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New Satellite Network Will Make It Impossible For a Commercial Airplane To Vanish (cbsnews.com)
pgmrdlm quotes a report from CBS News: For the first time, a new network of satellites will soon be able to track all commercial airplanes in real time, anywhere on the planet. Currently, planes are largely tracked by radar on the ground, which doesn't work over much of the world's oceans. The final 10 satellites were launched Friday to wrap up the $3 billion effort to replace 66 aging communication satellites, reports CBS News' Kris Van Cleave, who got an early look at the new technology.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
On any given day, 43,000 planes are in the sky in America alone. When these planes take off, they are tracked by radar and are equipped with a GPS transponder. All commercial flights operating in the U.S. and Europe have to have them by 2020. It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
I think they also need to make it impossible to turn off GPS. IIRC, that's what the pilot did on flight MH370.
Transponders have always been able to be turned off as per FAA regulations. Your summary is incompetent like most of your views.
It's that transponder that talks to these new satellites, making it possible to know exactly where more than 10,000 flights currently flying are.
So, perhaps in the event of transponder malfunction?
The fallacy of absolutes is why we can now only rate products as idiot-resistant, since idiot-proof only lasts until we encounter a more consummate idiot.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
For one thing, the GPS satellites include error correction code, and can even be programmed to exclude certain events. They are military satellites, and we don't tell you about certain things, because it's none of your business.
But, other than flights or areas we don't want you to know about, and if they actually have functional GPS transponders, yes, you can now follow them.
If we want you to.
Fun experiment: watch how your GPS gets more inaccurate and stops working in certain areas when there are certain international incidents. You'll even see your location suddenly jump way far away.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
One thing I've never understood is why a modern airliner - essentially a highly complex flying computer costing tens of millions of Dollars to acquire and keep operating safely - does not have CCTV-like live video feeds from the cockpit and cabin going up to a satellite uplink at all times? Its the same dumb news all the time "airliner vanishes from radar", "search for missing flight XXXXXXX continues". Are airliners, in 2019, not capable of constantly streaming live video and instrument data to a satellite somewhere overhead? If an airliner can use a radio link to "talk" to air traffic control miles away, could one not use an old fashioned modem to also constantly send crucial data about the position and physical wellbeing of the plane to air traffic controllers? Is it really that difficult to put a decent satellite uplink in a multi-million Dollar plane with 100+ souls on board? Would airline passengers not pay an extra 10 bucks each to travel in a "always connected" airplane that doesn't "vanish" in some far-flung ocean somewhere?
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
I'm pretty sure YouTube is going to dub this The Malaysia Airlines Challenge before taking the video down. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
But these new Iridium satellites are made so they don't have that very focused reflection that makes a brief light of about 5-10 seconds that is as an airplane light.
https://www.iridium.com/flarew...
I have no idea why that is still allowed. There should be NO reason for the plane to allow the pilot to take actions that crash the plane.
There should be NO reason for the plane to allow the pilot to take actions that crash the plane.
What if I'm depressed?
So it only is able to track 10,000 out of 43,000. Not sure that is an improvement.
While I agree with you, I'm wondering whether there is a fear than an "anti-crash" system might interfere - accidentally - with the drastic flight-commands an airline pilot may give the plane (to save some passengers) just before an unwanted collision with hard ground occurs. Remember this Airbus 320 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ) which supposedly crashed into trees, killing everyone on board, because the autopilot of the time "fought the pilot" over who should control the plane at low altitude? I agree that there should be a mechanism that prevents a mad pilot from crashing a plane deliberately, but the mechanism needs to be such that it doesn't "misinterpret" the actions a non-mad pilot undertakes to bring down an airliner in a controlled manner - into an empty field perhaps. Just changing the angle of the nose a bit during an emergency landing could kill everyone on an airliner.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
Well, ok. Maybe then. Just make sure you aim for tall rectangular buildings.
Of course they can still vanish. Turn off the ADS-B transmitter on the aircraft and poof they're gone from the ADS-B receiver on the (Iridium) satellite.
Why do the pilots turn off the GPS transponder for this kind of airplane Northrop_Grumman_B-2_Spirit
And then what, we have pence ? Really good option there. The dude is actually evil, not just crazy.
As opposed to say... pentagons.... that your wings wouldn't fit into the hole you made in... somehow.... leaving no debris... somehow... and then a nearby building just catches fire and spontaneously falls into its footprint, straight down. Whoosh.
One thing I've never understood is why a modern airliner - essentially a highly complex flying computer costing tens of millions of Dollars to acquire and keep operating safely - does not have CCTV-like live video feeds from the cockpit and cabin going up to a satellite uplink at all times?
Because no one wants to pay for the bandwidth.
Airliners disappearing (or even just crashing) is a rare occurrence, while the video bandwidth is a constant cost. Airlines don't care: if a plane is lost, they'll put in an insurance claim and move on.
At most airlines will upload some basic telemetry, but there's no point in streaming video. At most perhaps have a dashcam in the cockpit that loops / overwrites every "x" hours. If there's an accident look at the last little bit in addition to the blackbox data.
As another poster mentioned - it's pretty hard to prevent this sort of thing while allowing the pilot to do what (s)he needs to do in an emergency situation. These aircraft are already quite automated, but to completely wrest control of the airplane from the pilot, especially at low altitude... That's not good. And it would be difficult for the computer to definitively say: Ok, the pilot is in control, or the pilot is suicidal. And even if the pilot is suicidal, what does the aircraft do then exactly?
The only way this works is if there is remote control (as in, drone tech) - and that has to be absolute perfection.
