Comments on: Digital cyclorama to replace air traffic control towers

By: jackbird

jackbird — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 13:19:00 +0000

While most of your post makes sense,

Peoples up time is between 20% – 33.3%.

would mean most people are out sick from work one day per week (even after charitably inverting the fraction).

By: Magnus Redin

Magnus Redin — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 09:49:00 +0000

Yes we had such an airforce, most of the wartime base organisation were disbanded after the end of the cold war, almost all the short road runways are disused and many have been converted to 2+2 lanes of wire separated roads.

About 20 main runways are used for hobby and small scale commerical traffic and those can not afford a manned tower but a pole with cameras etc would be ok and provide for better service.

By: Magnus Redin

Magnus Redin — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 09:36:00 +0000

That is how it is sold in Sweden, as a way of keeping small mostly municipiality owned airports open within a small budget. It is however well on its way to expand out of that niche market.

By: YourOldBuddy

YourOldBuddy — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 08:03:00 +0000

Sweden prepared for a Russian invasion by making lots of cheap SAAB jet fighters and lots of small runways which actually doubled as roads in some places, all over the country.

They are mostly all abandoned now but maintained. This is Saab maintaining a presence in those runways.

By: noah django

noah django — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 06:57:00 +0000

I’ll take that as a “no.” the gatefold to one of the illest hip-hop albums of all time is a cyclorama. enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuB2bG82-ro&feature=results_main

By: Kimmo

Kimmo — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 06:02:00 +0000

Yeah, my first thought was this system can’t ever be quite as robust as a window…

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 05:19:00 +0000

By: noah django

noah django — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 04:59:00 +0000

you mean to tell me that you don’t own a copy of Paul’s Boutique?

By: drunkenpastor

drunkenpastor — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 04:18:00 +0000

I’m a pilot. And a nurse. In the hospital, we just switched over to this “high tech” charting system that records vital signs…blood pressure, oxygen, etc…
It’s failed three times for more than 24 hour stretches already. Yes, we are a private hospital so money IS a factor and lives are secondary. (You can’t tell me it’s not…been doing this 20 years…)

Let’s hope the people who put these systems into place have enough backup people ON SITE and ON THE READY to take over if something happens. Our hospital had on site I.T. personnel for ONE frikken week. Then they bailed and made it phone call accsssible.

By: pjcamp

pjcamp — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 03:53:00 +0000

That should be just peachy keen when it bluescreens.

What’s with the giant coolie hat?

By: Cowicide

Cowicide — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:20:00 +0000

Makes sense.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:11:00 +0000

This reminds me of the stupid-NASA-and-their-silly-notebooks story. Who needs a printed manual? Who needs a window? Who needs a windshield when I have GPS?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIakZtDmMgo

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:07:00 +0000

When the generators start, the radios work fine. Perhaps the computers will be kind enough to reboot. Perhaps.

By: Diogenes

Diogenes — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:05:00 +0000

”…there are places it’s just hard to get air traffic controllers to live…”

…for the money being offered. Reminds me of the excuses of agribusiness in the US. They claim they have to hire undocumented workers because “Americans won’t do these jobs”. They leave out “…for the crappy wages we want to pay them.”

By: matthew sanders

matthew sanders — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:09:00 +0000

I think you may over estimate the security of military systems. Most big industrial and military networks rely on physical isolation for security (like the Iranian centrifuge facility that got taken out by stuntex, or drown control center in the US) and usually have pretty crap security practices, e.g. hundreds of machines running SOE images which nobody wants to patch/update because the bureaucratic process to get approval will waste you life.
I trust these guys more :o)

By: AirPillo

AirPillo — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:07:00 +0000

I think you would be disappointed both in the actual security of those systems, and in the poor training of the people maintaining them.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/virus-hits-drone-fleet/

By: matthew sanders

matthew sanders — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:03:00 +0000

And how well does the radio work when the power is cut in existing towers?

