One problem we have here is there are reasoned, serious, and apparently thoughtful objections to the satellite data/interpretation like that one, but we also have the nutjob “resonance” engineers, who have objections as well. It’s hard for the average news viewer to tell the difference, as they both sound “sciencey.”
The problem with a “terrorism link” is that it would make little sense for any terrorist group to either not claim credit for such an event or to wait so long after the event to do so.Not much could be gained by not immediately claiming bragging rights for your actions if you are a terrorist.
I don’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade but I’m of the opinion that this plane will only be found by accident. Unless of course some government(s) are actively looking for it covertly. Thoughts?
I wish Inmarsat would release the full analysis, but all we have is one simple graph that was part of a press release. The way I see it, if this article is correct, there’s no way Inmarsat could possibly be that inept and it’s more likely that they just threw together a shitty graph to mask their trade secrets.
The British Air Accidents Investigation Branch and Inmarsat each performed independent studies of the satellite data before the search fully committed to the south, and after that Malaysia set up a group consisting of representatives from Inmarsat, the AAIB, Rolls-Royce, China’s Civil Aviation Administration and Aircraft Accident Investigation Department; the NTSB, the FAA, and Malaysian authorities to go over and refine the satellite data.
I can buy that they might be looking in the wrong spot, I can buy that there might be an overlooked mistake in the Inmarsat data, but I don’t buy the idea that all these experts and engineers have worked on this for hundreds of hours and haven’t figured out what these 3-4 guys have concluded from a simple graph.
Malaysia releases satellite data on missing jet
http://news.yahoo.com/malaysia-releases-satellite-data-missing-jet-043556329.html
That’s like inventing antigravity and masking your trade secrets by tying visible wires to all your public demo test objects.
Three months after the fact. Stay classy, Malaysia.
This thread keeps popping up like debris on a deserted, er … never mind.
Every time I see that commercial that says we’ll remember where we were when they announce cancer is cured. Starting to feel the same way about this flight.
I’m convinced a cardboard tube will eventually prove the pilot couldn’t have done it.
Navy official: Pings not thought to be from Flight 370’s black boxes
:rolleyes:
Time to bring back the radiation quacks.
I blame those frickin’ sharks with the frickin’ laser beams on their frickin’ heads.
Wonderful. Now what? They’re never gonna find this thing. C’mon kids.
[Dr. McCoy] “It’s over, Jim!” [/Dr. McCoy]
The War on Sharks, of course.
I suppose they could start analyzing sharks’ stomach contents. Or would it be too late for that by now?
So the ship or the hydrophone, by sheer luck, happened to produce ping sounds at the exact frequency and interval that the black box was expected to emit?
Or did they not bother to check the frequency/interval of the chirps they were hearing and compare it to what they expected from the black box?
I’m baffled as to how they could search for so long without having a clear understanding as to whether the signals they were hearing actually came from the black box or not.
This is just one navy guy being speculative and frankly moronic.
When your best theory is that the detection system detected itself at exactly the right time and place, you best shut up about it.
I’m baffled, too. I am not an expert on such matters, but I have been following this story closely. It looks like the black box signals can be altered by environmental factors (water, pressure, time) so “exact” frequency is not expected, but a range, and the sigs received were within the expected error bars (barely).
The Air France boxes apparently had this happen (As revealed by post-recovery tests; it is thought the AF black boxes did not trigger, possibly due to the plane’s forward motion being so slow on impact).
Unfortunately, the wider the range, the more likely to pick up bogus signals.
But I would expect the ping intervals to be a confirming or disconfirming factor. Maybe we had more wishful thinking than technological expertise at work here?
I don’t get how the pings could have been wrong either. The black boxes were both supposed to ping for 9 milliseconds duration once per second. It seems unlikely that a short circuit in the Bluefin would produce an exact matching ping, let alone two of them.
On the other hand, the frequency was wrong, which was thought to be due to the dying batteries. I’m thinking that they weren’t pinging exactly 9 milliseconds every second and they may have attributed that to dying batteries too. They may have put all their hope in signals that were a poorer match than we thought.
Their carefulness with public statements isn’t helping, especially after the Malaysian officials botched up the publicity early on. I can’t really fault them for it, they cautiously said it was a promising lead because they didn’t want to get people’s hopes up, but I wish they’d have given us details about the signals a month ago along with straight up pros and cons about them being related to MH370.
Well, I guess we have to be patient. It took two years to find Air France and they had GPS coordinates 4 minutes before it crashed. They still think MH370 is relatively nearby along that southern arc, and the Inmarsat data seems to be holding up. There are sections of the search area that they didn’t look at because they were too deep for the Bluefin, so there’s still a slim possibility that it’s right there under their noses.