That restricting the pilot will lead to disaster, or that not restricting the pilot will let them cause a disaster?
I would say that being able to track there position is most unlikely to either cause a disaster or prevent one. But it would make it much cheaper to find the bits left over from a disaster.
They just need to make sure the Pilots are on the Sprint network.
Sensors fail. I'd rather put my life in the hands of a pilot than a computer. When you allow computers to override human input, without knowing the state of mind of said human, you aren't increasing safety in the least bit.
Sounds like challange for someone.
Out of 136 people on board, only 3 died, all of smoke inhalation due to not being able to escape the aircraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The aircraft was intentionally flying at a very low altitude as it was part of an airshow, demonstrating fly-by-wire. It was the fist public demonstration of fbw, which obviously didn't go well.
Humans fail. I'd rather put my life in the hands of a computer than a pilot. When you allow humans to override computer input without knowing the state of mind of said human, you aren't increasing safety in the least bit.
GPS is a receiver (unless you're the satellite). It's probably ADS-B they're talking about. This takes the GPS position as input, and transmits position information which can appear on air traffic control screens superimposed with radar.
It's possible to lie about your GPS position. This is why air traffic controllers have not stopped using radar (they know something is there whether it's squawking the right information from its ADS-B transponder or not).
It is also possible to screw up your local air traffic controller with spoofed ADS-B transmissions. Cryptographic signature is not part of the system yet.
Bruce Perens.
The older Iridium satellites had 3 large, flat antennae on the bottom. These would reflect sunlight down, and if viewed at the right time and place after dark or before dawn, would go from invisible to the brightest thing in the sky for a few seconds. Since the satellites were in predictable orbits and orientation, it was possible to forecast exactly when these flares would occur. I enjoyed viewing them, and surprising people by pointing them out ahead of time. I'll miss them, since the new satellites are a completely different design.
The fact that you fight these obvious little nothing-battles on the internet is just more evidence of what a nothing faggot you are in actual life. It's obvious you have nothing to do with anything related lol.
Sure there is. There was recently a deadly crash when the pilot was uneducated and couldn't figure out how to manually disable the airplanes anti stall mechanism. A sensor failed, the plane thought it was climbing too fast and kept nosing down to avoid a stall, the pilot kept trying to pull up, the airplane won and smashed into the ground.
"Impossible" is a pretty big word.
How about we start with "nearly impossible" and see how that goes?
-Styopa
A much better idea would be to install 3 or 4 additional Black Boxes with radio beacons which would be programmed to eject themselves if the plane went into a fast non-recoverable dive. They could be filled with expanding styrofoam or similar, guaranteed to float if they land in water, and tough enough to withstand impact on land. By recovering the ones that ejected first, and tracing the line, the final position of the aircraft would be known,.
Who wrote the code the computer runs to make decisions? A human! Why do you trust human written code to recover in an emergency more than a human pilot trained to respond to emergency situations?
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
So many low tech ways to kill this if you are a hijacker (which is the main problem I would worry about). Cut wiring to the GPS receiver, or to the transmitter that sends the GPS coords out. Bring a jamming transmitter on board in your laptop extra hard drive bay. Cut or short out main power to that electrical subsection or everything. Fly a chase plane close with a jammer. Damage antennas before or after takeoff. It took me as long to think of these as it did to write this. A couple minutes max.
Anti-pedantry gives them an outlet release feelings. The pedant is their virtual punching bag, if you will.
Mission Fucking Accomplished
GPS is a receiving system only. Transmitting is done with something else and that can contain your location you received through GPS.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
43000 planes in the air in the US and it can track 10000? Even uf that is for the US, that means onky 25% is tracked.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Why is this not a thing already?
If you gave me a choice between a printer and a giraffe with explosive diarrhoea, i'll get my ladder and my raincoat
Very impressed.
For some people like amateur and professional astronomers these flares have been a big nuisance. They can destroy sensitive photodetectors for instance.
New Satellite Network Will Make It Impossible For a Commercial Airplane To Vanish
"The plane is gone? Inconceivable!"
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
They arent talking about radar transponders here. Theyâ(TM)re talking about ads-b transmitters. And you donâ(TM)t âoesquawk your identâ. Your squawk is your transponder code. Hitting the ident button highlights you on the radar screen the next time the beam comes around.
Theyâ(TM)re talking about ads-b transmitters that get their position info from gps. They arenâ(TM)t transponders.
Is there anyone here that doesn't already know for a fact that nothing happens in our skies without a few Agencies
having full view? I mean seriously, enough.
Because if the code was properly vetted by a team of folks it is logical to assume they might be more competent than a single human making a decision at a moment with a state of mind influenced by who knows what inside them and outside of them.
Nothing is perfect but I think you can see my point of view
I see what you're saying but it's honestly not very realistic to install something in the aircraft that the pilot can not control. In flight fires are always a concern. One of the ways a pilot can respond to a potential fire is by shutting down all electronic equipment. It's important that you are able to control all of the equipment onboard an airplane if you are going to respond to emergency situations.
What happens when a system malfunctions, say an engine blows out. Would THAT be a good reason to take action that may be, under normal circumstances, an action that would crash a plane?
Now I hope you have an idea, and a clue.
Most amateur astronomers like to observe them. Planes are much brighter and far more likely to ruin your image. I have lots of frames ruined by planes, as well as random satellites and meteors. Iridium flares are very predicable and can be avoided.
That's a pretty odd fetish you've got there. Then again, judging by your politics, I'm not surprised.
Even a team of humans may not be prepared when something occurs that is unexpected or a system fails in an unexpected way.
Not everything can be scripted.