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How Black Boxes Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from house stuff
0:04
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
0:12
Speaker 1: Josh Clark and they're sitting by me. Is Chuck Bryant
0:16
Speaker 1: across from you and Jerry Rowland beside us. Here we are, Yeah,
0:23
Speaker 1: this is stuff. Hey, and this is a fan request
0:28
Speaker 1: by one of our younger fans. Yeah. When Cormack ron Dalzo,
0:33
Speaker 1: it's right, our buddy, Joe's son and wife Cat, they
0:36
Speaker 1: all listen as a family and it's adorable. They shout
0:40
Speaker 1: at their stereo as a family. Yeah, apparently Cat shouted
0:44
Speaker 1: at the stereo when you didn't remember thirteen year old
0:47
Speaker 1: girls doing finger spelling sign language, Joe said. Kat was like,
0:51
Speaker 1: how can he not have known this? That's all we did.
0:54
Speaker 1: It wasn't around Tolito. Yeah, and you know what, Emily
0:58
Speaker 1: didn't know about it either, and she was in Ohio,
1:00
Speaker 1: so maybe it's everywhere but Ohio, Ohio. Colon left behind
1:04
Speaker 1: as usual. It's pretty funny. But yeah, Cormack suggested that
1:09
Speaker 1: we do an episode on black box flight recorders, and
1:12
Speaker 1: that's what we're doing. Yeah, So Chuck, if you'll indulge
1:15
Speaker 1: me before we get started. Um, I don't know if
1:19
Speaker 1: you remember, but a couple of years ago a fan
1:22
Speaker 1: sent in some day planners for us UM that were
1:26
Speaker 1: like year long day planners, the the ones made out
1:28
Speaker 1: of old library books. Yeah, and like um and they
1:31
Speaker 1: had like h like de coupage like clicker stuff on
1:36
Speaker 1: the on the cover. They were great. Perfect. Can't find
1:40
Speaker 1: anything even remotely that good anywhere I've been looking for
1:44
Speaker 1: a while. So, dear listener, if you're still out there
1:48
Speaker 1: and you were listening UM, get in touch with us,
1:50
Speaker 1: because I would love to buy those from you every year.
1:52
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you like those? Oh they were great? Yeah? Yeah,
1:55
Speaker 1: you mean went crazy for it. Yeah, So if you
1:59
Speaker 1: are that person, get in touch with us. Yeah. Stuff
2:02
Speaker 1: podcast at Discovery dot com and put in the subject
2:05
Speaker 1: line I'm the person Josh is looking for our day planners.
2:11
Speaker 1: Uh okay, thank you, Chuck. So we're talking black boxes,
2:16
Speaker 1: that's right, it's pretty interesting. I thought, Yeah, we should
2:18
Speaker 1: probably put to rest the inane question of if they
2:21
Speaker 1: can make something like a black box that can survive
2:26
Speaker 1: an airplane car crash, why don't you just make the
2:28
Speaker 1: whole airplane out of a black box material? And the
2:31
Speaker 1: answer is because it wouldn't fly. Simple as that. Yeah,
2:35
Speaker 1: so I'm glad we got that out of the way. Yeah,
2:37
Speaker 1: and they're also we should go ahead and say right
2:39
Speaker 1: up front, they're not black. Uh. They're generally like bright
2:42
Speaker 1: orange with like reflective tape and things, because you want
2:45
Speaker 1: to be able to find it. Yeah, amongst the rubble
2:48
Speaker 1: as of the I think the sixties or seventies, there
2:51
Speaker 1: became a mandate where you had to paint them bright
2:53
Speaker 1: orange so you could find them. But they think that
2:55
Speaker 1: they were called black boxes originally because either the original
2:59
Speaker 1: ones were blacky or because it was kind of a
3:03
Speaker 1: grim moniker because the boxes will become charred in the
3:06
Speaker 1: wreckage and turn black. Yeah. I saw another explanation to that,
3:11
Speaker 1: I don't think holds water. That they were initially like
3:13
Speaker 1: round and red, and when they first debuted it, someone
3:17
Speaker 1: in the room said, oh, what a nice black box,
3:19
Speaker 1: as a smarmie thing to say, I guess about something
3:22
Speaker 1: that's round and red. I don't know if that holds
3:24
Speaker 1: water though. Yeah. It's weird all around. And apparently in
3:28
Speaker 1: the aviation industry they don't call them black boxes anyway.
3:30
Speaker 1: That's like something for the news media and jerks like us,
3:33
Speaker 1: they probably call them crash survivalbal memory units. I think
3:38
Speaker 1: what they call them is either one of the two
3:40
Speaker 1: things that are either a flight data recorder or a
3:45
Speaker 1: voice box. Well, there's a there's a lot of um. Yeah,
3:51
Speaker 1: it's not that hard. But because of the media, and
3:54
Speaker 1: in part because of this article, uh, it's very unclear
3:58
Speaker 1: that black boxes are different things. Yeah, there's two different
4:03
Speaker 1: We'll get into it, but there's really two different kinds.
4:05
Speaker 1: And what you would think of as a black box
4:07
Speaker 1: is actually a group of components the system that yeah,
4:12
Speaker 1: that formed this system that's meant to record the flight
4:17
Speaker 1: data and the cockpit um sounds, which is the discussion
4:22
Speaker 1: and the beeps and the pings and all that of
4:25
Speaker 1: every single flight that goes into the air, commercial flight yeah, um,
4:30
Speaker 1: in order, and then it is housed in a way
4:33
Speaker 1: that it will survive even a horrible plane crash. It's
4:36
Speaker 1: frequently the only survivor of a plane crash. Yeah. And
4:39
Speaker 1: we'll get to the testing of these, which I thought
4:41
Speaker 1: was kind of the coolest part. Yeah, I thought so too.
