As readers of this blog or my Kindle Single (or, now, New York magazine) know, I’m intrigued by the possibility that MH370 might have been hijacked and flown north to the Yubileyniy Aerodrome within the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If so, it would have come to rest on the specially-milled concrete at approximately an hour and a half before sunrise on Sunday, March 8. And then what? If it stayed where it was, it would have been easy to spot by land-imaging satellites overhead. To avoid detection, it would have to have either refueled and taken off again, or found some kind of shelter.
As it happens, the Kazakh steppe is a terrible place to hide a 210-foot long, 60-foot-high airplane. The flat, desert plain is sparsely populated and almost featureless, so that anything large and unusual is apt to stand out. There is no natural canopy of trees to shelter under. Though there are large buildings at the cosmodrome where space vehicles are serviced, there are no large structures near Yubileyniy.
After I began developing my “Spoof” hypthesis I spent days scouring first Google Earth, then free commercial satellite imagery looking for any hint that a plane could have been stashed in the vicinity. The pickings were slim. The Yubileyniy complex was built in the ‘80s as the landing site for the Buran space plane, and after the program was cancelled in 1989 it has largely sat disused. Occasionally the runway is used by planes carrying inbound VIPs and cosmonauts, but otherwise nothing has really happened there in decades. An overview of the area is depicted above.
The dark, fishhook-shaped line is the rail line connecting the airstrip to the rest of the Baikonur complex. Alongside it is a road from which a series of driveways lead off to the north. One of them leads to an isolated six-story building that stands surrounded by debris, berms, and trenches. I came to think of the area as Yubileyniy North. Here’s what it looked like in 2006 (click on images to enlarge):
As you can see, the area is desert, where vehicle tracks persist for many years. The six-story building casts a dark, short shadow to the northwest — the sun is nearly overhead. The road from the airstrip comes up from the bottom of the frame and curves to the right. Here and there rectangular patches of debris suggest where buildings once stood. Essentially, it’s a ruin. Here’s the same area, six years later:
Not much has changed. The sun is lower in the sky, so the six-story building’s shadow is longer. But nothing seems to have changed at all. The entire area of Yubileyniy is like this—the place seems have been left to slowly crumble in the desert sun for decades. There’s nowhere to stash a 777. On the other hand, the most recent imagery viewable here in Google Earth comes from 2012. Perhaps something has happened since then? I didn’t know anything about what kind of imagery is available from commercial sources, but I set out to learn. Before long I came upon a company called Terraserver, which lets you view high-resolution satellite imagery for free. I used it to scope around the general area of the Yubileyniy complex, and here’s what I found in an image of Yubileyniy North from October 31, 2013:
Suddenly, things are happening. A number of trucks are lined up in the parking lot in the upper-right part of the image. The six-story building is being disassembled. And what looks like a large rectangle of dirt has been bulldozed to the left of the building. The image resolution is so good that you can make out what I take to be the stripes left by the bulldozer blade as it worked back and forth horizontally. At the northern end of the rectangle is a berm which casts a shadow to the north. At the far northeastern corner lies what appears to be a trench with a well-defined corner on the upper right, with treadmarks leading out of it toward the southeast. I’m not sure what this dirt rectangle represents — are they building a pile of dirt, or a hole? — but what really gets my attention is the size of the thing. To give you a sense of scale, I’ve superimposed an equivalently proportioned 777 silhouette onto the image:
This struck me as interesting, to say the least. Naturally, I wondered what happened next. Fortunately, Terraserver had one more image that I could browse for free. This next one was taken on April 26, 2014:
Holy cow. All traces of both the building and the dirt rectangle have been erased. Various debris piles have been swept away, too. At first I thought that maybe the image had been digitally scrubbed, but if you look closely you can easily make out individual pieces of junk in between the cleared areas. So my interpretation is that the site was actually cleared and swept up.
