China Deploys Satellites In Search For Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 142
EwanPalmer writes "China has begun using its orbiting satellites in a bid to find the missing Malaysian Airlines flight. The Xi'an Satellite Monitor and Control Center is said to have launched an emergency response to search for Flight MH370 after it went off radar over the South China Sea in the early hours of Saturday. The center is reported to have adjusted up to 10 of its high-res satellites to help search for the plane."
Check small airports (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes big airliners can get lost at those.
Re:Check small airports (Score:5, Interesting)
Sometimes big airliners can get lost at those.
While that happens once in a while with US flights, I don't think there are very many airports in that lane where an errant 777 could go unnoticed. The route, as described on the BBC is a very heavily traveled air lane and the flight should have been easily tracked, particularly if it had veered off course.
No floating debris is perplexing as that should have been soon spotted had the flight broken up.
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I'm not joking. If this thing landed at some tiny landing strip in the boonies with a serious electrical problem (or having been hijacked), it could just be sitting somewhere. Not likely, but I wouldn't rule it out.
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How many 'tiny landing strips' can handle a 777 so damaged that it can't send out a radio distress signal? I would think that the numbers would be vanishingly small.....
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I didn't say it was a *successful* landing.
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How many 'tiny landing strips' can handle a 777 so damaged that it can't send out a radio distress signal? I would think that the numbers would be vanishingly small.....
In addition to this, there are few places where a 777 could land, safely or otherwise in SE Asia that doesn't have mobile reception or people.
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I'm totally not an expert, but I do have some questions that the news do not answer:
If the 777 took a rapid dive to nearly ground level, and then changed course, and continued flying at an elevation of mere meters above the water, would the radars in the area have picked it up? And once such an airplane is hundreds of kilometers off course, would anyone notice if it increases its altitude to a few hundred meters, before attempting a landing on a straight stretch of road somewhere in Cambodia, Borneo (in Ind
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Heck, in the middle of the sea they could have skipped the dive and just turned off their transponder and communications. It isn't like air search radar sets are in operation in the middle of the ocean. They could probably overfly large parts of the US without being detected on primary radar (though probably not the borders - not much point in advertising an ADIZ and not having radar).
If they actually flew at low altitude it would not be picked up by radar unless it was fairly close or airborne. They wou
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The Malaysian military reported a radar signal that was likely the flight over the Straight of Malacca (west coast) rather than the Bay of Thailand which everyone has been focusing on.
I have a pet theory and it does well explain all the events. This theory is based on the fact that Thailand and Malaysian relations have been sour as of late.
So here's the facts, at least as I understand it.
1. Radar contact of the flight was lost over the Bay of Thailand and appeared to be turning (~750km NNE of Kuala Lumpur).
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Re:Check small airports (Score:5, Interesting)
This aircraft had modern rolls royce trent engines - these come with an online 24x7x365 service back to Derby in the UK where all engines that are flying around the world are monitored in close-to real time using an independent comms facility to that of the rest of the aircraft. They will know if the engines powered up/down and what their status was at the last moments before contact was lost. I imagine the Malaysian Authorities are keeping a lot of the data under-wraps at the moment and I would assume that a lot more is known about the aircraft than is being released to the public right now.
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But in that case, where are the people? If the plane landed relatively intact, people would evacuate/escape the plane before it sinks, and you would have people and rafts or clinging to their seat cushions which would be spotted (and rescued). Same thing with the plane landing at some rural airstrip - eventually some of the passengers/crew would find a way to contact civilization.
Re: Check small airports (Score:1)
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If it crashed into the water, it breaks up and stuff floats to the surface. If it glides to the water, it might break up into a couple of pieces:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
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The pilot that you're talking about was an awesome guy that frequently posted on flight sim forums, posted youtube videos about how to save you money on your air conditioner and had a daughter, a family. He was a better human being then you'll ever be.
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I prefer to think that it has slipped through a wormhole and is out of temporal phase with the rest of the Earth [youtube.com].
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Sounds like there was a very important person of Chinese descent on it.
Several. Quite a few movers and shakers, including holiday takers. China takes care of its own.
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Nooooo. Not spy, just, y'know, observing ... stuff, yeah observing stuff, that's the ticket. All just hanging around up there, just in case they're needed for something like this.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
Radar is line of sight. So a plane at 11000 meters, can be seen about 375 km away from the radar installation, assuming a radar at ground level.
If your radar is within 200km of the plane, the plane would fall below the radar horizon at about 5km altitude.
Given the description of the plane's flight path, if it was being tracked by radar from Kuala Lumpur, then "dropped off the radar" would have been closer to 10km altitude than to 5km.
