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AF 447 Flight Recorder Found In the Atlantic
romiz writes "The memory of the flight recorder for the Air France 447 flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed on June 1st 2009, has been found on the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean, and brought back to the surface in good shape. This is the data recorder, which saves the flight parameters. The search is still continuing in hope of finding the voice recorder containing the sounds recorded in the plane's cockpit."
All the way.
The memory of the flight recorder for the Air France 447 flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed on June 1st 2009, has been found on the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean...
When you look at the twisted mass of wreckage the flight recorder came from, finding the data unit is a miracle. Thousands of feet underwater, working remotely in a pile of twisted metal and they find a little memory unit. I have trouble finding my car keys some days.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Do not click on above link, it's a shock video.
No mod points or I'd mod it down.
turn in your nerd credentials for thinking that would work
additionally, flight data recorders do send out a ping for 30 days:
http://boingboing.net/2009/06/03/miles-obrien-bloggin.html
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Does somebody know why it's so hard for them to find it? I would assume that it's properly secured against crashes, and has a GPS/transmitter on board? What causes this to be so hard?
Inside the data recorder it's attached to a pinger which sends out a sound pulse on a regular basis for about a month after a crash; that makes it easy to find if the recorder stays intact and it's in relatively shallow water, but in this case it's so far down that the pinger was barely audible during the first search (it wasn't detected during the search and only found by post-search processing of the recorded audio data) and the various layers in the ocean reflect sound so it's hard to track. Obviously the batteries died long ago so the only way to find it now was to look for an orange cylinder on the seabed.
Got a GPS?
Good.
Now, go jump in a lake with it.
Where are you? What? No GPS lock? Oh, that's ok, it still transmits its last known coordinates and you shouldn't be too far from there; I'll just use that signal. Oh... wait, there's no signal. Hmm, that LARGE BODY OF WATER must be blocking it.
No bother, anyway, those coordinates would only be accurate enough to tell me you're at the crash site; something I already know.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The voice recorder may be completely destroyed. Keeping them separate decreases the possibility that a single force or impact will destroy both units.
Same reason enterprise IT departments (should) maintain multiple, separate backups of critical data.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Why if you have 2 flight recorders do they not have the voice replicate to the data and the data to the voice ... that way it you find one you have the complete data set.
I know "crazy talk" but I'm a storage bod and it irks me when people lose VERY important data!
But this is the English language. Not only will we add an "s", we might even throw in an apostrophe or two for good measure.
Only if you're a grocer.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If you're close enough to see a flashing LED you're close enough to see the wreckage. The ping is audible (with the right equipment) through thousands of feet of muddy water. Sound travels farther than light in the ocean.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
But sound travels MUCH farther underwater than light will...
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What happens if (I know this never happens in real life, LOL) but hypothetically, what happens if something interrupts the communication from the plane, say for example when it is upside-down in a raging thunderstorm plunging towards the ocean surface?
You would still need a backup flight recorder. The advantage of the inflight system is that you might obviate having to find wreckage in a case like the Air France flight, but in exchange you would have to be constantly storing telemetry data from thousands of commercial flights a day; this would cost more on a yearly basis than spending $20M to send bots to the ocean floor for the once in a generation crash like this.
During an underwater robotics conference I attended, one of the presenters was describing their attempt at using GPS for location fixes every time their autonomous underwater vehicle surfaced in the ocean. They ended up trashing the idea because they found that as little 5 mm of seawater on top of the GPS antenna would prevent a GPS lock.
That's funny. An intelligently designed autonomous underwater vehicle seems to have no trouble getting GPS fixes when surfaced.
But this is the English language. Not only will we add an "s", we might even throw in an apostrophe or two for good measure.
I'd give you a bonus "e" for no extra charge!
I am not a crackpot.