So here’s the situation: nothing happens at Yubileyniy for decades; then, four months before MH370 disappears, the Russians start building a 777-sized something-or-other a mile and a half from a giant disused airstrip. Then, a month after the plane disappears, the area looks like it’s been erased.
What had happened in the meantime? To find out, I had to shell out cash from my own pocket to buy imagery from the main commercial satellite imagery provider, Digital Globe, via one of its resellers—in this case, a company called Apollo Mapping. The cash drain was painful, but at this point I was very far down the rabbit hole. Here’s what Yubileyniy North looked like on December 17, 2013:
The sun is low on the snow-dusted steppe; it’s almost winter. In a month and a half, workers have removed all but the bottom-most floors of the six-story building. You can make out the shadow of a crane projecting to the north from the middle of the remaining structure. A handful of trucks can still be seen in the parking lot. The dirt pile has been extended a few yards to the north; the berm at that end now overlies the what we saw as the sharp corner of the trench in the October image. Beyond the berm lies either a dark strip that could either be a long trench or just a shadow; to my eye the line of brightness at its northern edge implies the lip of a trench, but who knows. Work is clearly continuing. The next image, in black and white, is from three weeks later, January 9, 2014:
Now winter is in full effect. Snow blankets the entire region, and cold has descended: in the four days before this picture was taken, the temperature fluctuated between -15F and +14F. The disruption of the snow cover shows that work is very much underway. The building seems to be down to its last story. Trucks can be seen in the parking lot. I’m not sure what to make of the northern end of the rectangle; two dark strips are visible, perhaps one of them is a trench and the other is the shadow of a berm. Unforunately the resolution is not very good because the image was taken at a fairly low angle. The fact that work is continuing under such harsh conditions suggests a sense of urgency, to my mind; or perhaps these are simply hardy mofos. By the time the next image is taken, nearly two months have passed.
In this black-and-white image, the building has been completely dismantled and the dirt rectangle bulldozed flat. No berm remains at the northern end. Horizontal bulldozer tracks are still visible. The dark dirt is framed with a lighter border, suggesting perhaps a snowy slope. No trucks are visible, suggesting that the work crew has moved on. A color image taken four days later looks almost identical:
This image was taken two days before MH370 disappeared, on March 6. The next one was taken eight days after, on March 16:
When I first saw this picture, my heart leapt. The two scenes, taken just before and after the disappearance, looked so different that I was certain that something significant had occurred in the interim. Perhaps what was a rectangular depression in the March 6 image has now been filled in with sand (along with maybe, oh, who knows, a plane?).
I began pricing out tickets to Kazakhstan and searching the internet for advice on detecting large buried things with metal detectors. I located a Russian from St. Petersburg who’d made a gonzo two-day bike trek across the steppe to reach the Yubileyniy strip and sought his advice on how to get to the area without permission; he told me that he’d camped out at the airstrip overnight without anybody noticing him but then had tried to visit a busier part of the cosmodrome and gotten arrested. After he told them he was just scouting around because he was a huge fan of the Buran project, they let him go. I figured that if I was more careful I had a good chance of making it in and back.
But then I looked more closely, and examined the weather records. It just so happened that during this time interval spring fell on Baikonur like a hammer. On March 6, the temperature had only just peeked above freezing, by the 16th the daily highs had been in the 40s for the better part of a week. The thaw has completely changed the color palette. Everything that was covered in snow, and hence lighter colored, is now sodden and hence darker colored. White plains of snow are now damp brown sand. The darker earth of the rectangle is now drier and lighter-colored. After staring at these images for many hours I concluded that the most likely interpretation is that nothing has changed except for a temperature change.
And so we wind up back at our April 26 image:
By now the desert has returned to its normal dried-out state. The cluttered jumble seen over the winter has been replaced by almost featureless swatches of tan. A vehicle track overlies the northernmost part of the dirt rectangle, its borders now smudged and indeterminate.