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If you look at a map you'll see this flight path takes you past some pretty well monitored territory - though obviously there are a few bugth in the thythtem.
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Radar is line of sight. So a plane at 11000 meters, can be seen about 375 km away from the radar installation, assuming a radar at ground level.
If your radar is within 200km of the plane, the plane would fall below the radar horizon at about 5km altitude.
Given the description of the plane's flight path, if it was being tracked by radar from Kuala Lumpur, then "dropped off the radar" would have been closer to 10km altitude than to 5km.
Why do they not have satellite location based reporting on the planes providing the planes position every five minutes? Expand the ACARS system to give the position of the plane. This would help the searchers narrow down the location where the plane was lost.
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Why do they not have satellite location based reporting on the planes providing the planes position every five minutes? Expand the ACARS system to give the position of the plane. This would help the searchers narrow down the location where the plane was lost.
I think most airliners do just that. If not equipped with ACARS then they have to do HF position reports with regular frequency. However, I'm not sure how much that applies internationally, it is quite possible that procedures at Malaysian airlines aren't quite what they are with Lufthansa or United.
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I was thinking about this yesterday. Doesn't the vast majority of modern aviation tracking radar systems depend pretty heavily, not just for identification but for returns at all at at long distances, on the planes own IFFtransponders for replies?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]
Could it not "drop off" the long range radar simply by turning off it's transponder? At that distance the radar return might be low enough that without the transponder response, it'd "disappear"...
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Re:Thoughts (Score:4, Informative)
IANAATC, but...
Most center surveillance radars have a range of 200 - 250NM (ARSR-3, ARSR-4, AN/FPS-117, AN/FPS-67B). Secondary beacon radars have a range of about 190NM for 1090ES equipped transponders.
You are correct in assuming most high altitude center control ops, for aircraft in cruise, rely heavily on MODE-S data. This is transponder data and not primary radar echo return data.
Terminal radar, the kind you see at your local airport, mostly relies on primary radar data. But at a shorter range (~50NM).
The reasons for the difference are many, but come down to accuracy and overlap. Center controllers use a mosaic of data from multiple radars that must average primary returns, this leads to slight disagreements on the true location of the aircraft. The MODE-S data is constant though, so it is preferred. In terminal environments, there's usually a single radar set. So the primary data is more useful in terms of accuracy for spacing the aircraft (they can pack them in tighter more safely). Terminal radar sets also have a higher scan rate.
MH370 was over the Gulf of Thailand and was under coverage of about three different radars. Even if the transponder was turned off, primary return data would still be available for the track. CrimsonAvenger has a valid point, but the last known location of the flight was far off shore and at a cruising altitude. So we could possibly speculate that line of sight was not a big factor.
There's a lot of big mysteries and speculation at this point, but we just need to give it time. They will eventually find the wreckage and hopefully determine they cause. There are many historical crashes that required more searching than has been applied to MH370 (AF447). In the meantime, grab some popcorn and enjoy the conspiracy theories...
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Why can a transponder be "turned off" anyway? On a civilian plane there is no reason whatsoever for a pilot to turn off the transponder.
It's so they can be re-purposed as bombers in times of conflict.
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Plausible deniability. Civilian planes violating airspace can cause incidents.
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Sure thing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-horizon_radar
.
Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Funny)
So NOW do you see the advantage of a flat Earth?
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OK, You win.
How soon can you implement changeover?
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"So - these are Chinese spy satellites? Given the region, hasen't the US got similar facilities in zone?"
You know that satellites don't orbit above a fixed point on the earth. (well except for geostationary ones that are 25,000 milrd up, and generally you want your spy satellites closer than that..
" How low does a plane need to fly to "drop off the radar"?"
That depends on how far away from the radar it is. Sonce it was pretty far away, I would expect the radar not to be able to see it if the plane dropped t
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Malaysia military reported a radar response for the plane off the west coast of Malaysia over the Straight of Malacca.
What I suspect is they had a depressurization requiring descent to 10,000ft that dropped them off radar. Then they banked to port, turned off their transponder, flew over Thailand (made easier to not having a transponder on) to reach the Straight of Malacca in order to attempt to return to Kuala Lumpur. Why they didn't turn the transponder back on would be a good question but I bet they land
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Of course the US has satellites that can look at that part of the world. And they may well be doing so. It's just China is trying to score a couple of PR points by showing that they can act like a Big Important Country and task their surveillance satellites to suit their interests.