4:43
Speaker 1: And the whole point is, of course, is to get
4:46
Speaker 1: all the data to figure out what happened in a
4:48
Speaker 1: plane crash, what happened because very frequently that it's not. Again,
4:53
Speaker 1: if it's the sole survivor, then there's no one there
4:57
Speaker 1: to say, oh, well there's fire. There there's fire. It's
5:00
Speaker 1: somebody lit a fire in the cabin and and the
5:02
Speaker 1: whole the plain blue wall. Yeah, but you could hit
5:04
Speaker 1: play and the pilot's going someone lit a fire in
5:07
Speaker 1: the cabin, and there you have it. But it's a
5:10
Speaker 1: little more complicated than that. Uh and goes back to uh.
5:15
Speaker 1: In the nineteen forties there was a Finish aviation engineer
5:18
Speaker 1: named V. A. Ho which doesn't sound finish umigration and
5:26
Speaker 1: he did some of the first um flight recording was
5:30
Speaker 1: something called the Mata Harre for World War two planes
5:33
Speaker 1: test flights basically, but I think it was only like
5:35
Speaker 1: instrument readings at the time. It wasn't recording uh uh
5:40
Speaker 1: any voices like cockpit recording. Well, supposedly the Right Brothers
5:44
Speaker 1: had some sort of recording device to record the propeller rotation.
5:47
Speaker 1: That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's like there's been flight data
5:50
Speaker 1: ever since there's been flight that's awesome. I found that
5:53
Speaker 1: an Australian named David Warren was the one who really
5:56
Speaker 1: came up with the black box recorder. Yeah, he's the
5:58
Speaker 1: one that brought the voices into it, the actual audio recording. Okay, Yeah,
6:03
Speaker 1: he was He was a member of a crash investigation
6:06
Speaker 1: for a mysterious plane crash, and he thought it would
6:09
Speaker 1: be really good if we had like a recording of
6:11
Speaker 1: what was going on at the time. So he developed them. Yeah,
6:13
Speaker 1: he's like that, you couldn't be too hard. And that
6:16
Speaker 1: was the fifties, I believe, and they became widespread and
6:20
Speaker 1: mandated in the sixties in Australia. It was the first
6:23
Speaker 1: country and I guess even continent to make the mandatory.
6:28
Speaker 1: So go uh Ozzy Yazzy Azzi so um. Initially the
6:34
Speaker 1: black box recorders were UM recording on magnetic tape, and
6:39
Speaker 1: then they moved in the strangely enough, in the late
6:42
Speaker 1: nineties early two thousands. It wasn't until UM two eight
6:47
Speaker 1: that they fully switched. Yeah that the f A mandated
6:51
Speaker 1: in two thous five. There was a list of proposed
6:53
Speaker 1: rules and one of them was, let's get rid of
6:56
Speaker 1: magnetic recorders, which no one uses anymore. That's two thousand
7:00
Speaker 1: five after all, and go to solid state digital record
7:04
Speaker 1: yeah right, Uh, no cassettes even UM and uh they
7:09
Speaker 1: the f A thought about it, and thought about and
7:11
Speaker 1: thought about and finally said, okay, fine, we'll do that.
7:13
Speaker 1: One of the big reasons why it was with magnetic
7:16
Speaker 1: tapes you could just record the last half hour of
7:20
Speaker 1: a cockpit conversation. Yeah, it would. It would rerecord over
7:23
Speaker 1: itself every thirty minutes, which you know probably that's all
7:27
Speaker 1: you need. Yeah, you want to hope that your plane
7:29
Speaker 1: doesn't take thirty minutes to go down. Um. But the
7:33
Speaker 1: the the big superiority that solid state has over that
7:39
Speaker 1: is that the recording time is far greater, the recording
7:44
Speaker 1: media is smaller, more durable if you were moving parts, yeah,
7:49
Speaker 1: and so it can't break down as easily. And if
7:52
Speaker 1: one part breaks, you can still take the solid state
7:56
Speaker 1: memory sticks and reconfigure them and get the eat off
8:00
Speaker 1: of them. Still. Yeah. They cost between ten and fifteen
8:03
Speaker 1: grand each and are usually um comes straight from the manufacturer,
8:09
Speaker 1: like they work with the airline manufact airplane manufacturers themselves
8:13
Speaker 1: to like preinstall them on these planes. Right. Yeah, So
8:16
Speaker 1: you have a black box manufacturer who sells them to
8:19
Speaker 1: the airlines, who are the airplane manufacturers who sell the
8:22
Speaker 1: airplanes to the airlines with the black boxes are installed.
8:26
Speaker 1: It's like a part of the plane. That's right. Um,
8:29
Speaker 1: so we should probably explain this now it's been long enough.
8:34
Speaker 1: A black box can be one of two things, well,
8:37
Speaker 1: one of three things really. Um. It can be the
8:40
Speaker 1: flight data recorder, or it can be the cockpit voice recorder,
8:44
Speaker 1: that's right, or it can be the crash survival baluh
8:48
Speaker 1: memory unit. Black box refers to all three of those. Yeah,
8:52
Speaker 1: the important thing, the only thing that really needs to
8:55
Speaker 1: survive the crash is the crash survival of memory. That's
8:59
Speaker 1: where the data is it and housed and um that's
9:03
Speaker 1: the one that's super super beefed up to survive like
9:07
Speaker 1: a nuclear war. Basically, so on any flight, on any
9:10
Speaker 1: commercial flight, you have hundreds, if not thousands of sensors
9:15
Speaker 1: going on at all times, and they are measuring things
9:19
Speaker 1: like airspeed, altitude, UH, cabin pressure, cabin temperature, UM, wing
9:27
Speaker 1: trim everything, What are your flaps doing? Yaw? Yeah, you
9:32
Speaker 1: don't just guess it, yaw, you gotta measure it right, right,
9:35
Speaker 1: And so all of this information is coming into the
9:37
Speaker 1: flight computer and plugged into the flight computer is uh. Well,
9:41
Speaker 1: basically it's like an upstream passive eavesdropping units called the
9:46
Speaker 1: Flight Data Acquisition Unit, and it takes all of this UM.
