> Black boxes are not made to be latest generation hardware and top class storage equipments, they are made to resist and survive and air crash as their first priority.
You could say the same about, say, the body of the airplane or the engines. But we have innovation in those fields (composite materials, exotic metals, etc.).
The point is: 2 hours is simply not enough. The BB should be able to hold the entire flight's data; and our current technology (in terms of processing power and storage capacity) is more than enough to do that. Plus, given that the BB is a modular, independent unit it would be easy to swap out an older BB with a newer, better BB.
Why 2 hours isn't enough? We're talking about voice conversation between the crew. Mot of the information meaningful to investigation would happen in a short period of time prior to the crash.
Usually correct I imagine but what about the slow de-pressurisation scenarios where the pilots have passed out and the plane flies until it runs out of fuel?
In this case (whatever the cause) it would definitely be useful to have the recording for the time the plane went off the planned route but that will probably have been overwritten.
That's a good point. However I believe low pressurization event is captured by the data recorder. That information, coupled with other events, and the fact that the voice recorder goes silent for 2 hours, would give investigators sufficient clue.
I don't have any inside knowledge of how blackbox works the way it does, but I imagine, like with any critical system, reliability and redundancy trump everything else. I bet the two hour limit is not an arbitrary number but rather result of some lengthy tried and true testing process and debate. Any design decision is a trade-off, no matter how small.
I'd argue that, if we have learned anything from MH370, ensuring blackbox survive in the harshest environments in the planet and stay discoverable for long period of time should be the utmost concerns.
You could say the same about, say, the body of the airplane or the engines. But we have innovation in those fields (composite materials, exotic metals, etc.).
The point is: 2 hours is simply not enough. The BB should be able to hold the entire flight's data; and our current technology (in terms of processing power and storage capacity) is more than enough to do that. Plus, given that the BB is a modular, independent unit it would be easy to swap out an older BB with a newer, better BB.