Why can't airplanes be built with the same material used to make the black box- that always survives the crash

Answer 1

Basicly, it would be too heavy and expensive to justify building it.

Answer 2

To make a long answer short, if you made an aircraft out of the black box material, you'd be driving it rather than flying anywhere. The black boxes are made out of heavy-gauge steel, and are very dense in comparison to their relatively small size. But like Boston says, it's the cabin that protects them in a crash.

Besides, tarmac is designed to handle the weight of modern aircraft, but it's just not strong enough for anything as heavy as a black-box material aircraft would be. The aircraft would sink on any modern runway. On top of the landing strip problem, the plane would be nearly impossible to get it into the air with even the strongest jet engines--much less economically enough to justify keeping it.

Aircraft are astoundingly safe anyways, even when not made to "black box" specs. Out of the tens of thousands currently operating in North America, how many crash per year (when not taken over by sociopathic terrorists)? Two, in a bad year? Most of the time, the U.S. goes years without seeing an airliner crash--and even then, the crash is usually due to outside influences (like SCUD missiles or poorly performed engine maintenance). It's never the fault of the aircraft at all.

It's the humans maintaining and flying aircraft that are the imperfection in the equation. We're the fragile ones that don't survive the shock waves at crash--it's usually not the construction of the aircraft at fault.

Answer 3

It's not indestructable. It's protected mainly by the crushable cabin of the aircraft. Only the data recorder mechanism is hardened. If you built an aircraft to those standards, it would never leave the ground. Imagine an M1A Abrams tank with 3 foot wings.

Even if you had some magic material that was totally indestructible and light enough, the passengers would still all be killed. When the aircraft crashed, it would come to an instant stop but the passengers would keep moving at 500 MPH. They'd but cut in half by the seatbelts which would act like cheese slicers. The body parts would then be smashed into the seat or bulkhead in front of them and all of the guts and goo would spray all over the inside of the aircraft. Nice visual, eh?

Answer 4

Planes are funny creatures. They need to be rigid in some areas and flexible in others.

The black box is a small componnent. I know the joke is that the plane should be made of the same material as the black box, but we've learned over the years that even automobiles shouldn't be made to be completely rigid. We've had to remember to take into consideration that people aren't. We're more likely to survive a car crash if certain parts will take an impact better than others.

Planes are like that too. Your chances of surviving a plane crash increase through safety studies, and to be quite honest, I don't think I'd want to fly in a black box!

Answer 5

The NTSB standard for aircraft survivability is something like the equivalent of 35mph into a wall. Its about 7G's or something low like that. Basically its the equivalent of a fall from about 15 feet onto a concrete floor. The aircraft all that force MUST go somewhere, and deforming the aircraft is part of the shock-absorbing characteristics of the aircraft. Just like the "crumple-zones" in your car

While it may seem unlikely to ever crash at 35 mph, its not particularly unrealistic to imagine two aircraft taxiing into each other at a combined speed of 35mph. Designing an aircraft to withstand the impact forces of a 500mph crash would be a wasted effort, as the deceleration forces mentioned above would turn you into a little red puddle on the floor regardless of the condition of the aircraft's exterior

Answer 6

Black boxes don't always survive crashes. Also it would make the plane much too heavy. Also, no matter what a plane is built of if it come careening towards earth from 35,000 feet @ 500 mph the chances of anything holding up is quite small.

Answer 7

People have already correctly answered why you can't do that...too heavy and expensive.

But don't forget even if the plane survived the crash, there is no certainty that you would.

What the NTSB euphemistically call "deceleration forces."

Answer 8

what kill u is the deceleration.

you brain will move and be compressed and all organs too , and you die instantly. so even with the best build aircraft in the world, the human body would not support the negative G.

if you jump straight down from a chair(where you stand and not sit), and you keep your legs straight, u can die...

try that, and let me know;)

Answer 9

I admit black boxes are very durable, however weight is paramount to aircraft design. There are many other uses for them already!

Answer 10

they do: those airplanes are called tanks and do not fly
and they are as tough as the orange "black box"
and both can be destroyed by enough impact