Malaysian Plane Missing After Take Off

[Motasyco]

Courtney Love ?? Lmao. Missed that one. Only "debris" I see her spotting involves a mirror, razor, and a straw.

If we are talking about the former Mrs. Cobain

 

That's the one. 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/18/showbiz/celebrity-news-gossip/courtney-love-missing-plane/

[tnguy]

Anyone else remember when the media used to ridicule conspiracy theorists?

[TMF]

Anyone else remember when the media used to ridicule conspiracy theorists?

 

This is the best observation to come out of this.

[Chucktshoes]

[quote name="tnguy" post="1127414" timestamp="1395327006"]Anyone else remember when the media used to ridicule conspiracy theorists?[/quote]

This is the best observation to come out of this.

Yeah, I do. Then we started getting proven right. It's a bit harder to dismiss us these days.

[tnguy]

I think the media are trying to out-tinfoil the tinfoil-hatters.

[bersaguy]

I wish they would locate the plane and end all of the theories that are flying around and finally give some kind of closure to all the family members of the passengers and crew. The thing that confuses me the most is with all of our high tech equipment most every country has these days and something as big as a 777 airliner can just disappear and be gone this long and no one can find it. It just amazes me and now I wonder just how good all this supposedly high tech equipment really is?.................jmho   It didn't fly through the Bermuda Triangle. It didn't even get close to it.  

[Guest Lowbuster]

I can't possibley wish that on anyone. I really don't know how to reply.

I'm with you Mike.
Chuck, how did you feel when 9-11 hit?

[peejman]

I wish they would locate the plane and end all of the theories that are flying around and finally give some kind of closure to all the family members of the passengers and crew. The thing that confuses me the most is with all of our high tech equipment most every country has these days and something as big as a 777 airliner can just disappear and be gone this long and no one can find it. It just amazes me and now I wonder just how good all this supposedly high tech equipment really is?.................jmho   It didn't fly through the Bermuda Triangle. It didn't even get close to it.  

 

 

The world is a big place.  It's easy to lose small things like airplanes.

 

Best I can tell, the current search area looks to be roughly 250,000 square miles.   Given the size of the pieces of stuff that have been found via satellite images (25-30ft) ... that's like looking for something that's 0.000027" in diameter on the floor in your 2000 sqft house.  The fact that they find anything is pretty astounding to me. 

Edited March 20, 2014 by peejman

[tnguy]

Now, GPS or not, what I don't understand is why there isn't some kind of beacon designed to deploy if a plane goes down at sea. Of course, if theories are to believed, the plane may not have gone down and an explosion could destroy such a device but still.

[TMF]

[quote name="tnguy" post="1127530" timestamp="1395339903"]Now, GPS or not, what I don't understand is why there isn't some kind of beacon designed to deploy if a plane goes down at sea. Of course, if theories are to believed, the plane may not have gone down and an explosion could destroy such a device but still.[/quote] Wouldn't matter. If they had a global device that regularly updated its position they would know the last known location before it went down. Doesn't matter if the device was destroyed, it would turn a search area the size of half the world into a search area the size of a county, depending on how quick they get there. Operating costs for fleet vehicles to update their position on similar devices can run between $20-$40/month. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[tnguy]

True enough. I don't take a stance on the GPS issue but a beacon would be trivially cheap. I think the black box already has one but they tend not to be too useful at the bottom of the sea.

Edit: Hmm, interesting

The beacon sends out pulses at 37.5 kilohertz (kHz) and can transmit sound as deep as 14,000 feet (4,267 m). Once the beacon begins "pinging," it pings once per second for 30 days. This beacon is powered by a battery that has a shelf life of six years. In rare instances, the beacon may get snapped off during a high-impact collision.

Edited March 20, 2014 by tnguy

[Jonnin]

The world is a big place.  It's easy to lose small things like airplanes.

 

Best I can tell, the current search area looks to be roughly 250,000 square miles.   Given the size of the pieces of stuff that have been found via satellite images (25-30ft) ... that's like looking for something that's 0.000027" in diameter on the floor in your 2000 sqft house.  The fact that they find anything is pretty astounding to me. 

