Your papers please

[David Honig]

At 01:49 PM 10/19/01 -1000, cpaul wrote:
>On Fri, 19 Oct 2001 10:49:28 +0800 "F. Marc de Piolenc"
<piolenc at mozcom.com> wrote:
>
>> Sounds like we need to be dictating into cellphones, with remote
>> recording!
>
>fishing through wreckage for a crumpled black box recorder seems pretty
>old fashioned, too.
>

30K planes in the air before; maybe 20K now (or 30K 2/3rds full..).
Lots of data from mobile senders.  [Yes, some of the 30K are too small to
be interesting.]
Though now perhaps you could do it by piggybacking on the cellphone 
mesh?   Cheaper than satellite.  
(Though what about hitting multiple cells, the non-EMI reason for not
using cells on planes)

N years ago a robust tape recorder was the best you could do;
N/2 years ago a solid state recorder became reasonable.  For some
value of N.  Now RF (digitally encoded, bursty?) is feasible.