We of course know that they can - spy satellites don't do much good if you can't spy on people. The US is also spending assets [globalsecurity.org] in the search. So will everyone else who is involved.
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Of course the US has satellites that can look at that part of the world. And they may well be doing so. It's just China is trying to score a couple of PR points by showing that they can act like a Big Important Country and task their surveillance satellites to suit their interests.
We of course know that they can - spy satellites don't do much good if you can't spy on people. The US is also spending assets [globalsecurity.org] in the search. So will everyone else who is involved.
Your left shoe is untied.
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China is the big and important country. Only the dumbest of the dumb would try to deny.
Notably US is not dumbest of the dumb, that's why they're shifting their military to counter its growth.
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If military hardware (spy satellites) are being invoked anyway, then I suspect that if the plane were detected by technologies they didn't want to admit to they would use that knowledge to target more admissible sources of evidence.
As for going under the radar, I expect that a decent sized civilian aircraft probably doesn't have that option, especially over the ocean where *everything* above water is easily trackable (if boats show up on radar, a plane can't fly under it). I haven't been following the deta
Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thought. How low does a plane need to fly to "drop off the radar"?
First, Civilian radar depends on transponders, a small transmitted signal from the aircraft that is triggered by the Radar signal. This transponder responds with a "squawk code" (a 4 digit number assigned by ATC) along with some other basic information like altitude. Transponders make it unnecessary to get a "primary" return (i.e. they don't have to get the actual radar signal return) for the aircraft to show up. In fact, most civilian radar installations run with primary returns filtered out because they create visual noise for controllers, because weather and other noise shows up.
Second, the aircraft in question was at the far reaches of radar coverage. This tells me that a primary return was unlikely. In fact, the radar coverage for this aircraft was expected to end right about where it did. I"m told that radar coverage did not start back up for the next controller for a few min of flying time so a short time out of coverage was expected. They will pull the tapes and review for any primary returns, but I'm guessing this has already been done an it provided little information.
So, this tells me that something happened to the aircraft during the short time it was outside of coverage. What ever it was, it must have disrupted the flight controls and likely their communications ability, but it seems that the aircraft stayed largely in one piece, at least until it impacts the surface. If it was generally in one piece with say the vertical stabilizer disabled it could have flown a LONG way from the last position report.
It did NOT break up at altitude. Something rendered the aircraft uncontrollable. A loss of hydraulic pressure or power does this for a 777. Decompression at 35,000 feet can do significant damage to an aircraft's systems, plus it can incapacitate the flight crew in less than 10 seconds. Decompression can do this, without causing the aircraft to come apart in the air. Metal fatigue, fuel tank explosion, small explosive device, uncontained engine failure are all possible things that can cause decompression and all of these have happened before.
My guess is that they will find the aircraft tens even hundreds of miles away from the last known position, largely in one piece under water. The longer this takes, the further away from where it was last seen it will likely be. This is because they have found nothing yet. Much of an aircraft floats, so it sank in one major chunk with out spreading debris too far. This is not totally inconsistent with past aircraft crashes. KAL 007 flew nearly 20 min in a slow descending circle after being shot down. They will find it in a day or two.
Re:Thoughts (Score:5, Informative)
A loss of hydraulic pressure or power does not do this for a 777. It has a RAT (ram air turbine) which pops out in such cases. Basically a big propeller which gets turned by the wind as the plane glides at 500 mph and generates enough power rudimentary electronics (including radio) and hydraulic pressure. That's what happened with the Gimli Glider [damninteresting.com] - a 767 mistakenly loaded with insufficient fuel (the original boneheaded imperial vs metric conversion foul-up before the Mars Climate Orbiter). which basically turned into a 100 ton glider when it ran out of fuel mid-flight. The RAT popped out and allowed the crew to control the plane to a safe landing. (Which of course means if this did happen on MH370, the search area needs to be much larger than where they're currently looking).
Hydraulic failure usually involves structural damage which compromises all the hydraulic lines. Most commercial aircraft have 3 independent hydraulic systems; some have 4. If there's damage which severs lines in all of those systems, the plane can "bleed" hydraulic fluid until there's not enough left to control the flight surfaces. I believe the 777 used a hybrid fly-by-wire + hydraulic system though, where pilot commands are transmitted to the flight surfaces by wire, and a hydraulic pump there moves the flight surface. So severing the hydraulic lines may have killed one control surface, but not all. (Severing the wires OTOH...)