9:50
Speaker 1: That's up front, right, that's up front with the pilots UM,
9:53
Speaker 1: and it takes all of this incoming information and it
9:55
Speaker 1: records it. So not only is the are the pilots
9:58
Speaker 1: and the the ground control getting all this information, but
10:02
Speaker 1: it's being recorded as well, UM and it's being routed
10:06
Speaker 1: to the recorders through the Flight Data Acquisition Unit. Right.
10:10
Speaker 1: So also up front in the cockpit you're gonna have
10:13
Speaker 1: at least four microphones and in some newer planes also
10:16
Speaker 1: video cameras. Yeah, that's the newest, the latest, crazy, right,
10:20
Speaker 1: which you can't do that on magnetic tape, you know
10:22
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, they have to start drinking vodka
10:25
Speaker 1: instead of like brown liquors. What do you mean the pilots,
10:29
Speaker 1: you know, like it's water. I'm just having some h
10:31
Speaker 1: dwoh not not the Great Goose or Yeah, I'm joking. Okay,
10:38
Speaker 1: all the pilots have been known to drink here and
10:39
Speaker 1: there and they get in trouble. Yeah, they should get
10:41
Speaker 1: in big trouble for you're the d D. Okay, if
10:44
Speaker 1: you're an airline pilot, there's no way around it. The
10:47
Speaker 1: only shouldn't do is drink and do drugs. So um,
10:51
Speaker 1: up there to eaves drop on the pilots, and not
10:53
Speaker 1: just the pilots, but also all the sounds going on
10:56
Speaker 1: in the cockpit. Are these microphones and their recording everything
11:00
Speaker 1: through the cockpit voice recorder? Yeah, and you talked about
11:03
Speaker 1: the sounds, that's a big deal. Like not only do
11:06
Speaker 1: you want to hear Captain Jim say, holy crap, our
11:09
Speaker 1: wing is on fire, but they want to hear thirty
11:13
Speaker 1: seconds before that if they hear just some weird noise.
11:16
Speaker 1: And they're trained to pick up all that ambiance sound
11:18
Speaker 1: and experts or trained too to listen out for things
11:22
Speaker 1: that you would probably never notice. It's just a regular dude,
11:24
Speaker 1: right exactly. And they can sit there and hear a
11:26
Speaker 1: ping or a thud or a knock or a combination
11:28
Speaker 1: of those things and be like, oh, I know what happened.
11:31
Speaker 1: Somebody smoked in the laboratory and while they were on
11:35
Speaker 1: their cell phone is loaded. Um, so you've got again,
11:38
Speaker 1: you've got the cockpit voice recorder, you've got the flight
11:42
Speaker 1: data recorder, and all of that info going out to
11:45
Speaker 1: those two guys is going through the flight data Acquisition unit.
11:48
Speaker 1: And it's sending the info all the way to the
11:51
Speaker 1: back of the plane, where the cockpit voice recorder and
11:53
Speaker 1: the flight data recorder are located. And why is it
11:56
Speaker 1: located in the back, because the front of the plane
12:00
Speaker 1: takes up most of the force of the impact, and
12:03
Speaker 1: it's far likelier that something placed at the rear of
12:06
Speaker 1: the plane, specifically like the tail cone or the aft
12:09
Speaker 1: galley ceiling or something way in the back is going
12:13
Speaker 1: to be likelier to survive because the rest gets mushed. Yeah,
12:17
Speaker 1: we talked about that in our Surviving a Plane Crash episode.
12:21
Speaker 1: And while they won't come out and say it out right,
12:23
Speaker 1: it is a little bit safer in the back of
12:25
Speaker 1: an airplane because you usually go nose down, and by
12:29
Speaker 1: all accounts, if you drive a plane into a mountain,
12:33
Speaker 1: captain and the co pilot are going to suffer the
12:35
Speaker 1: worst of it. Maybe if you're in the back bathroom
12:39
Speaker 1: having your cigarette, you're shaving like on airplane, you might
12:42
Speaker 1: have a chance to survive, like cutting themselves. Uh and
12:47
Speaker 1: speaking of mountains, chuck, this is good at places I
12:49
Speaker 1: need to put it. There's some something called plane Crash
12:52
Speaker 1: info dot com slash last words, and there's a lot
12:57
Speaker 1: of It's not just this site. There's a lot of
12:59
Speaker 1: sites that have UM recordings from black boxes from like
13:04
Speaker 1: the last seconds or whatever. And this site also has
13:07
Speaker 1: just like transcriptions of the last couple of sentences, and
13:09
Speaker 1: one of them was mountains the last thing. But then
13:15
Speaker 1: there's been there's other ones to like, um Ma, I
13:18
Speaker 1: love you was one the last words of one pilot.
13:21
Speaker 1: Another one was Pete sorry, so I get somebody screwed up.
13:25
Speaker 1: Another one was hang on, what the hell is this? Yeah,
13:30
Speaker 1: and then other ones seem like they don't realize what's
13:32
Speaker 1: about to happen. This isn't as bad as I thought
13:34
Speaker 1: it would be, right, Yeah, yeah, but it's pretty interesting stuff.
