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Robots To Search for Amelia Earhart's Lost Plane
raque writes "Following up on an earlier story, a group of aviation archaeologists will use underwater robots along with submersibles and sonar to search for Amelia Earhart's plane. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery will search this July for the aircraft, which went down 75 years ago. 'If there's wreckage there that can be recovered, we need to know what it is, how big it is, what it looks like, and what it's made of so we can prepare a recovery expedition that has equipment to raise whatever's there,' said Richard Gillespie, the group's executive director."
aaaaaaaand
over in 1
And then seeing robots looking for her!
http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/1312-robots-hunt-amelia-earhart.html
The site has been heavily /.'d that all of the article's text has been turned into dashes...
Can't people write anymore - did the robots volunteer or something? Jeezz....
CAPTCHA = resell
Funny thing when we went to pull up Amelia's airplane, we found something that's a Submarine, 150' long, long black and slender, and made of steel! Glomar Explorer was dispatched to the area a few months before the secretary of state, seemingly at random, and to the bewilderment of the press, announced from the whitehouse that they would be assisting in this "exploration of America's heritage".
moox. for a new generation.
I can't help but wonder if they're using this search for her plane as a cover for a secret military operation like they did with the Titanic. Seems like those robots would cost a little more than your typical academic research grant would cover.
Not that it's a bad thing: the researchers get funding from the military to quietly carry out their secret missions and in exchange they get to spend some time doing what they actually want to do which is investigate this remarkable person's fate. If it hadn't been for such arrangements, it's unlikely we ever would have found the Titanic.
In this case it's sheer speculation though.
Queue the sexism. :( A very disappointing first comment.
I don't understand the obsession with Amelica Earhart. It's pounded into kids in public schools as if she was so important. Seems to me the feminist movement is trying to rewrite history or at least emphasize what they deem more important to push their agenda. She crashed her plane and died, whoopee!
It could be a technology demonstrator, with or without the backing of the miliitary. It's easy to imagine using the same technology to recover more precious materials from pirate ships and what else. Who knows, maybe even NASA would be interested in knowing something they can send to the bottom of the presumably liquid Europa.
"and what it's made of "
I can tell you what it's made of right now. it was a Lockheed Electra 10E was built at Lockheed Aircraft Company to her specifications. Information about her plane was highly documented before it took off. Really scientists, have you not discovered the internet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Model_10_Electra
And I am certain that Lockheed will be glad to tell them what they made it of.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Bullshit!
Actually, there's science refuting this. Ask any insurance company.
We should all know already that Amelia Earhart and her plane were discovered by the Voyager crew in the Delta Quadrant!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708976/
I never really understood why people still care about her. Can someone here enlighten me?
The science purely says that it is cheaper, not that it is less likely.
Science is great and all, but it's useless if you're incapable of interpreting the data.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to get one of those numbered ticket dispensers? Then all the sexism could do something other than standing in line while waiting for its turn to come up.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The science purely says that it is cheaper, not that it is less likely.
Science is great and all, but it's useless if you're incapable of interpreting the data.
Not that what's less likely? The science shows that women are much less likely to be involved in serious accidents, and much less likely to die in those accidents. In short, their driving is less likely to result in serious and costly accidents. By any reasonable measure, a good driver is one who gets safely from A to B. The science tells us that women do this better than men by a significant margin. And since we're talking about a serious accident, I think the science is very applicable in this case.
:)
In other news, men certainly have bigger egos than women when it comes to driving.
Wouldn't it be more efficient to get one of those numbered ticket dispensers? Then all the sexism could do something other than standing in line while waiting for its turn to come up.
I wonder if there's a patent out for the "sexism queue".
lol, poor women... they can't drive or fly
Or load a dishwasher properly.
On the other hand, "queue the sexism" could just mean that there are so many bigots waiting for their cue that they'll have to stand in line.
making the Borg into a completely weak opponent
Borg was "a completely weak opponent", not winning a single set in nine matches in 1991 and 1992.
If you look at statistics per kilometer driven, there is little difference between the genders. Men tend to drive a lot more than women (at least in the US, I don't know about internationally). It seems both genders have their stereotypes that are unfounded.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
> The science shows that women are much less likely to be involved in serious accidents, and much less likely to die in those accidents.
Which has nothing to do with cost.