I showed some of these images to construction experts and satellite imagery professionals, and received very little encouragement. Most likely, they told me, the work being performed was site remediation: a building was torn down, and construction debris thrown in a trench and covered up. As successive trenches are dug and filled in, a rectangular shape is formed. Simple as that.
And yet: the entire cosmodrome is littered with decades of abandoned equipment and derelict buildings, evincing a constitutional lack of interest in the concept of remediation. There is no commercial or residential activity for miles of Yubileyniy. Why, after decades, did the Russians suddenly need to clear this one lonely spot, in the heart of a frigid winter, finishing just before MH370 disappeared? And why is it that the greater part of the dirt rectangle was already laid out in the Oct 31 image, before the building was substantially demolished?
I don’t know. I tried to reach out to people who might know, but had no luck, and eventually I had to turn my attention to projects that might earn me some money. But I’d love to find out. If any readers have any special insight, I’d love to hear it.
UPDATE 4/3/2106: Since I wrote the above, Google Earth has added a new high-quality image of the site, taken October, 12, 2014. It gives a different impression from the last image–it doesn’t look any longer like the dirt was swept flat, like someone trying to cover their tracks.
This is a good search string for results relating the demolished building complex at Baikonur.
251 казарма в ч 03079
Individuals identified on discussion boards. Area 251, building or unit #03079. A few posts mention ‘riots’ in the 1991-92 timeframe, i.e. the collapse of the Soviet Union, but that may be a ‘lost in translation’ issue.
The building was living quarters for military technicians working on the Buran program. The part demolished outbuildings, seen the leninsk.ru images and approx 150m, to the east are described as dining and bathing blocks.
It is astounding that the Russians left the Buran assembly building deteriorating to the extent that the roof collapsed in and destroyed the Buran orbiter.
TEx
and finally,
https://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/Catscan_columns/catscan.14
James Oberg, December 1995 issue of SPECTRUM
“The site, according to Oberg (and his many fine color photos strongly back him up) is in a state of advanced decay. The water is no longer safe to drink, and runs only intermittently. Fires, explosions, and toxic leaks are common. Tumbleweeds (an Asian species) roll unimpeded through the launchpads. Many civilian workers were left unpaid for months on end, and they simply fled.
Drafted militia sent in to maintain order broke into rioting and looting through the abandoned, windowless apartment blocks. There haven’t been any new-hires taken
on to the space enterprise in at least five years.
With the near-collapse of security, thousands of Kazakh squatters have moved in to the launch center.
They’re still there [in 1995], defying eviction by Russian and Kazakh military cops and armed militias.”
TEx
Point to note about Putin – his enemies are either dead or in jail and he has taken Russia back to a virtual dictatorship – and they love him for it. Russia is in a dangerous phase of unbridled nationalism.
Spencer – Do Forbes Magazine a have a dedicated anybody who has kept their finger on this thing, or is it just someone’s morally superior attitude? It’s no great surprise to me that many of the relatives have been outside of the square all along even if only part of a pained denial. I did say a few times that if the search comes up empty the relatives will be clawing and the alternate theories will be flowing – and why not?
Jay/Examinator – Cleaning up Baikonur seems like a very good idea indeed but why wouldn’t you start with all that low hanging fruit? I’ve worked in construction and razing that building isn’t consistent with the long term management of that site. That required a major budget and lots of equipment. I’m not trying to pour petrol on anything – just trying to understand it.
ALSM – I didn’t know Clarke and Dawe had a following outside of Australia?
@Brock,
Hang on, are you or Dr. Duncan saying the Curtin Boom was only discarded for good because it contradicts the the satellite data?
I’m on record here saying already in June, that we have to consider the data to be faked or corrupt since
a.) there was no recorded sonic event in the search area and
b.) there is a recorded sonic event at the right time and a plausible destination, which got only shelved because it doesn’t fit the pings.
Then we were told that
a.) a crash in the designated search areas doesn’t necessarily generate a sonic event which can be picked up with their underwater mikes (probably true) and
b.) the Curtin event was explained to everybody’s satisfaction with a small sea quake near India.
