Originally Posted by
MG23
Yes. A 10TB RAID6 with a hot spare (so three of eight disks have to fail before you lose data) costs about $5,000. That should hold all the data from all an airline's aircraft for multiple flights before you have to overwrite them.
10TB of satellite data bandwidth costs $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
And a bad guy could still turn it off.
The simple solution would be to add a simple location transmitter like the ones used for cargo containers, which could report position to the airline every few minutes from its own GPS. But a bad guy could still turn it off.
Soon all aircraft will be required to transmit Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Extended Projected Profile (ADS-C EPP) which is the standard ADS-C position/altitude report plus "
a report containing the sequence of 1 to 128 waypoints or pseudo waypoints with associated contraints or estimates (altitude, time, speed, etc.), gross mass and estimate at Top of Descent, speed schedule, etc. " If ADS-C EPP were to be transmitted every 60 seconds that would probably be all that is needed to locate the aircraft.