Future flight safety

Thinking of some aircraft accidents, it seems to me that "rocketcams" on
commercial airliners would not be a bad idea. After all, they say that a
picture is worth a thousand words. How about a camera in the tail (like the
SILTS pod on Columbia) looking forward, and one above the cockpit (exterior)
looking aft? Perhaps one on each wingtip looking directly inward? Not too
many cameras. In essence, the idea would be to give the pilots a good
side-view or rear-view mirror. Would situational awareness like this give
crews valuable information that might lead to more effective recovery
techniques? For instance, in the case of the 737 that crashed due to a stuck
rudder hard over, would precise knowledge of the failure have helped the
crew act more appropriately and quicker? Were they aware of the nature of
their emergency?

How about telemetered aerosurface positions portrayed graphically on a CRT
for quick comprehension of aircraft state? An off-nominal effector could be
displayed in blinking red.

For spaceflight, during ascent at least, things happen fast, and there would
likely not be time for deliberation on aborting a flight should something go
terribly amiss. I suspect crews are hesitant to cede control of abort
initiation to an automated flight manager. However, there are probably
several ways to abort a mission, proportional to the threat. For retargeted
goals that are not mission-threatening, the crews might initiate action
based on information supplied by the automated flight manager. For vehicle
failures that could threaten the vehicle, a strong recommendation might be
given to the crews, which would then be expected to act or else the flight
manager could take action. For immediately impending catastrophic failures
(diagnosed by onboard diagnostics and vehicle health monitoring), the flight
manager could take immediate action to save the crew. The point is, for
future spacecraft, the state of the art has probably advanced far enough to
allow for vastly enhanced crew situational awareness, and for automated
advisement and abort (Triple-A ;-) to become a reality. Team this with
RocketCam style video made available to the crews, a sensible vehicle design
(e.g. a capsule/escape tower Apollo-type vehicle) and perhaps then you start
to approach desirable safety goals.

Jon

In article , Jon Berndt wrote:
Thinking of some aircraft accidents, it seems to me that "rocketcams" on
commercial airliners would not be a bad idea. After all, they say that a
picture is worth a thousand words. How about a camera in the tail (like the
SILTS pod on Columbia) looking forward, and one above the cockpit (exterior)
looking aft? Perhaps one on each wingtip looking directly inward? Not too
many cameras. In essence, the idea would be to give the pilots a good
side-view or rear-view mirror. Would situational awareness like this give
crews valuable information that might lead to more effective recovery
techniques? For instance, in the case of the 737 that crashed due to a stuck
rudder hard over, would precise knowledge of the failure have helped the
crew act more appropriately and quicker? Were they aware of the nature of
their emergency?

You know, this is the smartest idea I've seen in quite a while. It's
fairly easy (on most passenger airliners, at least) to obtain a look at
the wing (at least to get a "it's not on fire/the flaps are all flat"
response), but the tail's a whole new ballpark - would adding a small
bump to the roof of the plane to hold a camera be a problem, technically
or aerodynamically? I doubt it, but I'm always leery of calling anytihng
"easy" :-)

Hmm. Possible important blindspots: the tail, the sides of the engines,
the outside of the fuselage generally, the landing gear. Six cameras,
at a guess - one rear-facing over the cockpit, one front-facing from the
tail, one looking inwards above each wingtip, one ditto below. That
should pretty much cover everything, except the very underside or the
far rear, neither of which I can see as being something you'd like to
look at in flight. The hardware's unlikely to be expensive, the
design/installation costs might be a bugger.

Someone with experience that runs to mroe than "I got in the back of one
once" care to tell me why this wouldn't help at all? g

How about telemetered aerosurface positions portrayed graphically on a CRT
for quick comprehension of aircraft state? An off-nominal effector could be
displayed in blinking red.

I was under the impression this was the direction things were moving in
regardless, TBH, but I don't follow the field...

--
-Andrew Gray