13:38
Speaker 1: Some of it's pretty grim. Some of it's super sad. Yeah,
13:42
Speaker 1: it's like not an uplifting thing. Start on read on
13:44
Speaker 1: a Friday afternoon. Oh no, it's not uplifting, but it's
13:47
Speaker 1: it's definitely interesting. Yeah. I would not recommend reading that
13:50
Speaker 1: before you take a flight. No. As a matter of fact,
13:53
Speaker 1: Umi was traveling UM recently while I was researching this,
13:57
Speaker 1: and I made you send it to I was like,
13:59
Speaker 1: I can't send her this. He's gotta fly back here.
14:01
Speaker 1: That's awful. UM. Alright, so we talked, Uh, let's go
14:06
Speaker 1: ahead and talk about the flight the flight data recorder. UM.
14:08
Speaker 1: You mentioned that they are all kinds of um of
14:13
Speaker 1: data being recorded, like up to seven hundred types of
14:16
Speaker 1: data can be recorded. UM. Like they can tell when
14:19
Speaker 1: you just turn a switch on, that's like it's logged.
14:22
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, captain turned on, even interior cabin
14:25
Speaker 1: light switch, you know, that's all recorded. And UM. The
14:29
Speaker 1: f a A they require pre two thousand two planes
14:34
Speaker 1: to have a minimum of eleven and twenty parameters. If
14:37
Speaker 1: it was built after two thousand to um at least
14:40
Speaker 1: eight parameters, right, I don't see why they just don't
14:43
Speaker 1: log at all if they can. Well, apparently like that
14:47
Speaker 1: that rule that forced up to eight parameters be recorded
14:51
Speaker 1: like cost the airline industry like three million bucks or something.
14:54
Speaker 1: And that's the reason they're notoriously tight. So that's why
14:57
Speaker 1: they keep fighting it. And it's the NTSB that's say like,
15:00
Speaker 1: let's push this along. It's two thousand five, we need
15:03
Speaker 1: to stop using magnetic reel reel and the f a
15:06
Speaker 1: A is like, I don't know, Well, the f A
15:08
Speaker 1: is being pushed around by the airline industry well scary enough. Um,
15:13
Speaker 1: I guess it's a good time to mention this. There
15:14
Speaker 1: was something called the Safe Act Safe A v S
15:17
Speaker 1: Asian and Flight Enhancement Act, and it's been up twice
15:22
Speaker 1: and has not passed this legislation either time. And all
15:25
Speaker 1: they're trying to do is provide a second recorder and
15:30
Speaker 1: one of them should be deployable in the rear, which
15:33
Speaker 1: makes sense, like if the plane hits an impact, this
15:36
Speaker 1: thing pops off the back of the plane altogether and
15:40
Speaker 1: a little clost like. I guess so because because they said, uh,
15:46
Speaker 1: the f a A has a long history of delaying uh,
15:50
Speaker 1: much needed upgrades in this equipment, and I guess it's
15:53
Speaker 1: because the price or the airplane lobby. Yeah. When you
15:57
Speaker 1: when your federal agency is actually like a safeguard to
16:01
Speaker 1: protect the finances of the industry, is regulating, that's not good. No,
16:05
Speaker 1: it's not. I can't everybody just do things right. I know,
16:10
Speaker 1: it's frustrating, and money is typically at the root of
16:14
Speaker 1: it all, you know, it always is. Yeah, all right,
16:17
Speaker 1: So we talked a little bit about the testing. I
16:20
Speaker 1: guess we should just talk about what these things are
16:21
Speaker 1: built out of, why they survive that the CSMU back
16:25
Speaker 1: in Roswell in New Mexico. No, but there are three
16:30
Speaker 1: layers of materials to keep these things safe. Um, you
16:34
Speaker 1: got your aluminum housing on the outside of it, and
16:37
Speaker 1: it holds all your memory cards. No, the aluminum is inside.
16:42
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay, that makes sense. It's
16:44
Speaker 1: the weakest link, you know what I mean, it's on
16:46
Speaker 1: the inside surrounding it's the last stand of protection. I guess, right,
16:50
Speaker 1: that is like you said, it's holding the memory cards,
16:52
Speaker 1: which are the one thing you really want to survive,
16:56
Speaker 1: the only thing. And this is right right, Yeah, I
17:01
Speaker 1: guess it's a good point. And this is the crash
17:03
Speaker 1: survivable memory Unit, which is actually a part of the
17:06
Speaker 1: flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder. But it's
17:11
Speaker 1: also the separate It's kind of like the Holy see no,
17:17
Speaker 1: the Holy of Holies, the temple within the Temple of Jerusalem. Yeah,
17:21
Speaker 1: like everything else will get mangled and it doesn't matter.
17:23
Speaker 1: But all you needed, like you said, are those memory cards. Right, Okay,
17:26
Speaker 1: So so go ahead. There's an aluminum housing around the
17:28
Speaker 1: memory card, right, and then around that you have it
17:31
Speaker 1: insulated with a dry silica one inch of it and
17:35
Speaker 1: that is because a lot of times some planes crash
17:37
Speaker 1: they catch on fire. Yeah, you want to retard fire.
17:40
Speaker 1: Put a niche of silicus stuff around this, around whatever
17:44
Speaker 1: you want, your hand, your head, sure, just do it.
17:47
Speaker 1: You won't get h And then around that is your
17:49
Speaker 1: outer shell. And it's either stainless steel or titanium. It's
17:52
Speaker 1: about a quarter inch thick. And that's like you know
17:55
Speaker 1: that you're bomb casing and all of that is why
17:59
Speaker 1: you can't bill a plane out of all this. It
18:01
Speaker 1: would be too heavy. And so this this one to
18:05
Speaker 1: three punch of a crash revivable memory unit. Um, it's
18:10
Speaker 1: a cylinder. Did you say that? I thought it was implicit.