By: matthew sanders

matthew sanders — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 23:01:00 +0000

In countries like Australia, there are places it’s just hard to get air traffic controllers to live, and where the rate of aircraft arrival is low enough that adding a couple of controllers to the bill is a hefty drain on the budget year on year.

So this system gets you
a. Access to a big city controller, or multiple controllers if you suddenly need them. i.e. it scales.
b. Synthetic reality. The system will highlight the flock of birds, and the fox running down the run way, as well as the incoming aircraft.
c. Increased safety for smaller airports. Because for a couple of hundred K they can actually have access to controller 24/7.

It is also worth mentioning that as ace as a controller with binoculars is, if any part of the current tower system system goes dark (radio comms, radar, person with the flu etc) you’re still in the same hole.

Remember also that although people always ask, “What if it goes down?” they rarely ask, “What if she gets a cold and can’t come in?”.

Systems like this are designed with up-times that of 99.999%+ and will report when they are having an issue that 0.001% of the time. Peoples up time is between 20% – 33.3%.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:10:00 +0000

They’re just made for tripping.

By: timquinn

timquinn — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:48:00 +0000

geez, I hope none of you guys ever join my improv group. You’d be all, like, “What hat, I don’t see a hat.” Whoopy, you get the rational guy merit badge, can we get back to having fun now?

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:44:00 +0000

Or title it: ”How to spend $100million per airport when you could have put in a window.”
Tech fails, uber-tech costs more than we can afford. My wife works for companies that have built airport towers and they are already VERY expensive. Putting in redundancies for tech when a simple tower with windows ALREADY costs $40-50million in places like hurricane-prone Florida is silly.

By: Preston Sturges

Preston Sturges — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:03:00 +0000

The Gettysburg Cyclorama is back on display after its own long strange trip.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Cyclorama

By: Fogbert

Fogbert — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:57:00 +0000

Agree.

Where I could see this as a real bonus would be at larger uncontrolled airports or airports that are only controlled during certain hours.

By: deviousasti

deviousasti — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 19:47:00 +0000

Coming up next: Live video chat with the aircraft cabin with fun effects like Fire, Stall warning and Hostages in the background .

By: zotlerg

zotlerg — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:55:00 +0000

They’ll feel a bit silly when there’s a power cut!
I guess using cheap foreign labour remotely would keep their accountants happy.

By: paul

paul — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:44:00 +0000

Jackbird is right. Pretty much all the air traffic control action already happens in windowless rooms. This would be mostly about ground traffic control at airports, with a side order of final approach and takeoff. In a lot of ways this is also an acknowledgement of what we already live with, namely that if the automatics go out the situation is so complex that you’re pretty much up the creek even if you have full manual control

By: jackbird

jackbird — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:29:00 +0000

The on-airport tower isn’t TRACON, though. They direct traffic on the taxiways, clear planes for takeoff and landing, etc. Their job is very much about seeing what is actually happening on the airport grounds and in the immediate vicinity.

Because that’s their job, I can’t imagine how this would be allowed – if a camera went out (or someone hit the data cable with a backhoe) they’d have to shut down the airport until it was resolved, or else fail over to actual controllers in an actual tower (hence no cost savings).

Also, a nice $250 pair of binoculars in the control tower provides very nice “zoom cabability,” and a night vision or thermal imaging scope would do much the same for the other capabilities.

Is there some actual problem with current control towers (too many stairs!) being solved here? Is building the control tower a tremendous expense in airport construction?

By: Barry

Barry — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:28:00 +0000

The technology itself may not be much different from military applications, but I would be greatly surprised if the security in civilian applications matches military requirements.

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:27:00 +0000

This is the Minority Report view screen in alpha mode.

Add a Kinect and get some motion/gesture interface and we can get it to beta mode in no time.

By: Ned Carlson

Ned Carlson — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:26:00 +0000

Seems like the most sensible shot term implementation would be to drop this into existing towers as an augment, even if it means conventional screens that have to be scrolled rather than the full wraparound.