When these informations transpired I didn’t shelve entirely my suspicions that the pings might’ve been corrupted somehow but I abandonned all lines of reasoning which included the Curtin boom.
Now you and Dr. Duncan are saying the boom remains very much on the table if someone shows that the data are not valid.
Sigh! But thanks for keeping us on our toes.
An afterthought: Wouldn’t a theory which places the crash in the area of the boom also suffer from the fact that no debris has shown up so far – unless we are dealing with incredible thorough and neat perps who cleaned up the area while everybody was looking in the wrong place?
Matty
Materials recycling: bring in a demolition excavator, a crusher and a screener, demolish the buildings and you have a ready supply of aggregate for another build project in the area. If Site 251 was only accommodation only then its likely contamination free.
Some speculation: pre 1992 policies may have involved shipping materials in from Godnoswhereberg by rail. Today, economic realities prevail.
Baikonur is a little piece of Russia surrounded by Kazakhstan, the Kazakhs might try to extract top dollar for all inbound supplies & materials?
Around my locale, I see crusher-screeners often employed on demolition sites.
Low hanging fruit indeed.
TEx
For those of you, who might like to go back to last year’s discussions here, I recommend to re-read the following discussion:
http://jeffwise.net/2014/06/17/the-triple-disappearing-airplane/comment-page-4
It shows, that I’m apparently overfond of quoting Sherlock Holmes and that we discussed the validity of the satellite data already back then, although we were mystified how it could’ve been accomplished. Well, since then I really hoped we left behind that toxic can of worms the Curtin boom seemed to have opened after it was shown to be connected to a small earth tremor near India.
Triple sigh…
@Littlefoot: I specifically asked Dr. Duncan to rank the following in order:
1) conflict with BTO data
2) proximity to known zones of seismic activity
3) frequency profile
Alec ranked them as you see them, and gave me the statement I quoted above (which he had already given to journalists previously).
The September reporting only mentioned 2) and 3) because only 2) and 3) were news.
Doesn’t DG have an acoustic detection facility? Maybe we should just ask them for their raw data, and clear this up once and for all.
Does this post look too Bayesian on me?
http://www.reddit.com/r/MH370/comments/2x8xes/i_assume_the_search_team_is_going_back_to/
@Brock, @Littlefoot:
Re —
“Doesn’t DG have an acoustic detection facility?”
Remember? ‘Metao’ tells us YES. And note his comment:
“Apparently hoops were jumped through to access Diego Garcia’s data, but they’ve been doing seismic measurements, so the data is a mess and unusable.”
A mess and unusable. Really? That’s your clue.
(see #’s 6 and 10)
http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1skoopj
@Littlefoot:
“the Curtin Boom was only discarded for good because it contradicts the satellite data?”
Hold that thought.
@Ann:
Re —
“I posted a potential sighting on page 6 of the peanut gallery thread it was held in moderation so I won’t add links, they are on the original post.
I saw it in the comments section of a Daily Mail story.PUBLISHED: 21:44, 18 March 2014
“Jaxx, Langkawi, Malaysia,
My friend watched a large plane flying very low at 2.20am on the evening of the disappearance. It had no lights on apart from the undercarriage which was brightly lit. This was at Gungung Raya , Langkawi, Malaysia. Gungung Raya is a large mountain on the island. She thought at first it was going to crash but maintained its low flight through the mountains. This is an area of dense rainforest. The Thai plane sited on radar was at 2.13am at Butterworth around 10 mins flyiing time from here. My friend has lodged a report with the police”
THANK YOU for re-posting this. You originally posted it on 10.18.14 (In Search for Missing Airliner, Peanut Gallery Shows the Way).
I don’t know how your post was missed here. Because it’s potentially quite significant. The plane described in this comment — one of almost 1000 posted in response to a Daily Mail article written 10 days after MH370 disappeared — may be the same plane Kate Tee saw.
