On Thursday, March 27, 2014 7:51:11 PM UTC-4, Robert Green wrote:
"trader_4" wrote in message

news:19ce2cf9-1e57-471e-addb-



stuff snipped



The crazy thing here is that if the ocean is chock full of garbage,

they can't even find that. For about a week now it's been a satellite

or plane spots some big object, but later when someone finally gets

there or the plane returns, they can't find it again. I haven't heard

about them finding a single thing in the search area that they thought

could have been from the plane, but isn't. It's just that they can't

find anything and poor weather isn't helping.



The original search area was equal to the size of the US. Now it's only 3

times the size of France. People just don't realize the incredible amount

of area that has to be searched, often just by bored people with binoculars

looking through the glare of an airplane cabin window. A lot of the

surrounding detritus that marks the typical ocean crash site was dispersed

by winds and waves for almost a week before they got the area right.



This wreckage might not ever get found because there's so much unrelated

junk in the water and because the Indian Ocean is so remote. The planes

spend most of their time and fuel getting to the search area and then have

to turn back after a few hours.



--

Bobby G.

And if you think this search area uncertainty, conditions, etc to locate
even one piece of debris is tough, what does that say about what comes
next, ie finding where the plane actually went down is? With 2+ weeks
having gone by, the uncertainty is going to lead to another large possible
area. One that can't be searched by airplanes going 200 mph. It took
2 years in the AirFrance case and that was with a much better idea of
where the plane went in. I don't hold out any hope of the pingers doing
any good. Even if they are working and last 2 months instead of one,
they just aren't going to be able to cover much of the possible area,
and they haven't even figured out where the possible area is.

One possibility would be that they could get luck and backtrack from
the debris field, if they find it, using sat pics going back in time.
If you found the debris today, you know the currents, wind, etc and
would know where to look in all the sat pics going back to the day
it crashed. Even if they only find pics of where that same debris
field was a week ago, it would narrow down the possibilities of where
to search. But then it's going to still be a huge area and those
remote control drones only go so fast, it could take many years.
A related question, who is going to pay for it? In the case of AF,
the French paid for it, heard numbers like $50mil. In this case,
since the Malaysians are in charge of it, what's the chance they will
pony up for what it takes, versus just calling it quits after a few
months? And if that happens, then what? I doubt Boeing or
anyone else will pay for it.

On the issue of the pingers, one wonders why they are limited to just
a month? They have shown them on TV and they are just small gizmos.
I don't see why by now they don't have ones that last many months.
Also, they've said they emmit a ping every second. Wonder who came
up with that and what it's based on. You would think that if it
emitted a ping say once every 5 secs, a sub, drone, whatever would
still be likely to detect it and then even with the current size,
batteries, etc it would last 5 months, instead of one. Seems to me
I'd rather have on ping every 5 secs for 5 months instead of what
we have now.