes trade density for robustness in a pretty serious way.
The classic ones, at any rate, are well sealed and record magnetically onto loop of stainless steel wire. Seriously retro in terms of data density; and you don't just plug it into the nearest USB port(which is why many aircraft also have flight data recorders designed for non-emergency use, which are much less survivable; but much more convenient for routine diagnostics); but anything not involving serious corrosion or an excursion above the Curie temperature of the recording loop should be pretty much irrelevant...
The Civil Aviation Authority, which will have the same requirements as EASA who will be the ones regulating the Airbus A330 as its an European aircraft, only requires the FDR (Flight Data Recorder) to withstand sea water immersion for 30 days, and says nothing about pressure at the depths we are talking about here other than the FDR will withstand crushing forces of 5,000 LBF (22.25 kN) for 5 continuous minutes.
http://www.caa.co.uk/application.aspx?catid=33&pagetype=65&appid=11&mode=detail&id=1229
The Cockpit Voice Recorder has similar requirements.
Its unlikely that after this time the FDR nor the CVR are still sealed.
http://www.whaletimes.org/hagfish.htm
'Hagfish have been seen as deep as 16,405 feet (5000 m)'
do not doubt cthulhu's minions
even worse:
'Looking closer, one might discover an alarming sight: Those dead organisms resting on the deep sea floor are actually pulsating! What could cause such movements? Usually, it's a passel of scavenging hagfish feeding on the carcasses from the inside out.'
http://www.jyi.org/volumes/volume5/issue7/features/lee.html
I would spare relatives the idea that human bodies would be found pulsating from within as they are consumed by hagfish. hagfish are the fate of all bodies that go to the deep. i don't want to know the details
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/vertebrates/basalfish/myxini.html
'The adjective which best describes the Myxini is "Lovecraftian".'
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The AP article indicates that they are confident they can still read the recorders.
South African Airways Flight 295 had it's CVR recovered from 4,900 meters of water just over 2 years since the crash. They were able to read the data from it, although in the aforementioned case the fire stopped the CVR before the crash.
The Brazilian Globo news site has photos which were taken yesterday: http://g1.globo.com/mundo/fotos/2011/04/destrocos-do-voo-447.html
So you think that a well-packaged ceramic PGA or a plastic QFP would be susceptible to corrosion down there? We're talking about packages that are about as inert as glass, and even if the pins were somehow corroded away-- somehow corroded away--you could still open the package and bond new leads to the die. We're talking about something that might as well be as passive as glass sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Someone with a datasheet for the IC could come back in a hundred years and recover the data.
And stainless steel wire which is reactive as all get-out and has to be kept in a gas atmosphere is going to fare better? You may have a little chance with the wire recorded, but I wish you the best of luck with it!
--TSP