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Australia Elaborates On a New Drift Model To Find MH370
hcs_$reboot writes Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared on Saturday, 8 March 2014, while flying from Malaysia to Beijing with 239 people on board. And 8 months later, after millions of dollars invested in a gigantic search operation, there is still no sign of the aircraft. Now, Australia is developing a new model to predict where the debris of the missing MH370 could wash up. Authorities had initially predicted that the plane's wreckage could drift and come ashore on Indonesia's West Sumatra island after about 4 months of Flight MH370's disappearance. "We are currently working... to see if we can get an updated drift model for a much wider area where there might be possibilities of debris washing ashore," search co-ordinator Peter Foley told reporters in Perth.
A story about a model under development which may or may not lead ... to something? You call this news?
Here's an idea: next time something this "newsworthy" comes up, don't post it!
So you're going to launch satellites which can find every airliner in the sky with IR over the entire world? Just in case one disappears again?
Since we started launching satellites whose intent was to find military jets in the sky with IR over the entire world in the 1970s, I should think that it is not too much to ask that by 2014 we should have advanced the technology and built out the hardware to the point where we could in fact do that.
And note that underwing engines are probably going to make IR detection particularly hard as it will block a direct view of the exhaust.
No doubt. Perhaps there is a superior means which could be used today, although IR is still pretty good for this sort of job and the planes are still big IR sources. Our sensing and data processing technology have both advanced dramatically since then.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Let's put it this way--a full-size jet airliner carrying passengers has *never* been lost without a trace. Not ever. Every one that went down was eventually found.