Julie I had several goes at getting it seen I sent it to DS a couple of times I knew I was on a sticky wicket there with it being anecdotal and then saw a chance here but it got held in moderation and so I just hoped JW had seen it.
I was unsure because it was in full view and no one seemed that interested .
I am glad it has been noted just in case it helps.
@Brock, thanks for contacting Dr. Duncan and sharing his mail.
@Nihonmama, I extracted the following link from your tweet:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2014/09/indian-ocean-signal-was-not-crash-of-flight-mh370.html
A good and readable summary with a sound explanation (pun intended) and a picture that shows where the underwater sound most likely originated. The event which triggered the sound happened apparently around 01:30 – 01:32 UTC. That seems to be ca. 10 minutes too late for the crash since the last half ping came in at 01:19 UTC. Isn’t the current consense amongst the IG that the plane crashed pretty soon after the last half ping?
@Ann:
It’s very helpful.
You only had one URL in your original post. So why didn’t your comment post immediately?
There are many things going on ‘out there’ that have been missed, dismissed or ignored here. But things do have a way of coming back around.
Since Jeff quoted the Spiegel article with the essence of Tim Clark’s interview repeatedly: here’s the unabridged transcription of Andreas Spaeth’s interview with Sir Tim:
http://www.smh.com.au/world/full-transcript-emirates-chief-sir-tim-clark-on-mh17-and-mh370-20141121-11rc70.html
I didn’t know that Tim Clark is a “Sir” but he’s a very smart man IMHO 😉
Littlefoot
Correction: not 10 minutes, but 1 hour & 10 minutes later. My hypothesis is that Curtin Univ. could actually record the sound of bed impact, rather than water surface impact.
A while back I estimated the location of a source of sound if it was on the 7th arc. It appeared to be 99.0E, 27.7S:
duncansteel.com/archives/899/comment-page-5#comment-10012
(add www in front).
As I mentioned earlier in this forum, recently I came to the same location under “free flight” hypothesis. Coincidence? Unfortunately Fugro has abandoned this search area, despite initially it was considered as a high priority area.
@Olexandr, thanks for the important correction. Of course, you’re right. My mistake.
Personally I’m inclined to discard the Curtin boom for good, then. Pings right or wrong – the plane could never have flown that long. I marvel a bit, why then it was ever claimed that the sonic event was at about the right time for the crash.
@Olexandr,I read your comment at Duncans’s page. In my last comment I didn’t want disparage your opinion. You thought long and hard about it and I don’t have the technical knowledge to form an educated opinion.
It’s just my personal view, that there are too many variables to come to an accurate conclusion.
Just read this story in New York magazine; I am no scientist but I have never believed this plane is in the water. When the plane first went missing, does anyone remember reading the story of the man from Australia who gave his wedding rings and something else away, saying who it should go to “if anything should happen to him”. He was going to a job in Siberia, if I am remembering correctly. Coincidence? I hate to fly but have never given anything away before I leave.
Julie I don’t want to hold up the forum my best guess would be it was a one and only post here so maybe I was not a trusted poster and was held for moderation I assumed at the time it was the link .
@Nihonmama, @littlefoot:
The “caused by seismic activity” was, to my knowledge, never more than a hypothesis. Geologically active Carlsberg Ridge runs NEAR this spot, and thus was deemed a plausible source – and the reading had a low-amplitude tail often associated with seismic events. However, it seems odd to me that such a seismic event would be localised more than 200nmi EAST of the Ridge’s nearest point. Also, I have learned that the implosion of a fuselage at depth WOULD be consistent with such a frequency profile.
While Curtin’s location estimate lies almost equidistant from each of the horn of Africa, the tip of India, and Diego Garcia (roughly 600nmi from each), the CLOSEST land to the refined best-estimate – by FAR, at a mere 215nmi – is Kuda Huvadhoo, Maldives – home of the multiple eyewitness accounts.