Anyway, I'm skeptical that it broke up at altitude too. That usually generates a lot of floating debris (papers, luggage, clothing, bodies, etc.) scattered over a wide enough area that the crash area is quickly located. The pingers [benthos.com] should be firing away so it's just a matter of one of the search boats traveling within a few miles from the plane's resting location. (KAL007 wasn't located because the Soviets knew from their radar tracks where it went down, and set up decoy pingers far away to get the U.S. and South Korea to search the wrong location).
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I'm somewhat familiar with the RAT system and I'm not discounting it.
What I'm saying is that we must have had multiple system failures. ALL power or ALL hydraulic pressure (both of which have multiple redundant and independent systems) or possibly an unfortunate combination of partial system failures. Such catastrophic failures should be vanishingly rare, and usually would be the result of a major structural failure and one would expect the breakup of the aircraft would result. In flight breakup didn't
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Re:Why then the crews never made any distress call (Score:4, Insightful)
Could it be that when emergency strike the crews panicked and started praying on their knees to their Allah and forgot to call for help ??
No. As my flight instructor told me, fly the plane first and if you have time, talk on the radio. If they where busy with multiple system failures the first task is to get control of the aircraft. If you don't have the aircraft under control, talking on the radio is the absolute WRONG thing to be doing unless there is time. ATC is required to ask you all sorts of useless questions and if you are struggling to control your aircraft the last thing you want or need is another distraction. "Nature of your emergency?" "Number of souls on board?" "What are your intentions?" Now if they can help you by suggesting the nearest airport, clearing the runway, getting the fire trucks rolling or getting search and rescue started by all means, get on the radio, but the first thing you do is FLY THE AIRPLANE.
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Primary return data is most likely available for the initial part of the descent (maybe down to 10,000 AGL), regardless of SSR MODE-S data. The Gulf is covered pretty well radar wise (not counting military sets) Ref: See page 2 [icao.int]. The difficulty is collecting, combining, and analysing all the CD2 data from the primary returns. Even then, the general public may not be advised of the outcome of the analysis until well after the search.
I concur that it did not break up at altitude, otherwise the debris field wou
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I would agree except that apparently they don't know where it is or they would have found it by now. Something tells me that this aircraft headed below radar coverage quickly, then few for quite some ways before ditching. We have no ELT signals which says they are underwater. We have no debris so the aircraft stayed together until impact with the water (or longer).
Primary paint requires Line Of Sight and if the military radar is ground based this happened in about the worst possible location for coverag
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Depressurization would require a descent that could drag the plane below altitude to be detected by radar. The more I look at the situation the more I believe that's what happened combined with the radio silence and IFF transponder being turned off because they were about to violate Thay airspace.
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That still makes no sense. Entering Thai airspace wouldn't be considered a violation for a civilian airliner in distress. Civilian airliners don't have "IFF transponders" either, just the usual aviation transponder. If they suffered loss of pressurisation and were still conscious enough to bring the plane down, the first thing to do would be activate emergency locator beacons, followed by distress call, letting ATC know what you're doing on the usual channel, and making sure your transponder is active.
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Malaysian military radar's last signal for what they believe was this flight was over the Straight of Malacca. More specifically it was roughly 300km NW of Kuala Lumpur. The radar signal that showed the plane possible turning around was roughly 750km NNE of Kuala Lumpur.
If that is true, it means the plane banked port, crossed over Thailand and was probably trying to return to Kuala Lumpur. It likely also touched down on water in one piece and became submerged with a limited debris field. I'm thinking that t
Auto-play video on linked article (Score:5, Informative)
There's an auto-playing video embedded in the linked article's page - just in case you hate that sort of thing.
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Helps to do that for MP4, as well.
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Of course, your answer seems to assume everyone uses your particular browser. Perhaps you were unaware that there are others out there even if you have never used them?
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Good ol' farcebook is ensuring we have the ability to block just about everything in our browsers because they are so damn insidious.
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stick with Lynx.
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There is?
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Yes, there is, your smug sense of self-superiority in having disabled the same notwithstanding.
"Having Flash disabled," much like "knowing what RMS stands for," are not actually mandatory for being allowed to read Slashdot.
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"Having Flash disabled," much like "knowing what RMS stands for," are not actually mandatory for being allowed to read Slashdot.
That's fine, but unfortunately they are not necessary for posting either.
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Thanks God for my Flash blocker. :)
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Deploy: to remove the ploy from something.
"Hey, I got too much ploy, who wants to deploy me?"
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Once a spy satellite is in orbit, you deploy it for specific tasks. Once a ship is deployed for the Arabian Gulf, it can be deployed to the Indian Ocean without having to first return to port.
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Deploy: to arrange in a position of readiness, or to move strategically or appropriately
The start position or status is irrelevant. Either is appropriate in this case.
