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Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

bloomberg.com

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Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#71

Post by neurotech1 »

cmurf wrote: post #60
samstave wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't we have an additional distress beacon on all planes that says their gps coords to Inmarsat continuously no matter what? Basically why can't we use the Inmarsat network for more than distress but any and all planes report to some tamper proof system every minute? (Yes I know how many flights there are, but you don't need to store the data once a plane has reached its destination successfully)

It's complicated. One of the complications is requiring anything. Most trade agreements now in place defer major standards compliance in aviation to ICAO, and ICAO ends up being lowest common denominator when it comes to rules. Simply, less rich countries don't want to pay for every possible feature. Another complication is there's almost no such thing as a "backport" in aviation. The equipment a particular plane mod…

Actually, your mistaken. Cockpit avionics upgrades are relatively common, even in small aircraft like Cessna 172s. Considering a new Cessna 172 is around $250k, and a refurbished aircraft, with new glass cockpit is around $50k (and sometimes significantly less).

Aircraft have whats known as a Supplementary Type Certificate, which permits changes to a certified aircraft. Even a major upgrade from radial engine to turboprop has been authorized for some aircraft, including DC-3 transports made in the 1940s.

Another example is Southwest Airlines. The 737-300 series jets have glass cockpit upgrades for a common configuration between a 737-300 (Classic) and a newer 737-700 (NG).

If the ICAO mandates upgrades, it will happen. It might not be cheap, but its quite doable.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#72

Post by payne92 »

SeoxyS wrote: post #69

I find it hard to understand how we can be justified spending so much money and effort trying to find the wreck. What is there to gain? The only benefits I see are: - Giving family members (maybe a few thousand people) closure. - Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result. Given the very slim chance of them even finding the plane and learning anything useful out…

If they can find the wreck, they have a decent chance of debugging the cause, and implementing corrections to prevent it from happening again. Depending on the cause, that can be worth a lot.

See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#73

Post by Zikes »

SeoxyS wrote: post #69

I find it hard to understand how we can be justified spending so much money and effort trying to find the wreck. What is there to gain? The only benefits I see are: - Giving family members (maybe a few thousand people) closure. - Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result. Given the very slim chance of them even finding the plane and learning anything useful out…

And when it happens a second time, you will be asking why we never bothered to find out what happened the first time.

Honestly, $130m is not a lot of money to an industry such as that. I'll bet the majority of it was covered by insurance anyways.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#74

Post by fapjacks »

rwhitman wrote: post #55

The MH370 tracking problem is unfortunate but what I'm most fascinated by in all of this is the continuing reminder of how powerless we are as a civilization when it comes to the oceans. A plane crashes in an area with no landmass and we lose it. We've overfished many species to near-extinction because we completely failed to understand exactly how many fish there actually are. The sea acts as a natural eraser for hu…

I grew up in Kansas but lived on Oahu for six years. I will never forget the first time my squad leader took me body surfing at Sandy's. That is the interface of the most powerful force on our planet.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#75

Post by netinstructions »

SeoxyS wrote: post #69

I find it hard to understand how we can be justified spending so much money and effort trying to find the wreck. What is there to gain? The only benefits I see are: - Giving family members (maybe a few thousand people) closure. - Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result. Given the very slim chance of them even finding the plane and learning anything useful out…

> Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result.

Well Wikipedia says a Boeing 777-200ER costs $261.5 million[1]. That's about double the cost for the search. If it's possible to prevent even one future mishap as a result of learning anything the cost is justified.

Besides closure is important for the families and friends of the passengers. Especially with crazy articles saying the plane could have landed in Kazakhstan[2]. Imagine the suffering people must be going through thinking their loved ones are 95% dead but 5% possibly maybe caught up in a crazy conspiracy. Even if it's 1% or 0.001% likely it could be enough to keep one awake at night.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777 [2] http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/02/jeff-wise-mh370...

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#76

Post by [deleted] »

payne92 wrote: post #72
SeoxyS wrote: post #69

I find it hard to understand how we can be justified spending so much money and effort trying to find the wreck. What is there to gain? The only benefits I see are: - Giving family members (maybe a few thousand people) closure. - Understanding what happened, and potentially making a few improvements to plane safety as a result. Given the very slim chance of them even finding the plane and learning anything useful out…

If they can find the wreck, they have a decent chance of debugging the cause, and implementing corrections to prevent it from happening again. Depending on the cause, that can be worth a lot. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

[deleted]

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#77

Post by Zikes »

[deleted] wrote: post #76
payne92 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they can find the wreck, they have a decent chance of debugging the cause, and implementing corrections to prevent it from happening again. Depending on the cause, that can be worth a lot. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

[deleted]

Just show 'em a photo of Richard Dean Anderson with a mullet. If they still don't get it, we tell them to move along.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#78

Post by ssmoot »

gusmd wrote: post #50
ggreer wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article's line, "In a world where a $100 smartphone can be tracked for free..." is dishonest. Services like Find My iPhone only work if: 1. The phone can determine its location via GPS, cell tower, and/or wifi positioning. 2. The phone has Internet access. (Cell or wifi.) As you might suspect, the south Indian Ocean doesn't have many cell towers or wifi hotspots. GPS signals don't penetrate water, nor do the freq…

How is that relevant at all? GPS works pretty much anywhere in the world, even in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It would not penetrate water or survive the crash, which means it couldn't be tracked NOW. Nonetheless, you could know the position a few minutes (seconds?) before the crash, which would make finding the aircraft MUCH easier.

GPS is one-way. Even if your phone could get a signal, it wouldn't be broadcasting to SARSAT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cospas-Sarsat_Pr...). You'd need something like this: https://www.acrartex.com/products/catalog/epirbs-and-accesso... and even then, that's manually deployed and needs line of sight to the satellite network.

I'm not sure why a plane wouldn't have at least a few such devices on board in case of crash (there's no monthly fee or anything). Just under the skin perhaps so they'd only automatically deploy during something catastrophic? I'm sure someone knows.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#79

Post by notatoad »

baddox wrote: post #52
imglorp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just bad journalism. The first few lines should be who-what-when-where-why. Then you fill in the details and backstory at length.

It's called "long-form journalism." It's apparently extremely popular, but I consider it to be the worst medium ever invented.

There's nothing wrong with long form journalism if you have a complex story to tell with lots of information to convey. The problem is not with the format, it's with journalists trying to pad out a tweet's worth of information into a long-form article.

Re: Missing Malaysia Jet MH370 Weeks Away from Keeping Secrets Forever

#80

Post by logicrook »

myNXTact wrote: post #26
imglorp wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just bad journalism. The first few lines should be who-what-when-where-why. Then you fill in the details and backstory at length.

So what? This isn't a newspaper article, it is a nonfiction story. Bloomberg contains sections of their magazines written in your format; I always skip them. I prefer the long-form stories.

Honestly, why? After reading a few of them, I was completely sick of this format. It appears to me as information-free fluff, written in a very generic style.

What do you like in this format? I genuinely don't understand how it can sell, but if it does, there must be something?

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