18:13
Speaker 1: It's just so imagine like a steel box. And you
18:17
Speaker 1: can also go onto how stuff works and type in um,
18:19
Speaker 1: how black boxes working. It'll bring up images. But imagine
18:24
Speaker 1: like a steel box that forms like an L on
18:26
Speaker 1: its back right, so the foot is sticking upward into
18:30
Speaker 1: the air. And then on the part that's along the
18:33
Speaker 1: ground now of the L is it's cylinder that's coming up.
18:37
Speaker 1: Looks like it's it's holding some oil or something like.
18:40
Speaker 1: That's an oil cylinder. It's like a fat squat barrel.
18:44
Speaker 1: Then Attached to that is this little tube another cylinder
18:49
Speaker 1: but longer and shorter, that serves as the handle for
18:52
Speaker 1: the whole unit. But it's also a beacon. Yeah, and
18:56
Speaker 1: that's super important. Um And actually we'll get into that.
19:00
Speaker 1: But you've got to find these things, you know. It
19:03
Speaker 1: does no good if it's hidden behind a tree or
19:05
Speaker 1: at the bottom of the ocean. They like to hide,
19:08
Speaker 1: they do. So we talked about some of the testing
19:11
Speaker 1: that these things go through, and it's pretty awesome. Um.
19:15
Speaker 1: They do one, two, three, four, five, six tests, the
19:20
Speaker 1: first of which is just a basic crash impact. They
19:23
Speaker 1: shoot it out of an air cannon at thirty four
19:26
Speaker 1: hundred g s into an aluminum honeycomb and it smashes
19:31
Speaker 1: it with a force equal to times its own weight.
19:35
Speaker 1: It's just like, I want to see this thing in
19:37
Speaker 1: super SlowMo basically, which not only does this simulate the
19:40
Speaker 1: impact of a major plane crash, it actually probably overstates
19:46
Speaker 1: the force. I think they overstate everything, you know, and
19:49
Speaker 1: these things survived to say, okay, good, all right, let's
19:52
Speaker 1: take it on to the next test, and the flight
19:54
Speaker 1: data recorders like wait what yeah, exactly, and they take
19:57
Speaker 1: it onto the pin drop, which I think it's funny
19:59
Speaker 1: that they the pin drop has nothing to do with it. Sound,
20:02
Speaker 1: it's like engineering humor. Yeah. They take like a five
20:06
Speaker 1: pound weight with a quarter inch steel pin coming out
20:10
Speaker 1: of the end of it. It's like a little spike,
20:12
Speaker 1: and they drop it from ten ft the spike onto
20:16
Speaker 1: the weakest axis of the uh, the black box. It's
20:21
Speaker 1: like a puncture test. Yeah, and it nothing happens, so
20:25
Speaker 1: they move it on to the next test. Yeah. The
20:26
Speaker 1: static crush, which would be a good band name. Uh.
20:30
Speaker 1: Five minutes of five thousand pounds per square much pressure
20:34
Speaker 1: applied to the six major access points. So it's just
20:37
Speaker 1: a constant, not an impact thing. But just let me
20:40
Speaker 1: see if I can just crush you over time with
20:42
Speaker 1: brute force. Yeah. It's like a headlock. Yeah, the worst
20:45
Speaker 1: headlock you can ever imagine. And then the fire test,
20:49
Speaker 1: which uh they fire a propane fireball with three burners
20:53
Speaker 1: at about two thousand degrees fahrenheit for an hour and
20:57
Speaker 1: just let it sit there and see if it melts
20:58
Speaker 1: or does anything or explodes or whatever. Yea, it just
21:02
Speaker 1: sits there. Um, and then the planes frequently go down.
21:06
Speaker 1: Well when they go down, they frequently go down into
21:09
Speaker 1: the ocean or the sea. So your black box has
21:12
Speaker 1: to survive underwater. So they do a deep sea immersion
21:16
Speaker 1: test UM, which is like a pressurized tank of water
21:19
Speaker 1: for twenty four hours. Uh. And then they also do
21:22
Speaker 1: a saltwater submersion test, so this thing has to basically
21:25
Speaker 1: sit around in saltwater for thirty days, that's right. And
21:29
Speaker 1: finally they will let it soak in other types of
21:33
Speaker 1: fluids like jet fuel and lubricants and fire extinguisher chemicals
21:37
Speaker 1: and anything else in a plane that it might end
21:40
Speaker 1: up submerged in. And if they can withstand sitting in
21:43
Speaker 1: jet fuel for a period of time, then you're good
21:45
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah. And then after all this they put
21:48
Speaker 1: a little um mortarboard on the the cylinder and send
21:53
Speaker 1: it along its way to be installed in an airplane.
21:57
Speaker 1: That's right where it's Sadly, we'll only be used if
22:00
Speaker 1: something really bad happens. Alright, So we've set this all up.
22:05
Speaker 1: These things are sturdy, they're solid, they're good to go. Uh.