> In short, their driving is less likely to result in serious and costly accidents.
This is your conclusion, not theirs.
Again - science is useless if you're incapable of interpreting the data, as you seem to be.
A little skepticism kicks in for me, is this an attempt to raise donations for an otherwise non-funded archaeological expedition ?
Given the letters from little girls with $2 donation being displayed in their "most important sponsors page".
I am not making the expedition wrong, just throwing what came to my head, after all this is the Internet, where I can say what ever I want and get away.
-- It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -- Aristotle
Since her crash, I believe she's been on Stargate, Star Trek, The Outer Limits, Dr Who, and at least 5 other shows. So she could be just about anywhere by now lol.
Queue the sexism. :( A very disappointing first comment.
I think you mean cue the sexism.
Maybe a woman would've known the difference.
Confusion of cue and queue seems as /. specific as hot grits or goatse. I have yet to see a poster confuse the two on any other site.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Well, internationally I think that it's mostly man that drive. In Saudi Arabia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage#Saudi_Arabia) women cant drive a car at all, and most other muslim countries I have been it is rare (at least) to see women driving cars. There is an exception to that in former Soviet muslim country's like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan where Ive seen relatively lots of females driving. In India and China Ive seen some women in the big city's, but not that many. Europe, Australia, NZ, US is about 60/40 I guess, taking into account that most 'professional drivers' (lorry drivers, truck, taxi and so forth) are male.
South America... no clue.
That is why I guess that males are more driving around than females if you look at the world at large.
rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
I did all the hard work for you:
http://goo.gl/maps/jMYi ;)
Confusion of cue and queue seems as /. specific as hot grits or goatse.
or vagina
Personal experience and observations. In the people that I know there have been 34 serious accidents. 28 of those a woman was driving at the time. Serious is the car/truck being driven was totaled. Of those 28 4 times the driver was killed. I sort of say those were serious. In the 6 male driver accidents, no one killed. The car/truck being driven was also totaled.
If you count non serious the numbers go way up for the women that I know. Hell my sister has been in 12 accidents so far. Only 1 serious. The rest minor. But still. The science is tainted and biased by the insurance companies. Simply put historically, men got their drivers license first (not true today but back in the 1940s,50s,60s, 70s it was). So men got into accidents since there were more male drivers. Men can have a temper. So do women, but that is ignored. Men have a reputation of being aggressive drivers. Women can be aggressive drivers too, but that is ignored. So men have higher insurance rates then women. And people keep on telling the myth that women are safer drivers.
The group doing this search are (in my opinion) looking in the wrong place. This island is about 350 miles away from Earhart's intended destination, Howard Island, and not on the "line of position" she would have been flying. In order to be anywhere near this island, Earhart and her copilot would have to be really horrible navigators and/or not following the standard navigation procedures of the day. I don't think either of them would have been this bad, even with the tools available at the time. Her copilot was a professional, who had a lot of experience doing this kind of navigation and I'm sure Earhart had some proficiency with the techniques.
Further, there is no way to know that the items found belonged to Earhart. There is no DNA to test in the bones and the cosmetic items where in common use. Nobody documented what personal items Earhart might have with her so there is no real reason to expect that this has to be where she ended up or that this is her stuff.
Another reason to doubt that this is Earhart is that it is unlikely anybody could survive a landing that puts the aircraft on the reef. Ditching aircraft of the day is going to kill you (by blunt impact or drowning) 99 times out of a 100. Making a difficult landing on a narrow beach and ending up on a reef in the process is even less likely.
Finally, there is some interesting evidence based on some measurements of the aircraft and radio configuration and various trained radio operators who logged hearing Earhart during the last few hours. This evidence puts Earhart fairly close to Howard Island before she ran out of gas. This evidence also shows that Earhart was navigating fairly well and following standard procedures in her attempt to find Howard Island. All this evidence supports the conclusion that Earhart was following standard procedures and was close to Howard Island and NOT 350 miles away.