@littlefoot: for the Curtin event to have been MH370, the Inmarsat signal data would have to be rejected in its entirety – which would free us not only from the BTO arcs themselves, but also from any notion that it “must” have hit the water at precisely 00:19 (which, BTW, several ardent BELIEVERS in the signal data dispute ANYWAY).
MY point is that 12 months of zero physical evidence, together with intensive obfuscation by (and on behalf of) authorities, should have us seriously questioning the signal data.
Jeff,
Great analysis here, and hopefully my comments can add some value.
The January 9, 2014 and the following B&W photo stuck me as odd, and I just realized why. The snow pattern around the right and left side of the graded area isn’t correct for level ground. It is consistent with how snow looks at the edge of a depression – this I’m sure of, as I grew up in upstate NY farm country and in many places the farm fields are 5-10′ below road level. The same pattern forms, as wind comes over the edge of the ground it forms an arrow shape behind anything protruding up from the side of the slope. I’m pretty sure that in the January / snow pictures we’re looking at a 10’+ deep depression in the ground, not a level graded area.
Also, note no vehicle tracks run diagonal into the area – only perpendicular, which would be consistent with a depression but unusual for flat ground. If you drove diagonally down a 10′ slope you’d roll the vehicle.
Two other items to note:
1. Quantity of containers/debris off to the right of the graded area appears significantly greater in the March 6th picture than in the March 16th picture. They would be useful fill around a plane-sized object, to reduce amount of dirt required.
2. Comparing the final “after” picture with the earlier photos, it appears the overall graded area (and “indeterminate edges”) in the final picture is larger, having grown in all 4 directions to cover features that were previously farther away from the edge — the road to the south, the berm to the west, and the tracks to the north. This could indicate gradually sloped edges that would prevent shadows revealing that the area is now above grade.
In summary, I think the graded area went from a depression (below grade) to a berm or hill (above grade), in the period shown by the sat photos.
How tall is a 777, maybe with the landing gear stowed? If it’s something like 20′, I think this could easily have been swallowed up in a 10′ depression with 10′ of grading on top.
Over time, the ground may settle unevenly and reveal features that could help validate this proposal.
Hope this is useful, and thanks again for your analysis (read the ebook a few days ago!).
I also read somewhere, that Dr. Duncan claimed the sound might be compatible with fuselage implosion.
Here’s a Dec/2014 article from Curtin University with lengthy quotes from Dr. Duncan:
http://news.curtin.edu.au/rdnow/stories/listening/-clues/
It’s very interesting, but I find it a little troubling that Dr. Duncan insists the sonic event was close to the time of the plane’s last signal. 1 h and 10 min. later is not especially close. The recorded sonic event doesn’t fit the ping rings but it’s probably also incompatible with the plane’s performance limit. If a fuselage implosion could fit the sonic profile and explain the time difference he should’ve pointed that out IMO.
Apologies for multiple posts – just realized a deeper misunderstanding may have been taking root:
The TIME of the Curtin U event has LIKEWISE been triangulated (as of June, we didn’t know whether this was an impossibly LATE event that occurred very CLOSE to the Rottnest Island detector, or a sufficiently EARLY event that occurred very FAR from it.
After triangulation with Scott Reef, we now know the location AND time with some precision: per the Nature article, roughly [2.1N, 69.3E] and (as INFERABLE from the Nature article, given the speed of sound in water) occurring at roughly 00:25 UTC.
If the Russians were able to make the plane go 100% dark, why was it necessary to ever bring it back online? It seems unnecessarily risky to attempt to leave a “false trail” when they could simply leave no trail at all…
@Brock, I posted my last comment before I read yours.
You’re right, if we question the satellite data the ping rings aren’t sacrosanct. But the performance limit is something else, isn’t it?
@Brock, wow! it’s so difficult to pin down even supposedly exact data. 0.25 UTC is a completely different animal of course.