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Yes, but each requires filling out entirely different forms. In triplicate.
Oh, sorry. I thought these were Indian satellites we were talking about.
Win-win for China (Score:1)
1) China has successfully tested the ability of their stealth interceptor to take down a plane.
2) China demonstrates near-instantaneous ICBM launch capability.
They'll never find the island it landed on. (Score:1)
Unless it happens to flash into this time period. All the passengers are there now, running from polar bears, avoiding smoke monsters - that sort of thing.
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Time periods? Polar Bears? Smoke Monsters?
I disagree. The plane is hidden on a deserted volcanic island that's part of the Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia.
The planes occupants (including Mik Kanrokitoff) are currently aboard a flying saucer. Most will reappear in due course suffering from amnesia.
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The is flight 370 - not 714... :-)
My best guesses are
a) The pilot flew the plane at a very low altitude to a deserted island, where there is no mobile signal. Why? We will find out...
b) The pilot dropped the plane intact into the sea (and hence no debris). Why? No one knows...
I think we will find out in the next few days...
what about Ben Charles Padilla (Score:2)
have they found him or the Boeing 727-223 that he was last on and has not be found.
Why aren't big planes PERMANENTLY monitored? (Score:2)
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Because the pilot needs the means to be able to shut off power to any system for safety.
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I believe most US airliners do just this. I imagine most EU ones do as well. That is, at least for position - the amount of telemetry might vary based on mode of communications. It might not be as frequent as once a minute, however.
International Charter on Space and Major Disasters (Score:1)
It hasn't been activated for Malaysia Airlines Flight 307, nor was it activated for Air France Flight 447 in 2009 --one would think that they'd be all over this sort of thing like a cheap suit. Does anyone know why not? A computer search for a debris field that wasn't there during the previous pass would seem like a no-brainer.
http://www.disasterscharter.or... [disasterscharter.org]
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It hasn't been activated for Malaysia Airlines Flight 307, nor was it activated for Air France Flight 447 in 2009 --one would think that they'd be all over this sort of thing like a cheap suit. Does anyone know why not? A computer search for a debris field that wasn't there during the previous pass would seem like a no-brainer.
http://www.disasterscharter.or... [disasterscharter.org]
One plane going down is a tragedy.
100 planes all going down at once is a major disaster.
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Simple. This doesn't meet the criteria [disasterscharter.org] required to activate a giant global collaboration of space agencies. There needs to be more than 200 people lost to invoke the charter.
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You don't need global collaboration. There are privately owned imaging satellites with enough resolution 1m to detect anomalous debris floating around.
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Except that the comment I replied to was specifically in the context of "Why hasn't the Disasters Charter been activated to find this plane?" and the answer is, "because this isn't a disaster of great enough magnitude".
Though we're now learning that more than a couple of spy agencies are turning their surveillance resources onto the task (finally! The NSA might be good for something!)
As opposed to (Score:2)
their non-orbiting satellites?
Terrorist Attack (Score:1)
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or... a young Iranian guy wants to see his mum in germany and seeks diplomatic asylum.
statistically unjustified opinion (Score:2)
The vast majority of passports are stolen for mundane criminal purposes not terrorism.
http://www.independent.co.uk/v... [independent.co.uk]
this is not possible (Score:2)
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The planes are not tracked by simple radar, but by responses. If it stops responding, and is not close to an airport, it is lost.
It will be found, but the sea is big, and they did not have the courtesy to plummet from the last known location.
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I was watching the Discovery channel documentary on the 9/11 attacks the other night, and as soon as the hijackers turned off the transponders those planes effectively disappeared. The only way to track them would be with ground based radar. (And I don't think we have too many of those in the ocean).
Where is the US effort? (Score:2)
So the US isn't repositioning its satellites? It seems to me that China these days are doing the things that America used to at the drop of a hat without a whim...
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So the US isn't repositioning its satellites? It seems to me that China these days are doing the things that America used to at the drop of a hat without a whim...
Who said they aren't? I can't remember the last time the US announced the use of satellite surveillance for just about anything.
Seems like more of a PR move. I'm sure just about anybody with spy satellites is using them to look for debris. What else are they going to be busy looking at when they're over this region?
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Of course they are - the US satellites watch the Chinese ones and the NSA just tap the Chinese ground link to get the pictures ;-)
Better Question: Why Did It Take the PRC this Long (Score:2)
MH370 missing like Mandrake Magic (Score:1)
We can find this puppy (Score:1)
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Anyone happen to hear of any Aegis ships in the vicinity at the time?
Just asking.