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How Satellite Company Inmarsat Tracked Down MH370
mdsolar (1045926) writes "Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has announced that, based on satellite data analysis from UK company Inmarsat, Malayian Airlines flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean, and no one on board survived. 'Effectually we looked at the doppler effect, which is the change in frequency, due to the movement of a satellite in its orbit. What that then gave us was a predicted path for the northerly route and a predicted path the southerly route,' explained Chris McLaughlin, senior vice president of external affairs at Inmarsat. 'What we discovered was a correlation with the southerly route and not with the northern route after the final turn that the aircraft made, so we could be as close to certain as anybody could be in that situation that it went south. Where we then went was to work out where the last ping was, knowing that the aircraft still had some fuel, but that it would have run out before the next automated ping. We don't know what speed the aircraft was flying at, but we assumed about 450 knots.' Inmarsat passed the relevant analysis to the UK Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) yesterday. The cause of the crash remains a mystery."
They have narrowed down the presumed crash site. TFA states that the Malaysian government takes this data as proof that the plane crashed near Australia. While important evidence, it's hardly proof - we will need actual debris.
The Malaysian government has been widely criticized about it's handling of this affair. They would like to wash their hands of it and go on to doing whatever it was they were doing out of the world's spotlight.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Still vastly better than what it was only a day ago, and there seems to be a lot more possible debris sightings in the search area which I take as a sign they might be in the right area and will hopefully pin it down some more. The race now is to find it before the black box transmitters go silent, a task for which the US is dispatching some specialist search gear apparently, because that's probably the only hope of giving the bereaved a chance at some closure left now.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
They're probably worthless, the cockpit voice recorders are only required to have 30 minutes capacity with a recommendation for 2 hours, since we know it was at least 4 hours between the critical event (the plane turning south) and the crash the CVR's won't have any information about the events that matter (I'm assuming 777 uses digital recorders so they won't be able to pull phantom prior recordings like they sometimes were able to on analog recorders)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The cause of the crash isn't a mystery. It most likely ran out of fuel.
The cause of why the whole damn plane went AWOL IS a mystery.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
It's only completely worthless if its silent.
On the contrary. A completely silent CVR tells you a lot; it tells you that the airplane kept on flying with every one on board either unconscious or dead for at least 2 hours before the crash. That's a critical information for the investigation.
Furthermore, through data/media forensic, you might be able to recover the previous data that was overrecorded, although I wouldn't count on it after 3 to 4 record cycles.
as a practical matter actually finding the plane won't change much
Really? You don't think there's much of a difference between knowing it was a mechanical failure (or fire, etc) and knowing it was a deliberate criminal act? If the problem was related to payload or the aircraft's infrastructure or maintenance, you don't think it's vital for all of the other people flying on that same equipment to know what went wrong? If this was done by the pilot(s) at the behest of some organization or state, or otherwise in the service of some agenda, you don't think that's meaningful, in the context of trying to prevent it from happening again? Glad you're so relaxed about it. You probably don't do much business overseas, or ship expensive things that are central to your mission, or have relatives that fly on that equipment or in that part of the world, so that's probably why the death of hundreds and the loss of a huge, expensive aircraft is a yawner to you.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I don't know why anyone would find that disturbing.
In Tres Roeder's "A Sixth Sense for Project Management," he shows a diagram of communications. This diagram shows information versus time.
In the beginning, information is unknown; then the information changes, back and forth. For example: a dollar estimate may be $3,000 for a project, then $85,000 when we realize we need to excavate cabling tunnels for a line, then $6,000 when we realize we can run this across our existing tunnel and have a new fiber optic pulled for $3,000, then $7,000 when we realize we're going to also need a new transceiver, then $4000 when we find out some of the other equipment is unnecessary, then $14,000 when we realize the scope of labor required is twice as big.
Finally, once we have enough information, that figure stays. Perhaps at $14,000. We also realize we've got the correct figure because we have a full analysis of scope and work required--or at least, the figure won't change until we've done a bunch of work and realized, deep into the project, that we missed something. In any case, it is now not likely to change simply because our information base is hot.
During the initial planning phase, communication should reflect this: the understanding of the situation--the lack of precision--and what is being done to pin that down is to be communicated; conclusive statements should not be communicated because the current understanding of the situation is inconclusive. Once the situation has reached a point of conclusion, then you communicate these conclusions.
What is disturbing about the Malaysian government here is they have been repeatedly saying, "We have no idea what's happening and there's a ton of information out there we're missing; but this is what happened." Then, five hours later, "Oh we found more debris, we think this happened instead." Then the next day, "Oh there was some satellite telemetry information we weren't done analyzing, but it's provided additional information, so we think the plane may have gone this way..."
In other words: They have piles of information they know they're missing, piles of information they have a plan for finding (i.e. "ongoing investigation"), and huge and visible gaps they know exist and expect to fill. They should not be communicating any conclusions at this time.
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