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Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

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Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#151

Post by thriftwy »

interestica wrote: post #42
dml2135 wrote: post #29

Fascinating article. I had a chuckle at this excerpt: >The Malaysian investigators did look into whether the cargo could have started a fire, noting that it consisted mainly of ripe mangosteen fruits along with a small number of lithium batteries. Extensive attempts by the investigators to get mangosteen juice to react with the batteries and trigger a fire were unsuccessful. I'm sure plenty of people here have spent…

Investigations have some weird bits. I've always wondered if there's a certain title for the person who prepares the chickens for the 'chicken gun' in airplane testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun

This story has been going around the world for 50 years, and in different variations. According to some sources, the first time it appeared in a publication in USA in 1958, in the professional magazine "Meat and Game" of the California Associations of Game Producers (proven fact). The authenticity of the story, however, is questionable.

The FAA has at its disposal a unique device for measuring the strength of aircraft windshields, in case of a collision with birds at high speed (which happens not so rarely). This device is a powerful pneumatic cannon that shoots a chicken carcass into the windshield of an airplane at a speed approaching the cruising speed of a civilian aircraft (for jet aircraft, this is approx. 800 km/h, for piston engines in the 1950s this figure was probably smaller, maybe 400-500 km/h). According to the theory, if the glass can withstand a collision with a chicken at such a speed, then it should all the more withstand a real collision with a bird in flight.

A certain British engineering company developing high-speed trains borrowed this gun from the FAA to test the strength of the windshield of its a new high-speed train. The cannon was brought to England, installed at the landfill, loaded with a chicken carcass and fired at the prototype train.

The result exceeded all expectations: the chicken broke through the glass, broke the back of the driver's seat and got stuck in the back wall of the car. The British sent test results to FAA and asked them if they had done everything correctly and if the gun was hitting too hard. After studying the description and consequences of the test, the answer was sent by telegram immediately: "Next time, defrost the chicken."

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#152

Post by dinkumthinkum »

sopooneo wrote: post #68

Hearing about all the painstaking analysis of this flight made me wonder something: If you look deeply enough, how frequent are inexplicable situations? That is, if you took all the info from a normal flight, and cut it off at the halfway point and gave it to a group of enthusiastic investigators, would they find aspects that contradicted or truly did not make sense? My guess is they would. This is not to say MH370 w…

I get what you’re saying but I doubt it because air travel now is extraordinarily systematic and well understood.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#154

Post by jvm___ »

interestica wrote: post #42
dml2135 wrote: post #29

Fascinating article. I had a chuckle at this excerpt: >The Malaysian investigators did look into whether the cargo could have started a fire, noting that it consisted mainly of ripe mangosteen fruits along with a small number of lithium batteries. Extensive attempts by the investigators to get mangosteen juice to react with the batteries and trigger a fire were unsuccessful. I'm sure plenty of people here have spent…

Investigations have some weird bits. I've always wondered if there's a certain title for the person who prepares the chickens for the 'chicken gun' in airplane testing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_gun

An employee on the Canadian satire show This hour has 22 minutes

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#155

Post by Multicomp »

kadoban wrote: post #140
FeistySkink wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what happened to the guy who used this number while playing lotto?

It's been years and this was very famous, so I'm going to guess that at least one person who played this number died in extremely questionable circumstances. Large numbers and probability pretty much guarantee that this is true.

Those numbers are a plot coupon from the television show "Lost" which involves an airplane crashing on a deserted island...that turns out to be not so deserted after all.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#156

Post by ignoramous »

wpietri wrote: post #139
ignoramous wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nb: Wikipedia favours verifiability over truth : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/wp:vnt > Wikipedia values accuracy, but it requires verifiability. Wikipedia does not try to impose "the truth" on its readers, and does not ask that they trust something just because they read it in Wikipedia. We empower our readers. We don't ask for their blind trust.

You sound like you have a problem with that, but I can't fathom what alternative course you'd rather them pursue.

It is just a note. I don't mean it to sound anything other than what Wikipedia itself states. I see a tonne of "Wikipedia agrees" but none of "Wikipedia is a living document" and it isn't its place to be a gospel of truth...

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#157

Post by basementcat »

LarryMullins wrote: post #61
Railsify wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Black box' is referring to the lack of visibility inside the box and to the fact that you can't tamper with it, what goes in stays in.

Flight recorders are called black boxes because they originally were black-colored boxes. "Black box" in the sense that you are describing is an unrelated term.

Some flight data recorders are still housed in black boxes! Here’s one from the back of a 747 in the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA (sorry for my lousy photography) https://1drv.ms/u/s!ApyfVMR9dcxJnUDadgS2DDI_XUFa

The orange box is the cockpit voice recorder.

https://www.museumofflight.org/

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#158

Post by femto »

> However, engineers also could not rule out that some or even most of this frequency offset was due to the crystal oscillator inside the transmitter warming back up after the power interruption.

Didn't the plane have two power interruptions, the first of which it is known that the plane wasn't in the process of crashing at high velocity? I wonder what effort was made to compare them, possibly allowing the effects of crystal drift and Doppler to be separated?

Maybe any unexpected frequency offsets after the first power cut can be entirely attributed to the crystal warming up after the power cut? Maybe it could be assumed that the crystal behaves similarly after each power cut, as crystals are typically repeatable with temperature? In that case the characteristics of the crystal are known after the second power cut and Doppler can be determined.

I'm sure this would have been thought of, but one has to ask.

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#159

Post by Gare »

ceejayoz wrote: post #128
_Adam wrote: post #118

> ... reaches up and flips the pressurization switch, cutting off bleed air to the cabin. The airplane rapidly begins to depressurize ... I cannot believe that a "kill everyone" switch actually exists, and if it really does this seems like a bug. Especially because not hitting the switch would also kill everyone.

Being able to rapidly depressurize is fairly critical; the doors are prevented from opening in flight by a pressure differential and their construction. In an emergency, being unable to depressurize would mean being unable to evacuate the aircraft. Passengers would've had their oxygen masks deploy, which works in normal circumstances, but they only last 12 minutes; intended to give the crew time to descend. When the…

> but they could fly into a mountain too if they felt like it

Don't know if you said that with this crash in mind or not, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525

Re: Seven years on, what do we know about the disappearance of flight MH370? (2021)

#160

Post by FeistySkink »

kadoban wrote: post #140
FeistySkink wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess what happened to the guy who used this number while playing lotto?

It's been years and this was very famous, so I'm going to guess that at least one person who played this number died in extremely questionable circumstances. Large numbers and probability pretty much guarantee that this is true.

It was a crusty old pun. I learned my lesson :')
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