22:09
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about what happens in the
22:11
Speaker 1: event of a crash right after this place. All right,
22:17
Speaker 1: So your plane is crashed, Yeah, we're both dead, but
22:21
Speaker 1: the black box has survived. It lives on what happens
22:24
Speaker 1: to it. Well, they have to find it first. Um And,
22:27
Speaker 1: like we said, these things are tested to make sure
22:30
Speaker 1: that they can withstand deep sea and salt water immersion,
22:34
Speaker 1: which they sometimes have to. UM And in the event
22:38
Speaker 1: that they are going to go into the water. The
22:41
Speaker 1: little handle that has an underwater beacon installed in it
22:45
Speaker 1: actually has this water detector and when water comes in
22:48
Speaker 1: contact with the beacon, it starts to set it off
22:51
Speaker 1: and it sends out a pink I think every minute
22:54
Speaker 1: or thirty seconds for the next thirty days or something like. Yeah,
22:58
Speaker 1: it's one per second for a month. Yeah. Um. And
23:01
Speaker 1: this ping you couldn't hear it if you were listening
23:04
Speaker 1: for it, but if you were listening through sonar, you
23:07
Speaker 1: would be able to pick it up. And the beacon
23:10
Speaker 1: sends out the ping and the people go find the
23:13
Speaker 1: ping and they get it. They can transmit ideally, but
23:16
Speaker 1: it can transmit up to fourteen thou feet, which is
23:19
Speaker 1: pretty impressive, right, um And and if you can find
23:24
Speaker 1: the beacon thanks to the ping, that's awesome. There have
23:28
Speaker 1: been cases where the black boxes have been found long
23:32
Speaker 1: after the ping stopped. Um Air France flight four or
23:36
Speaker 1: four seven when I think two thousand nine and went
23:39
Speaker 1: down in the Atlantic, remember that one. It was awful,
23:42
Speaker 1: like it just disappeared into the Atlantic and they couldn't
23:45
Speaker 1: find the wreckage for a very long time. I tried
23:48
Speaker 1: to block out plane crashes. It was. It was a
23:50
Speaker 1: bad one. It was one of the worst, most recent ones. Um.
23:53
Speaker 1: But they couldn't find the black box for two years,
23:58
Speaker 1: and they finally found it in sea water at twelve
24:01
Speaker 1: thou feet after two years. And when they brought the
24:04
Speaker 1: both of the black boxes up, they were able to
24:06
Speaker 1: get all of the data off of them. They were
24:09
Speaker 1: well made. Did it was it dumb luck or were
24:11
Speaker 1: they searching for it? Oh? They're searching for it, Okay,
24:14
Speaker 1: even though it stopp pinging, they just kept looking. Uh.
24:17
Speaker 1: So you do recover it, hopefully, and then you need
24:22
Speaker 1: to analyze the data. So they're going to transport it
24:24
Speaker 1: to the h to a lab at the NTSP the
24:27
Speaker 1: National Transportation Safety Board. We should say, the the country
24:33
Speaker 1: that this happens in, or if it's like an international
24:36
Speaker 1: waters the country that the airline is registered in is
24:39
Speaker 1: responsible for leading the investigation. So in the United States
24:43
Speaker 1: would be the NTSB. Okay, yeah, sure. Um. And just
24:48
Speaker 1: like any relic you find, if you know about finding
24:52
Speaker 1: undersea items that have been in salt water, you want
24:55
Speaker 1: to transport that in its own state that you found it,
24:58
Speaker 1: so in its own yeah, like if it's it's the
25:01
Speaker 1: same thing as if you find a piece of sunken treasure.
25:04
Speaker 1: You don't want to bring it out and dry it
25:06
Speaker 1: off with a hair dryer. You want to keep it
25:08
Speaker 1: submerged in saltwater because that's where it's been living. And
25:10
Speaker 1: that's the sucking treasure pro tip from Chuck. I did
25:14
Speaker 1: an article on that. Actually that's how I know this. Um.
25:18
Speaker 1: But yeah, so if if they find it in the ocean,
25:20
Speaker 1: they want to transport it in salt water and a
25:22
Speaker 1: cooler to a lab where they can really treat it right,
25:26
Speaker 1: give it the V I P treatment. Yeah. Um. And
25:29
Speaker 1: if the whole black box is still intact, yeah, you
25:32
Speaker 1: can actually just use it's it's computer interface. It's already
25:36
Speaker 1: installed this part of the recorder. Yeah, you can just
25:39
Speaker 1: plug it in and download all the stuff off of it. Yeah,
25:41
Speaker 1: it can be super quick. But oftentimes that stuff, like
25:44
Speaker 1: we said, is mangled and burned away, and so you
25:46
Speaker 1: have to just take the memory sticks and then you know,
25:50
Speaker 1: hook it up to a different machine so you can
25:52
Speaker 1: retrieve the data, that's right, which takes a little longer. Yeah,
25:55
Speaker 1: it can take weeks or months. When you get the data. Obviously,
25:59
Speaker 1: when you have the flight data recorder data, you can
26:03
Speaker 1: feed that into a computer and create a simulation using
26:07
Speaker 1: a model to visualize what the plane was doing based
26:11
Speaker 1: on all those readings from all those different arrays. When
26:14
Speaker 1: you put them all together, it can create a computer
26:16
Speaker 1: model of the plane to show what it was doing
26:19
Speaker 1: at the time of the crash. Um, the cockpit voice
26:22
Speaker 1: recorder uses a little more of human ingenuity to piece
26:26
Speaker 1: it together, and this takes way longer. Yeah. One thing
26:30
Speaker 1: you're gonna have is um a representative from the airline.
