Steve Fossett

On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:36:35 -0400, NoneYa
wrote:

We can take pictures of objects on the Earth from space that
are 2 inch's wide. We can take pictures of objects on Mars
that are 12 inches wide. Why can't we find a wrecked
airplane in Nevada?? A place that is mostly dirt and sand
with very little vegetation?

Makes no sense

Makes a lot of sense to me. Tain't all that easy even with image
comparison. Too many variables, irregular shaped objects, and
changing landscape along with no recent data/images for a base line.

We can easily find lots of things when we are looking at either a
small area for something specific of any area where we look for
"anything", but not something specific in a very large area. That is
extremely difficult. When it comes to pattern recognition, computers
are very good at looking for some specific shape, but not good at
finding that shape when it's been altered. The algorithms for complex
pattern recognition are very sophisticated and typically take lots of
computing horsepower.

On top of that if there is any brush around, airplanes can be
extremely difficult to spot even from 500 or a 1000 feet.

A Bo went down between here and MOP a few years back. That area runs
probably between 50 and 100 people per square mile. They put it
between two trees and walked out. The FAA inspectors couldn't readily
find the plane so to save time the two guys took them back in and as I
understand it still took them a few hours to find it.

yeah he's certainly not evading but the big question is "why didn't his elt
go off ?"
what scenarios fit this ... he experienced a health problem and got the
plane down ?
doesn't seem like an experienced pilot like him would forget to set it off
by hand after a forced landing ....
Do they sometimes fail to go off on impact ?



"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...
Thomas Borchert wrote:
Newps,

That's a bad analogy, we're not looking for one airplane in a sea of
other planes. Remove all the planes in the picture except one. Now try
and find the one plane.


Hey, "we" can't even find Osama when "we" have 6 years to try (in a
similar landscape, I might add).

True, but I don't think Fossett is trying to not be found. :-)

Matt

On Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:27:35 +0900, "donzaemon" wrote:

yeah he's certainly not evading but the big question is "why didn't his elt
go off ?"
what scenarios fit this ... he experienced a health problem and got the
plane down ?
doesn't seem like an experienced pilot like him would forget to set it off
by hand after a forced landing ....
Do they sometimes fail to go off on impact ?

As someone else posted, severe crashes can sever the ELT antenna. Sadly, it's
the scenario that best fits the apparent lack of signals from either his ELT or
his wrist-mounted PLB.

Ron Wanttaja

Bob,

Our $40G/year intelligence expenditure mistakenly identified WMD in
Iraq.


Not really. They wanted to see WMDs, because the politicians wanted
them to see them - and so they did. The government paid, and got what
it paid for.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Donzaemon,

Do they sometimes fail to go off on impact ?


More often than sometimes, it seems. If they are not 406-Mhz-units,
that doesn't help either.

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

donzaemon wrote:
yeah he's certainly not evading but the big question is "why didn't his
elt go off ?"
what scenarios fit this ... he experienced a health problem and got the
plane down ?
doesn't seem like an experienced pilot like him would forget to set it
off by hand after a forced landing ....
Do they sometimes fail to go off on impact ?

Yes, they do fail sometimes to go off on impact.

Matt

Now you are talking about something I know something about. I have
written the image search software that pretty much has 90% of the
US intelligence market. There are two things you need:

1. Satellite tasking over the area.
2. Enough dedicated eyeballs watching the monitors who know
what to look for.

Believe me, even the commercial satellites such as Digital Globe
have enough information (time / location) and if DG wanted to
collect imagery, they probably could over a weeks time do it.
However, whose going to pay them? Satellite time costs money.
It's not just a bunch of data sitting in a google earth like
database of the entire world. Things are collected as there
is a demand.

For Steve's sake, I hope he's still hiding in the back of the hangar
with Paris.

On Sep 9, 7:36 am, NoneYa wrote:
We can take pictures of objects on the Earth from space that
are 2 inch's wide. We can take pictures of objects on Mars
that are 12 inches wide. Why can't we find a wrecked
airplane in Nevada?? A place that is mostly dirt and sand
with very little vegetation?

Makes no sense

The high quality Google Earth pictures are all done with aircraft.
Googe has had aircraft up to update the search area so you can help
search right now on Google Earth.

On Sep 9, 12:01 pm, Ron Wanttaja wrote:
On Sun, 09 Sep 2007 10:36:35 -0400, NoneYa wrote:
We can take pictures of objects on the Earth from space that
are 2 inch's wide. We can take pictures of objects on Mars
that are 12 inches wide. Why can't we find a wrecked
airplane in Nevada?? A place that is mostly dirt and sand
with very little vegetation?

Makes no sense

No, you just have to understand the realities of the process.

Imagine a satellite snaps a picture of Wittman Field during Airventure. Assume
it has a high enough resolution to allow individuals to be recognized. There
are 400,000 people on the grounds at the time...and you want to find one
particular person. You don't know where he was at the time the photo was taken

That means you will have to zoom in on, individually, each person visible on the
image. With average luck, you'll have to examine 200,000 individuals before you
find your friend.

(Heck, here's an aerial photo of Oshkosh:

http://www.airventure.org/2007/media...al_from_SW.JPG

...just try to COUNT how many people are visible)

Keep in mind, too, that this isn't a mug shot...unless they were pre-warned, the
people in the image won't be looking at the camera. If you take the picture
from directly overhead, all you see it a bunch of caps. But even if the picture
was taken obliquely, some folks will be turned away from the camera, or holding
a cup to their mouths, blocked by other people, inside the exhibition halls, or
using a portajohn, or lying under a tree, or even unexpectedly off the grounds
entirely.

The problem is analogous to the Fossett search. Let's assume the camera gives
the equivalent of viewing an area 500 feet by 500 feet. That is about .01
square mile. With a 10,000 square mile search area, that gives one million
500x500 foot blocks to examine.

And remember all those persons who were turned away or kneeling down, tieing
their shoes, in the Oshkosh picture? After nearly two weeks of an intense air
search, the lack of success is probably because Fossett's Decathlon doesn't
strongly resemble an aircraft any more. It's undoubtedly crumpled, it's quite
possibly burned. By now, it's probably dusted with the "dirt and sand" you
refer to, making it blend in even better.

The persons who would examine the imagery wouldn't be looking for the big white
"+" of wings and fuselage, they'd be looking at every apparent bush, every
apparent rock, to guess if sometime, in the past, it just may have been an
airplane. How long should they examine each block? If each takes two minutes,
we're talking well over 30,000 labor hours. Every shadow on the image might
hide wreckage, so you'd better have another set of photos taken at a different
time of day. AND look at those.

Finally, finding hidden objects in imagery is a *military* specialty your
typical Ikonos analyst doesn't practice. If you want experts to look for the
plane, you're going to have to go to the government...and those folks are pretty
busy on some pretty important tasks.

Ron Wanttaja

There are techniques other than straight visual images for detecting
objects, although I am not sure if any of them are being used in this
context. Examples are infrared hyperspectral and polarimetric
imaging.