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What the nine debris finds may tell us about the MH370 end point

duncansteel.com

1–10 of 31 posts

Re: What the nine debris finds may tell us about the MH370 end point

#6
post #4

It would be interesting if this crash location was an accidental side effect of a pilot/hijackerhijacker. Making it crash in the most remote location, following a very hard to follow path fully out of sight of modern tech.

This is explored in another article, the "controlled ditch" scenario: http://www.duncansteel.com/archives/2601

It is a possible scenario, although I have yet to see a reason for anyone to do this (as the article shows, it would require quite deliberate planning).

Re: What the nine debris finds may tell us about the MH370 end point

#8

I keep thinking they need to put a black box on the top of these planes that auto ejects at the first sign of crashing and can float etc.

Or just continously upload the data to the internet, should be quite feasible these days with satellites everywhere.

Re: What the nine debris finds may tell us about the MH370 end point

#9

I keep thinking they need to put a black box on the top of these planes that auto ejects at the first sign of crashing and can float etc.

The challenge would be to make such a device fully autonomous while yet being safe; someone intentionally trying to fly the plane into the great void, never to be seen again is an exceedingly rare scenario.

It is, however, an option such a tracking device should try to stay on top of. Hence, it would be best if the crew could not disable it.

The problem with that design decision made, of course, is that it would be a shame if a plane fell from the sky because of a failed tracking device which the crew couldn't disable (typically fire because of an electrical issue).

However, there are intrinsically safe radio transmitters available for use in explosion-hazard environments, where fire obviously is a big no-no.

Problem? It would need its own, dedicated power supply; probably a battery (which comes with its own set of challenges!) charged via solar panels and aircraft power.

Making systems tamperproof and failsafe is hard. Should be doable, though, leaving the question of who is to foot the bill; chances are that will be a bigger problem to solve than the engineering side of it.

Re: What the nine debris finds may tell us about the MH370 end point

#10
post #8

I keep thinking they need to put a black box on the top of these planes that auto ejects at the first sign of crashing and can float etc.

Or just continously upload the data to the internet, should be quite feasible these days with satellites everywhere.

If they had sent position, altitude and heading every minute (which requires very little bandwidth) literally millions of dollars would have been saved with both AF447 (which had ACARS info every 10min) and MH370
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