Besides the non-flatness of much of the floor, which makes it difficult, we’re talking about 5-10 million square miles – just eyeballing the possible plane’s routes from a map of the Indian ocean which is 28 mil. I’ve heard that a pinger can cover 40 sq miles in a day, and although a sonar or video sweep might be able to do more, we don’t want rough, low-res pix here, we need hi-res ones to capture details. (We might not have a single plane, but multiple, scattered, tiny plane parts.) Do the math and I think you’ll find that a systematic sweep will take…a very long time, and cost a boatload of money.
There’s going to be as much woowoo shit about this plane as about Amelia Earhart’s over the decades to come, isn’t there? Unless an undoubted piece of it actually gets found, which is not the way to bet right now.
A reader of the Toronto Star made the following comment. Is this a good strategy and is it doable?
“Instead of having black boxes mindlessly beep when there’s no one to hear them, why not leave them silent until suitable equipment gets near, then “ping” them and have them “ping” back and GPS them. Then turn them back off until in position to go get them?”
They would still use some electrical power to “listen,” although maybe less. Your design would require adding a receiver to the units; right now, they are only transmitters. That might actually increase the power requirements, and it would certainly increase the complexity.
It would be much simpler and cheaper to increase the size of the battery.
Remember that the current black boxes date, in basic design, back to the 1960’s. What you are proposing is a redesign and reimplementation that would be very expensive and rarely used. More likely continuous, satellite-based data transmission will replace the function of the current black boxes before that happens and that’s a far better idea anyway.
Thank you Musicat. Ignorance defeated.
CNN is running the following Breaking News banner:
One news report said the battery in this plane was scheduled to be replaced, due to age, in June. Which means, sadly, the existing one wouldn’t have full capacity by now.
Like what USA Today says, but wronger.
But this puzzles me:
How many signals at that frequency are being generated from an underwater source at the same time? If they really have detected one, they must be right on top of it, as the signals do not travel far (not even to the surface, if they’re deep enough).
NBC News can’t get their units right, either:
Here’s the best animated graphic I’ve seen yet (6 pages) of how the satellite handshake signals were used and analyzed:
Just to elaborate on my previous reply to this question, the recent, supposed detection of a ping suggests that a major improvement to the black box concept would be some kind of digital signal with data, an ID if you will. The current technology just sends a pulse with no information on it.
The news reports right now are saying they don’t know if the detected ping is from the plane’s black boxes or something else, as this frequency is used by other devices. I wonder how many devices there could be sending a signal from the sea bottom in the same place, but a digital ID would answer that question.
However, as I said before, I doubt if any of this technology will ever be implemented, due to cost and inertia. It will be replaced by real time satellite transmissions, a far better idea.
If they have indeed detected a signal, that means that they have narrowed the search area to a radius of 1.1 miles, or about 4 square miles. That would be the biggest breakthrough yet, so let’s hope the signal is valid.
CBC News this morning had two “experts” commenting on the latest news. One thought the signal would definitely be from the missing plane, the other said it could be from a variety of things–a sunken fishing boat, or cargo that had fallen off a ship, or a number of others. And the beat goes on.
My thoughts too. It would be a freak coincidence is this were anything else emitting a signal in that area.
There is a need for caution and this isn’t confirmation but at this point if the signal and white objects sighting lead doesn’t pan out I’m going to start thinking this is all just an elaborate prank.
Fishing boats carry black boxes? Cargo (containers?) carry beepers? Not impossible, but is it true, or common?
And if no one ever looks for fishing boats or missing cargo, why have pingers? Conversely, if they have pingers, does no one ever look for them? Talk about pollution – the sea floor must be littered with 37.5kHz transmitters.
…with magic power sources.
I’m thinking unicorns. On treadmills.
Good points all, which the “expert” didn’t clarify. The thought did occur to me that if a boat or cargo went down in relatively shallow water, it might be worth recovering, but if the water was four miles deep, the cost might not be worth it.
He also said that the batteries on those pingers usually last longer, up to 120 days. Why that is, I have no idea.
I’m sure it could be made to work to extend the battery life given the same power constraint. The receiver could be something as simple as a piezoelectric sensor. You could reduce the beacon transmit frequency and receive from further away, and only then increase transmit power. Other improvements are possible to increase recovery chances. The french BEA made recommendations in that sense following AF447.
The problem is that the industry is very averse to this kind of change. They’re not in the air crash investigation business. And regulation is heavily influenced by politics (and ROI). Deep sea crashes are indeed rare events.
If you were an airline manager and someone came to you and proposed a blackbox that cost 10% more but give 30% more battery life, would you take it?
I wouldn’t. “Our airplanes don’t don’t crash, and when they do, it’s probably pilot error so our current blackboxes suit me just fine. Come back when you have cheaper aviation fuel to sell”.
Plus they say the pulse only lasted 90 seconds acting like the batteries gave out right in front of the Chinese research vessel looking for the black box.
I want to give up on what to believe anymore, but I can’t :smack:
Yeah, that’s weird. It’s difficult to conlude anything from such a short blurb. Batteries don’t die that suddenly. I assumed they moved out of range but during 90 seconds they do what, 600 meters?
Maybe someone had an ultrasonic fart on board.
I wonder if this event will spur new development for something that Musicat pointed out (satellite). Is it the FAA who would initiate such a change?