• don@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    4 days ago

    More black boxes mean more money, something air line corporations really don’t like paying.

    • squaresinger@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 days ago

      What I mean is that black boxes are technically super easy today and shouldn’t cost a lot of money.

      All you need is basically a microcontroller writing to an SSD in an armored, heat-shielded box. Should be cheaper than a single seat.

      I couldn’t find up-to-date prices. The only thing I could find was that in 1993 a combined cockpit voice and data recoder that was made in a way that it would detach from the plane in case of ditching in water would cost ~$60k per piece.

      That was in a time way before shock resistant SSDs, so it was mechanically much more difficult to build that.

      Can’t imagine that a modern airplane grade black box costs more than a couple thousand.

      When it comes to cars, all you need is a microcontroller logging to an SD card or EMMC. That costs maybe a few dollars.