re: #59 ipsos

In 2015, when I can put 128 gigs of data on something smaller than the nail on my pinky and stick it in my phone, why in the world don’t both of the black boxes on a plane record both voice and data? (And video?)

They use two recorders for a number of good reasons. Among them is that the things have to be very robustly built and having two recorders reduces the chance that all of the data would be lost in a catastrophic crash.

Way back in the past I worked for a company that made flight data recorders for NASA and the military. Once a year they would pull two of them off of the line at random, load test data and then throw them out of an aircraft flying over China Lake, CA, at a specified speed and altitude. The data on them had to be recoverable when they dug the things out of the dry lake bed.