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Malaysian Airline Flight MH370

DeacDiggler said:
How is it that we can have in flight wifi but can't stream at least the minimum info needed, like "latitude and longitude of the lock box?"
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Much of the current in-flight Wifi is based on cell towers...those don't exist over the ocean. Satellite based internet is available on some flights, so that could be an option, but again, it's a solution in search of a problem. The plane was on radar when it disappeared, so we in theory know where to look, assuming it crashed. The best option for simply transmitting location data would be low frequency radio. It would work from any point on the globe. If there was a black box broadcasting location and someone wanted to "disappear" a plane though, they'd simply find a way to unplug/deactivate the black box, so it still wouldn't solve much. In the end, how many airliners go missing? This one will almost assuredly be found. If it had "crashed" somewhat safely on the water and there were survivors, we would have found them by now.
 
ImTheCaptain said:
1.5 billion = billions upon billions

i'm glad you weren't around when we were considering building the interstate system
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My bad, I was off on the cost of the data center. I was thinking it was more like $2.5 billion. But I was also including the costs of running the program, which, considering NSA's budget is estimated at around $10 billion a year, is billions upon billions.
 
Liquid Karma said:
I'm beginning to think this thing was flat out hijacked and stolen. Transponders turned off, and flown someplace at low altitude and stashed away.
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If somebody in Pakistan was tweeting during the raid on Osama Bin Ladin's compound in the middle of the night, somebody would have seen a suspicious plane. It's not like it's a helicopter that could land in a small space. Either exploded at high altitude or crashed in a remote location (mountains, jungle, or ocean).
 
Liquid Karma said:
I'm beginning to think this thing was flat out hijacked and stolen. Transponders turned off, and flown someplace at low altitude and stashed away.
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Yup. Starting to seem "most likely" from the bits and pieces that have been released to the public so far.
 
FuckmouthedRube said:
If somebody in Pakistan was tweeting during the raid on Osama Bin Ladin's compound in the middle of the night, somebody would have seen a suspicious plane. It's not like it's a helicopter that could land in a small space. Either exploded at high altitude or crashed in a remote location (mountains, jungle, or ocean).
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"Just saw a huge fuck off plane land in the rice paddy field. #splash LOL!"
 
bym051d said:
Or, don't capture audio, just positional data. We already do this for police cars, ambulances, fire trucks and semis.
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I mean, we do it for planes, too. It works great unless:

A) someone turns off the transponder
B) the transponder explodes or becomes disabled

The real issue is the limitations of radar over vast bodies of water, and NextGen is already addressing this by a proposed switch to satellite tracking. As you can imagine, the FAA's move to NextGen and then airlines appropriation of new tracking hardware and its implementation and standardization is a monumental task. NextGen itself is still a couple of years away probably, and the expense associated with it is a tough sell in an industry that has been struggling to turn a profit across the board for the past decade or more.
 
it seems like the transponder shouldn't be able to be shut off from within the plane. what reason would someone have to do so under normal circumstances?
 
RacerDeac said:
Yup. Starting to seem "most likely" from the bits and pieces that have been released to the public so far.
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How is that "most likely"? To me, who has done exactly no research into this whatsoever and has barely followed the news, that actually seems like "most unlikely" unless you count alien abduction.
 
has anyone considered:
octane.gif
 
Say Hey Deac said:
How is that "most likely"? To me, who has done exactly no research into this whatsoever and has barely followed the news, that actually seems like "most unlikely" unless you count alien abduction.
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You have to always consider alien abduction a possibility.
 
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