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SYSK Selects: How Black Boxes Work · Stuff You Should Know

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