 

The difference is that the search is covered by cameras and airplanes have a known (if intact, or mostly intact) shape.  Inside one day a good computer cluster can do pattern recognition on all the images to search for it.   If I had a few thousand high res images of my floor, an object that small but with a distinct shape, yea I could find it in short order.  I have a neural net trainer and image stuff around here somewhere, it would not take me long to rig up a search.

 

GPS is a wonderful thing, but it has some flaws.   First, the antenna has to be just so or they get muddled.  Second, to get altitude, it needs extra satellite connections.  Its not hard to make a beacon that deploys in an accident, but until fairly recently, it was expensive.   A decade ago (probably the majority of planes are at least this old..)  a high res gps, in a deployment system and all, you were talking 10 grand or more in materials and then, because its the bloody aviation industry, 10X that cost to get it certified to be installed on planes.    Now, the hardware costs nothing (gps is cheaper) and it would still cost 100 grand to certify it, if not more. 

 

Today, a *constant data stream* of all aircraft could *easily* be maintained via high speed networking & satellite comms.  This would be very expensive (satellite bandwidth is premium...  fast connections cost hundreds/ min), but it could be done.   This would cost some to certify but modern planes already have a high speed network capable system onboard, at least I think they do -- it might be a low-medium speed but still we are talking about 1 kilobyte of data every 60 seconds or so is all that is needed.....   I think we can manage that if we wanted to do so.
 (a floating point number is 80 bits, or 10 bytes, you need gps lat, lon, alt, heading, speed, roll, pitch, yaw, controls settings (steering commanded), wind/environmental forces...  all in all 100 values is probably too many, 30-50 so really 1/2 a KB per X seconds).    With the last one of those, we can extrapolate where it is going to crash.  And like any other system, turn it off, and you have nada.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Jonnin

[Chucktshoes]

I'm with you Mike.
Chuck, how did you feel when 9-11 hit?

I watched the events unfold with a sense of detached interest. I initially supported our actions in Afghanistan, but over time grew to realize that there was a definite element of blowback involved in 9-11. Our decades of interventions in the internal affairs of other nations birthed and nurtured that hatred of us in the M/E and elsewhere. The blood for the events of that day stains the hands of the US government as much as they do any terrorist.

[TMF]

[quote name="Jonnin" post="1127565" timestamp="1395342766"] GPS is a wonderful thing, but it has some flaws. First, the antenna has to be just so or they get muddled. Second, to get altitude, it needs extra satellite connections. Its not hard to make a beacon that deploys in an accident, but until fairly recently, it was expensive. A decade ago (probably the majority of planes are at least this old..) a high res gps, in a deployment system and all, you were talking 10 grand or more in materials and then, because its the bloody aviation industry, 10X that cost to get it certified to be installed on planes. Now, the hardware costs nothing (gps is cheaper) and it would still cost 100 grand to certify it, if not more. [/quote] There are no flaws. These devices are already in plenty of aircraft and transmit short burst data to the iridium architecture. While I agree that altitude requires more satellites, the altitude is relatively inconsequential in regard to determining its last known location. If we had that we would have known where the plane went down almost immediately. Not to mention, there are so many damn satellites in the constellation to get a GPS sample, and a 56 channel GPS receiver is standard and cheap nowadays. There are a whole lotta aircraft that already do this. There is no argument against it, especially when you have over 200 people and a gigantic aircraft that is not only missing, it will never be found. And, yeah, air worthiness for US commercial aircraft costs money, but considering this is something already in airframes, and that air worthiness tests are a drop in the bucket in terms of costs it doesn't make an argument against it. Not when you'll be paying out the nose later for a lost aircraft and all those bodies that won't be recovered, and the lawsuits which will bankrupt the airline. So, in terms of passenger confidence, the only thing worse than the thought of dying in a plane crash is the thought that no one will ever know what happened to you or where you crashed. This could all be avoided with a device that costs as much as an iPhone. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Sam1]

The plane was shot down over open water, that's why there was so much info withheld immediately after it turned up missing.  It was feared that the plane was going to be used in another attack.

 

Major issue, and obviously they can't come out and say "hey we shot the plane down because of the situation".