What happened is simple. The radios on her plane didn't work either being broke or not properly tuned. Adjusting the tube radios of the day is a technically difficult task that's easy to get wrong and Earhart didn't have a lot of experience using them because they where not common equipment on aircraft of the day. With the radios not working Earhart couldn't hear the folks who could hear her and where trying to help her Earhart got close to her destination a few times and was flying a standard search pattern in somewhat unfavorable conditions and simply ran out of luck and gas. In my opinion she is within about 30 min of flight time of Howard Island on her reported line of position (give or take 10 miles or so) which is a huge search area of mostly water. If she didn't die on impact with the water, she would have drowned as the aircraft sank only moments after it came to rest on the surface.
Where it is nice to think Earhart survived as a castaway, it is nearly impossible for this location to be where she ended up.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Queue the sexism. :( A very disappointing first comment.
Actually, seventy five years ago, airplanes were sexist, so his comment is not sexist at all. It took decades of hard work of equality-minded folks to make airplane designers design non-sexist airplanes that would let themselves get controlled by women. That's recorded history, mate.
Ezekiel 23:20
She has a robots.txt file. They'll leave her alone.
It's a cover story. They hope to find lots of other wrecks and make money/fame/etc.
Props to anyone who can pull off getting funded for such a telegenic venture!
Just as the sinking of Titanic was more valuable to society in terms of delicious romantic fappery than the ship and lives lost, so too will be the recovery of soggy Lockheed bits from the depths.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Gravity probally. It is true she is vastly overrated
she was too busy yaking on about How good women at multitasking to fly.
There's a special rack for the bowls. Why are the god-damned bowls on the cup rack?
When I read the title first, I thought it said "Robots to Search for Amelia Earhart's Lost Phone"
... and then was thinking that I could use a robot like that.
There are more interesting things to look for in the deep blue... Os bin laden, the wtc....
The! Science! Says!
I tried to read the story, but I had to answer a silly question regarding dating to see it. Well I am back now, without reading the article. Wonderful marketing idea.
It's because women find it more difficult to get their head out of the cockpit, unless they're on their cellphone talking about it... :P
instead of looking for a single object, why not build an obscenely large army of bots with lots of different sensors to map the ocean floors. you would find plenty of cool stuff in the process like new sea creatures, lots of lost aircraft/seacraft and sunken treasure.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
That's because on most other sites, they don't know "queue" is actually a word.
Maybe in the US but our neighbors across the pond tend to use queue a lot.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
ok, I'll not agree on the driving or flying... but loading the dishwasher is a fact. The general female rule of thumb seems to be "stuff as many dishes in as possible, and then complain to husband that it doesn't get anything clean we need a new one." I just don't get that. Look, if you stack 10 plates on top of each other, the bottom of the bottom plate will get clean. and the top of the top plate will get clean, but everything in between will still be dirty. This is just common sense! GAH!!!
Sounded like a pun to me.
How do you know that OP isn't a woman?
Anecdotal evidence from NZ: My wife has her own car but when we're both in it, she prefers I drive it. There is little difference in insurance premiums for gender when you're over 25. My 3rd-most stolen turbo charged car was cheaper to insure with lower excess and higher value than my wifes old toyota starlet when she was 24 and I was 28.
Hey, fuck the Daily Heil.
With all the people starving to death in Africa, it is nice to see that someone can find ways to waste money in something absolutely useless
Funny that we're both right, isn't it: http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=788126 ("Serious" is the important distinction here.)
This IS slashdot.
Not to be a conspiracy nut, but this sounds like a great story for to be look for something a bit more sensitive. Reference Slashdot story about Titanic search science.slashdot.org/story/08/06/03/1621249/search-for-rms-titanic-was-a-cover-story
Obviously 34 accidents is too small of a sample size to draw any conclusions from, and your sister does not represent all women but only herself. You cannot make generalizations about the general population based on only the women (and men) that you know. Maybe you surround yourself with idiots, for all I know. Secondly, responding also to earlier posters, having more male than female drivers on the road is irrelevant, because I assume insurance companies base their rates on the percentage of male/female drivers that have accidents and not the total number. Furthermore, I doubt insurance companies include statistics from the mid-20th century when analyzing their data. All that being said, I still am not making a claim as to which gender is better at driving. I'm a woman, and I believe I'm an exceptional driver, especially because others have told me so much. Perhaps I'm just an all around exceptional woman, because I also excel in mathematics, sports, and woodworking. My senior year of high school, out of 422 seniors, I won the Calculus Award AND I was the prom queen ha ha.
It's a shame that you don't write in a manner to indicate how smart you feel you are.