Australia Rebooting Search For MH370 92
McGruber (1417641) writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that two months after pausing its search for the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200ER, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) is ready to reboot its search. The ATSB is poised to select among bids from the world's most-advanced deep-water specialists, including offshore oil-and-gas companies, maritime research institutions and treasure hunters eager to use their technologies and experience to solve the Flight 370 riddle—and potentially raise their own profiles in the process. ... With no hard evidence of where the plane went down, the search will test the recovery industry's abilities like nothing before. In June, Australian authorities shifted the search zone for a third time — by about 600 miles to the southwest — after reanalyzing satellite transmissions. Even then, they said it was impossible to know whether the fresh search area would prove correct."
I hope they find it (Score:2, Interesting)
Just so that people stop sending me links to conspiracy theories about it. The problem with all of the conspiracy theories about MH370 that I have encountered so far is:
1. There is no motive for a conspiracy.
2. There is no evidence of a conspiracy.
Other than that all of the conspiracy theories are "interesting".
Re:More information (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm sorry about all the people who were on the plane, but if there's any bright side in this it is that the world will get to map a bit more of what's around us. It's shocking how little we know about the depths of the oceans.
So I hope all the multibeam data collected about the sea floor features gets published to free and open databases like GMRT:
http://www.marine-geo.org/port... [marine-geo.org]
Re:How much have they spent already? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's my problem.
It went into the ocean. Everyone is pretty certain of that. Since it did, it either broke up, or was able to remain intact. Highly unlikely it remained entirely intact, statistically speaking, given what we know about pilots, aircraft, water landings.... So, that means it broke up. Now I imagine most debris would sink. Most! However, there was quite a bit of material on that plane that wouldn't, or shouldn't sink. Ever! I realize the ocean is big, and search efforts are rather small comparively, but I have a hard time believing we haven't found a single shred of debris from the plane. Maybe it's just a matter of time, but to me, the most disconcerting things is that we've found no trace of it, at all! Nothing!
Re:Why the Australians? (Score:3, Interesting)
It took 2 years of searching before the black boxes from Air France flight AF447 were found, and during that period there was a massive amount of speculation and doubt about what happened, leading to total uncertainty about how to prevent another crash. Airbus took a beating as everyone assumed it was an aircraft fault which led to the crash.
When they found the black boxes, the real problem turned out to not be a systems fault (although there was a momentary loss of air speed data due to icing, it didn't cause the crash) but a crew training problem so spending the time and money to find and recover them after 2 years has lead to small systems changes but significant pilot training changes.
So while everyone assumes that MH370 crashed due to the pilot committing suicide, there is always that element of doubt because we really don't know what transpired until we have evidence - so what happens if that assumed 0.001% chance of this particular crash being caused by something else, something mechanical or systems related, comes real and it causes another crash?
There is a serious control fault with the Airbus that did result in the crash of AF447. One pilot was nosing the plane up as hard as he could. The other was nosing it down as hard as he could. There was absolutely no feedback from one pilot to the other indicating that they were fighting each other. Instead, the control system took the stronger force and allowed the plane to continue to try and climb and eventually stall and fall from the sky. Was there a huge mistake on the part of the pilots? Absolutely. But you can't deny that there was a critical problem with the controls in the aircraft as well. A problem that so many people try to say doesn't exist.
Re:How much have they spent already? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, pieces of debris should start washing up on beaches, but it can take a while. The first of the "lost rubber duckies" of 1992 took ten months to be found, and finds continued for at least fifteen years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... [wikipedia.org]
Also, the floating debris won't include a lot of specifically airplane material. It will be seat cushions, clothing, plastic bottles...and the sea is already full of floating crap, so an object isn't certain to be recognized even if it appears on Waikiki Beach.