AF 447 Flight Recorder Found In the Atlantic 218
romiz writes "The memory of the flight recorder for the Air France 447 flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, crashed on June 1st 2009, has been found on the seabed of the Atlantic Ocean, and brought back to the surface in good shape. This is the data recorder, which saves the flight parameters. The search is still continuing in hope of finding the voice recorder containing the sounds recorded in the plane's cockpit."
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
This is quite possibly one of the best examples of just how far underwater robotics have come. They literally found something that is harder to find then a needle in a haystack by several orders of magnitude.
Re:Amazing (Score:4, Interesting)
With more than a little of help from the Americans at WHOI [whoi.edu].
Re:Amazing (Score:1, Interesting)
All it took was Airbus being charged by France with manslaughter [foxnews.com] over the crash. They spent the money to make a real effort to find the wreckage and black boxes this time; in an effort to get out of the charges.
For those who don't know, France follows Napoleonic Law, not Common Law like in Britain, Canada (and most other commonwealth countries), and of course, America. In common law you are innocent until proven guilty. In Napoleonic law, they don't file charges or (generally) put you in jail until investigation convinces authorities that you are guilty (as I understand it, if murder etc. is involved, they might put you in jail while they investigate, but you won't be charged until they are convinced you are guilty). You have to prove your innocence. So basically, the government is pretty certain they will be able to convict Airbus on the manslaughter charges if they actually charged them. And thus, the search is likely in the effort to prove their innocence, not in the effort of finding the truth to ensure this type of crash doesn't happen again.
I'm not sure if executives of a company can be put in prison for manslaughter if their company is convicted of it. Or of any other crime for that matter. If anyone knows that would be interesting to hear.
Re:I don't get this (Score:4, Interesting)
During an underwater robotics conference I attended, one of the presenters was describing their attempt at using GPS for location fixes every time their autonomous underwater vehicle surfaced in the ocean. They ended up trashing the idea because they found that as little 5 mm of seawater on top of the GPS antenna would prevent a GPS lock.