26:34
Speaker 1: You're gonna have a representative from the plane builder because
26:38
Speaker 1: they don't like their planes to go down. Um, there's
26:41
Speaker 1: gonna be uh, I guess whatever country or in your
26:44
Speaker 1: version of the NTSB is going to be there. And
26:46
Speaker 1: then sometimes they might have a translator or language specialist,
26:50
Speaker 1: depending on you know what nationality your your pilot was,
26:54
Speaker 1: because i'mout to translate some stuff and you have people
26:57
Speaker 1: who are trained in deciphering beeps and pings and Knox
27:00
Speaker 1: and airline cockpits, and they put all this together. It's
27:04
Speaker 1: a pretty interesting job, you know. Um. And you you
27:08
Speaker 1: take that information, you put it together with the model,
27:10
Speaker 1: the simulation from the plane, the flight data recorder, and
27:15
Speaker 1: then these days also the flight computers send out warning
27:18
Speaker 1: messages like flight four four seven air France. It's sent
27:22
Speaker 1: out like twenty four warning messages um in the four
27:25
Speaker 1: minutes before it crashed. So they had that already on hand,
27:28
Speaker 1: but nothing else. Yes, And then they started to piece
27:31
Speaker 1: it together after they went and got the wreckage, which
27:34
Speaker 1: we should say in some cases, when possible, they'll actually
27:38
Speaker 1: piece the entire plane back together to Oh yeah, I
27:41
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Yeah, they'll get like a huge airplane
27:43
Speaker 1: hangar and take all the wreckage and pieces together piece
27:46
Speaker 1: by piece and try to get the plane back together
27:48
Speaker 1: to help that to help to help give a complete
27:51
Speaker 1: picture of what the heck happened. Did you see that
27:54
Speaker 1: the flight the Denzel Washington movie? No, I heard it
27:57
Speaker 1: was so depressing. It was good. Wasn't they filmed that
28:00
Speaker 1: here too in Atlanta? But yeah, it was intense for sure. Okay,
28:05
Speaker 1: I'll check it out and then chuck Um, it's not
28:07
Speaker 1: just airplanes where you can find black boxes, buddy, that's right.
28:11
Speaker 1: They're on trains planes already on planes, they're on trains,
28:16
Speaker 1: and sort of a newish thing is putting versions of
28:20
Speaker 1: these and cars, um, either to give you like an
28:24
Speaker 1: insurance break. I think you can opt for these sometimes
28:27
Speaker 1: to prove that you're a safe driver and get it
28:30
Speaker 1: basically tracks like how fast you go and if you're
28:33
Speaker 1: speeding and taking turns too fast and stuff like that. Yeah,
28:37
Speaker 1: but they're a little controversial, I guess because I think
28:40
Speaker 1: in England you can actually get traffic tickets based on right. Yeah,
28:45
Speaker 1: I knew that was coming. Yeah, but some there's some
28:49
Speaker 1: car manufacturers that manufacture basically flight data recorders into their
28:53
Speaker 1: cars already. It's not necessarily recording like your cockpit conversation
28:59
Speaker 1: or anything like that, but it is keeping track of
29:01
Speaker 1: your car. It's like, um, you you know how like
29:06
Speaker 1: your car will tell you that your tire pressure is
29:08
Speaker 1: low or your doors open or something like that. There's
29:11
Speaker 1: something that's recording all that stuff, including all of your
29:13
Speaker 1: engine stuff and everything else that's part of your car too,
29:17
Speaker 1: which amounts to a black box. Because we left out
29:21
Speaker 1: we said that. You know, the point of having a
29:23
Speaker 1: black box is to figure out what the heck happened.
29:25
Speaker 1: We didn't quite go far enough, because the point of
29:28
Speaker 1: figuring out what the heck happened, it's such as to
29:30
Speaker 1: satisfied curiosity. But if there's a problem that's going to
29:34
Speaker 1: translate to other planes too, mechanical failure, right, you want
29:38
Speaker 1: to go be able to fix it. Or if there's
29:40
Speaker 1: a way to make planes safer in the future, um
29:43
Speaker 1: or prevent an accident. That's the whole point of the
29:46
Speaker 1: black boxes, to learn from tragedy. Yeah, they should put
29:50
Speaker 1: the voice recorders in cars, for right, Yeah, for d
29:56
Speaker 1: why crash? This guy sounds drunk? Pull them over all right, Focus, focus,
30:02
Speaker 1: Like you start hearing stuff like that, you're in big trouble.
30:05
Speaker 1: Like no one else was in the car saying that
30:06
Speaker 1: out loud to yourself, but you're arguing about whether you
30:09
Speaker 1: should focus. I shouldn't be driving, it's fine, right, we
30:15
Speaker 1: shouldn't be joking about that. That's like super sad. Well,
30:19
Speaker 1: this is a pretty pretty sad episode. Yeah, but we
30:21
Speaker 1: should make pretty sad episode suggested by like a four
30:24
Speaker 1: year old I know what's going on with Cormack I
30:28
Speaker 1: don't know. We'll have to get to the bottom of that.
30:32
Speaker 1: I don't know what kind of parenting is going on.
30:34
Speaker 1: And as hood, you are great parenting. I'm sure I
30:38
Speaker 1: don't have anything else. I don't either. You got anything else?
30:41
Speaker 1: I got nothing else. Well, we should like Cormack who
30:46
Speaker 1: this is how we originally got the idea for this episode. Um,
30:50
Speaker 1: we should let him play us out to listener mail.
