France to resume 'black box' hunt

[IndianaGreen]

Source: BBC News

France to resume 'black box' hunt

Page last updated at 05:08 GMT, Sunday, 13 December 2009

French accident investigators say they will begin a third search for the black boxes of an Air France plane that crashed off the coast of Brazil.

The Airbus A330 crashed in a storm en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris on 1 June, killing all 228 people on board.

The head of the French investigation agency, Jean-Paul Troadec, announced the move in Rio de Janeiro after meeting relatives of the dead.

The search of the Atlantic Ocean is not due to begin until February 2010.

The cause of the accident is still unknown although investigators believe the plane's speed sensors had been "a factor" involved in the crash.

Mr Troadec was in Brazil to brief relatives about the current stage of the investigation before a new report into the crash is published in Paris next week.

"We tried to convince the families that we are conducting the investigation with the full intention of getting to the truth," he said.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8410375.stm

[TheMadMonk]

1. Two questions?

1) Why isn't the pinger on these things powered by a RTG (radio-isotope thermal generator)?
2) Why aren't they designed to jetison themselves and float if the plane goes down in water deeper than say thirty meters?

[Dogmudgeon]

2. And two answers

1) RTG (radio-isotope thermal generator) is eeevil nuKKKular deathenergy. MUSE would NOT approve. And according to Leading Experts, like Jeff Rense, an RTG nearly made Jupiter explode. (Or was that Saturn?)

2) "Black Boxes" were NOT designed to survive aircraft crashes, they were designed to survive Official Inquiries.

My own particular proposal: Multi-band real-time transmission from hardened boxes, monitored by the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) or some similar world body entrusted to do the recording -- admittedly a big job. Your suggestions would also be excellent design ideas.

Oh, also, that we get over nuclear-phobia.

Fat chance, for all of that.

--d!

[Angleae]

3. Two more answers

1) And these cost how much?
2) And this would cost how much extra?

[Sailing]

4. Now two REAL answers

1) Accidents over deep water are very rare. Too much regulatory paperwork involved for RTGs, just for the 1 time in 1000 that accidents happen over water too deep to recover them quickly.

2) Hitting water from any significant height is the same as hitting concrete. The impact would have shattered the plane in a million pieces already.

[zonkers]

5. One question.

Why dont they put you in charge of investigation. Those are good ideas!

[localroger]

7. Another Two Answers

1. RTG's use a LOT of plutonium. Really, they use a LOT. They generate electricity by the thermocouple effect, which is extremely inefficient with the relatively modest temperature spread used by a RTG. RTG's basically trade extreme energy density divided by extreme inefficiency to give reasonable power output very reliably. Even if we were cool with the risk of that plutonium getting into the environment after a crash, we really don't have enough plutonium to put a useful RTG on every single jetliner in the world. And with all that plutonium taken out of the power cycle you could kiss the ground-based nuclear power industry goodbye.

2. Your cool self-jetisonning black box idea is incredibly complex when you get down to the details, and "complex" is one thing the engineers who design them try to avoid. The first problem is that you need a hole in the plane through which the BB can escape, and a way to get the BB through it. BB's are actually located in the parts of the aircraft considered most likely to survive impact, which tend to be in the center of the fuselage. Once the BB realizes OMFG it's a water landing the mechanism to get it from such a safe spot to the exterior of the aircraft would have to be of Rube Goldberg complexity, which is exactly what the designers avoid. The pinger is a much more sound idea for dealing with deep ocean ditches. Unfortunately, this flight went down above the deep water equivalent of the Himalayas. We might be able to engineer something that could reliably signal its position from such a location, but the cost to equip all aircraft would make air travel prohibitively expensive.

The fact that they're re-starting the search suggests that they might have some clues though that haven't previously been released. In the end airplanes are made of metal, and one thing you don't naturally find on the bottom of the Atlantic is metallic aluminum.

[acsmith]

6. one real question...

...why have they waited SO long to restart? or why did they even stop in the first place? Wouldn't be surprised if it turned up with al-queda operatives speaking miraculously clearly on the aircraft intercom about hijacking it.