[Hershmeister]

[quote name="Chucktshoes" post="1127631" timestamp="1395352617"]I watched the events unfold with a sense of detached interest. I initially supported our actions in Afghanistan, but over time grew to realize that there was a definite element of blowback involved in 9-11. Our decades of interventions in the internal affairs of other nations birthed and nurtured that hatred of us in the M/E and elsewhere. The blood for the events of that day stains the hands of the US government as much as they do any terrorist.[/quote] Do not blame the victim Muslim hatred of "the west"goes back centuries - and its support of israel goes back to the beginning of the 20th century. If you want a good history lesson, read to first couple Chapters of The Farhud" by Edwin Black The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust by Edwin Black http://www.amazon.com/dp/0914153145/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_O3Imtb10HEXPQ

[Hershmeister]

[quote name="Sam1" post="1129901" timestamp="1395789570"]The plane was shot down over open water, that's why there was so much info withheld immediately after it turned up missing. It was feared that the plane was going to be used in another attack. Major issue, and obviously they can't come out and say "hey we shot the plane down because of the situation".[/quote] A very interesting notion - still mysterious as to why the plane was hijacked and why in blazes take it to antarctica?! What ever happened to going to cuba!

[Oh Shoot]

A very interesting notion - still mysterious as to why the plane was hijacked and why in blazes take it to antarctica?! What ever happened to going to cuba!

 

I think most all evidence now points to sudden serious failure of some sort that caused the pilots to both turn out of normal air lanes and get down to lower altitude in a hurry.

 

A mystery after that, but if indeed wreckage can prove that the plane went down in Indian Ocean, I think it flew there on autopilot until it ran out of fuel.

 

Just can't find any real scenario that this was a hijack or terrorist attempt on the part of the pilots at this point.

 

If they never find even any verifiable wreckage though, will be a much greater mystery than even D.B. Cooper.

 

- OS

Edited March 26, 2014 by Oh Shoot

[mikegideon]

I think one of the passengers turned into a werewolf and ate the pilots. 

[TMF]

I think most all evidence now points to sudden serious failure of some sort that caused the pilots to both turn out of normal air lanes and get down to lower altitude in a hurry.

 

A mystery after that, but if indeed wreckage can prove that the plane went down in Indian Ocean, I think it flew there on autopilot until it ran out of fuel.

 

Just can't find any real scenario that this was a hijack or terrorist attempt on the part of the pilots at this point.

 

If they never find any even any verifiable wreckage though, will be a much greater mystery than even D.B. Cooper.

 

- OS

 

That isn't a very sexy theory though.  It must be sensational.  Rational theories are not welcome when we have a void of information.

[Oh Shoot]

That isn't a very sexy theory though.  It must be sensational.  Rational theories are not welcome when we have a void of information.

 

Yeah, I know. Quite dull. More like real life than an action movie.

 

- OS

[npgunner]

You guys are all wrong ... they made a movie about this some years ago ... 

http://youtu.be/u6Squ9a2kO4

http://youtu.be/amYzBQMT4VI

[RC3]

What if there is no plane and they are just adverting our attention elsewhere in light of rising global tensions?

[TMF]

What if the plane never existed and this is all just your dream?  Or maybe we're just all characters in someone else's dream, where time itself is relative and our existence will be exstinuished upon them waking up???  What if we're all actually dead and don't realize it????   AAAAHHHHHHH!!!! BIG NEWS STORY!!!!! AHHHHH!!! MUST BE SOME CONSPIRACY!!!!

 

I wonder if they had crackpot tinfoil people when the Titanic went down, and if they did, I wonder what all their nutty theories were.

Edited March 26, 2014 by TMF

[DaveTN]

What if the plane never existed and this is all just your dream?  Or maybe we're just all characters in someone else's dream, where time itself is relative and our existence will be exstinuished upon them waking up???  What if we're all actually dead and don't realize it????   AAAAHHHHHHH!!!! BIG NEWS STORY!!!!! AHHHHH!!! MUST BE SOME CONSPIRACY!!!!
 
I wonder if they had crackpot tinfoil people when the Titanic went down, and if they did, I wonder what all their nutty theories were.

The Titanic never sank. The Olympic was disguised and sank on purpose as the Titanic for an insurance claim. The real Titanic then became the Olympic and sailed for 25 more years. No one died; it was all made up. They know that know but don’t want to release the information because we have such a great movie about it.