30:53
Speaker 1: Let's hear it. If you want to know more about
30:57
Speaker 1: Black Boss, into a streach you are, and you can
31:03
Speaker 1: have fun at our fun and entertaining home on the
31:07
Speaker 1: wet stuff you should know dot com. Al Right, well
31:11
Speaker 1: that was just too adorable. That's pretty cute. Maybe we
31:13
Speaker 1: should make that a regular thing. Yeah, so I have
31:17
Speaker 1: an idea. Okay, Um, you guys out there in podcast
31:20
Speaker 1: listener land, if you have a cute kid, you should
31:23
Speaker 1: records a cute kid doing our sign off for you
31:27
Speaker 1: know whatever, saying that. If you want to get in
31:29
Speaker 1: touch with me and chuck tweet to us, try us
31:31
Speaker 1: on Facebook, YadA, YadA, YadA, And um, a cute kid
31:34
Speaker 1: that's a fan of the show, Like, don't just train
31:36
Speaker 1: your kid and force them to do something they don't
31:38
Speaker 1: know what they're doing exactly, So send us that email
31:41
Speaker 1: it to us. Email your permission for us to use it,
31:44
Speaker 1: um and uh maybe we'll put it in some kind
31:46
Speaker 1: of supercut or whatever. Yeah, include whether or not you
31:49
Speaker 1: want us to say your kid's name or not. All
31:51
Speaker 1: that j all the safety standard safety this is. That's
31:54
Speaker 1: very exciting. We haven't had like a call out for
31:56
Speaker 1: anything in a while. Yeah, this could be cool. Nice. Well, okay,
31:59
Speaker 1: so it's listener mail time, right, Yeah, I'm gonna call
32:03
Speaker 1: this uh clearing up some kosher things. We've had a
32:07
Speaker 1: great response with our episode on salt, so thanks for
32:11
Speaker 1: everyone that wrote in so far. A slight correction for
32:13
Speaker 1: you guys on Kosher salt. You work correct on its
32:16
Speaker 1: use of drawing blood out of meat, as eating blood
32:18
Speaker 1: is against Jewish dietary laws. Simply salting the meat, though,
32:20
Speaker 1: will not make it kosher, which is a common misconception.
32:24
Speaker 1: To have a kosher meat, Firstly, you must have a
32:25
Speaker 1: kosher animal, one that choose its cud and has split hoofs.
32:30
Speaker 1: While pigs have split hooves, they do not chew their cut.
32:33
Speaker 1: They're not kosher. Cannot be a scavenger, so no catfish
32:36
Speaker 1: or lobsters. No lobster, I saw that felt. Oh yeah,
32:39
Speaker 1: that's right. Although fish is not considered meat, it is
32:42
Speaker 1: called parv p A r V, essentially meaning neutral, as
32:45
Speaker 1: in not meat or dairy, which are never eaten together.
32:48
Speaker 1: And it cannot be a predator. So no hawks or
32:50
Speaker 1: chickens or no chicken hawks are chickens predators. Um, if
32:55
Speaker 1: you're a worm of chickens of predator, you know what
32:57
Speaker 1: I mean? All right? Secondly, guys, and this is key.
32:59
Speaker 1: The weill must be killed in a ritual called shifting
33:02
Speaker 1: by trained ritual s s H E, K H T
33:08
Speaker 1: I n G the second H through me. This process
33:12
Speaker 1: involves a super perfectly sharp, rectangular ended knife. It's about
33:15
Speaker 1: twice as long as the particular animal's neck. It is
33:19
Speaker 1: forbidden to stab or tear the flesh, hence the squared
33:22
Speaker 1: inn and sharpness and one swift motion. The esophagus, trachea,
33:27
Speaker 1: herotid arteries, and jugular veins are all cut. The animal
33:30
Speaker 1: may not even feel it. Well, just's to say uh,
33:35
Speaker 1: and we'll pass out and then die in seconds. The
33:38
Speaker 1: blood is then drained from the animal, and after butchering,
33:41
Speaker 1: it assaulted with coash or salt to draw out the
33:43
Speaker 1: remaining blood and rinsed. You know, I knew a lot
33:46
Speaker 1: of that because I read this very very interesting article
33:49
Speaker 1: in Harper's Um several months ago, and this guy basically
33:53
Speaker 1: infiltrated the meat industry and like Nebraska or something like that,
33:58
Speaker 1: and he describes like kosher process of slaughter and how
34:02
Speaker 1: different it is from regular process, but that they have
34:05
Speaker 1: this special guy who's like a rabbi or something who
34:08
Speaker 1: works on this line at the slaughterhouse in in Nebraska.
34:11
Speaker 1: He's like a super specialized dude throat cutter. Yeah wow.
34:15
Speaker 1: But he uses like this incredibly sharp instrument. It's really good.
34:19
Speaker 1: He's a schector. It's a really really interesting article. I
34:22
Speaker 1: can't remember the name of it, but I recommend anybody
34:24
Speaker 1: going and finding it. You know what, maybe you can
34:26
Speaker 1: post that in your blog. Do I have a blog? Yeah?
34:30
Speaker 1: You do. Your blog posts about the best things you've
34:32
Speaker 1: read this week. Oh yeah, yeah, maybe you should throw
34:34
Speaker 1: it in there. All right. So those are the very
34:37
Speaker 1: basics of kosher meat. Guys. Jewish dietary laws and certification
34:40
Speaker 1: are much too lengthy for an email or a single
34:43
Speaker 1: episode for that matter. It's very convoluted, highly recommend a
34:47
Speaker 1: delightfully with the book called Kosher for the Clueless but
34:49
Speaker 1: Curious by Simon Episdorff. I hope this is making words
34:55
Speaker 1: and names. I hope I've shed some light on this
34:58
Speaker 1: highly complex aspect of Judaism. That's for Michelle and Cedar Park, Texas.
35:02
Speaker 1: Thanks Michelle, just near Austin, UH. If you want to
35:06
Speaker 1: setis straight about something, we are always glad to hear
35:09
Speaker 1: more information like this is. We're kind of like sponges,
35:12
Speaker 1: you know. Um. You can tweet a short bursts of
35:15
Speaker 1: information on Twitter at s Y s K podcast. You
35:18
Speaker 1: can post this information at Facebook dot com, slash stuff
35:21
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
35:23
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast, to Discovery dot com, and you can hang
35:26
Speaker 1: out with us at our home on the web. Stuff
35:28
Speaker 1: you Should Know dot com for more on this and
35:35
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot
35:38
Speaker 1: com