@All
IF, as some say, that the ac ran out of fuel @ altitude + – 350. One would think an acoustical signature of that magnitude would be picked up from AUS, to the S China Sea…not to mention CTBTO. I’m no number cruncher, but 300 tons of AC @ terminal velocity?. (would like to see the math on that one) Also 300 tons hitting bottom, wouldn’t there be two signatures?
Littlefoot,
No problem. My version with regard to Curtin is not necessarily correct, but first of all I would like to hear a comment from Curtin, how they defined source area based on two stations. They could define only a ‘line’, and it is actually what they did. However, why did they discard a part of this line, and left only “Central Indian Ocean”? If Curtin had directional hydrophones at each of the two stations, this is possible, though with a large error. In my understanding one of these stations belongs to the military, and the Australian military is as transparent as Malay military.
The other frustrating thing is that ATSB & Fugro have abandoned this search area; they even did not complete bathy survey, left some gaps. And this is bearing in mind that exactly same area was considered as top priority back in June.
@Brock: I looked at Dr. Duncans graph of the LANL event. If I approximate the time of the arrival minus the travel time (using a guess of 1500 m/s velocity) I get an event time of 0:21 UTC if it’s were to be where LANL says it was (I realize Duncan disagrees). Can you confirm?
@Chris, not necessarily. Underwater sounds are tricky and many factors come into play here. When A447 came down nothing was recorded. When the Air Asia plane crashed in Dec’14 nothing was picked up. So, the absence of a recorded sonic event is not proof, that no plane came down in the designated search area.
Brock McEwen,
You say:
“for the Curtin event to have been MH370, the Inmarsat signal data would have to be rejected in its entirety”
No, as I explained if it was bed impact, then timing is quite consistent. Take a hummer and hit water. Take a hummer and hit a hard stone, rock. Will you feel difference? The impact speed is not the only factor.
You say:
“MY point is that 12 months of zero physical evidence, together with intensive obfuscation by (and on behalf of) authorities, should have us seriously questioning the signal data.”
Shouldn’t we question hypothesis first?
There is only, probably 5% of the area of interest is searched, or even less. 30%? Nonsense. There is still long way to go before one should seriously be questioning signal data, unless some critical inconsistency or virtually impossible coincidence in the data is discovered.
Phil,
Satellites and GES.
There’s a tight relationship between the coverage region, the satellite and the associated GES.
The config is controlled from the ground as the “system table” and updated to the AES when changes occur. Frequencies (L-band sat to AES), satellite location, GES capabilities, etc.
I interpret your question to explore the likelihood of “crossed wires” between GES & satellite.
I can’t see that possibility.
:Don
@Littlefoot
Then the equipment is for seismic events only? No topside events such as that one?
@Brock, @Littlefoot:
“While Curtin’s location estimate lies almost equidistant from each of the horn of Africa, the tip of India, and Diego Garcia (roughly 600nmi from each), the CLOSEST land to the refined best-estimate – by FAR, at a mere 215nmi – is Kuda Huvadhoo, Maldives – home of the multiple eyewitness accounts.”
I think you can surmise my response.
Thanks much.
Chris Butler,
1. Not 300 tons, but 170 tons.
2. FL 350. Who said? Mike? Once again, this is just a hypothesis.
3. A lot of things depend on how it was (if it was) hitting water surface and bed, what kind of bed, etc.
Re number of sound signatures and timing.
There are three possible events creating a sound signature:
1. surface impact
2. possible implosion
3. bottom impact
Some of these are mutually exclusive. E.g. an implosion would likely require a ditching to keep the fuselage intact. A ditching would have a limited sound generated. On the other hand, a high speed impact would have the plane disintegrate eliminating the possibility of a later implosion.
Re timing, I recently watched a doco on abc regarding the deepsea challenger sub-marine.
www dot deepseachallenge dot com
This craft was designed to sink at speed to the bottom of the deepest point of the ocean. From memory, its sinking rate was in the order of 5kn. Considering that an aeroplane is not designed to sink fast, a back of the envelope calc would suggest that bottom impact would be expected in the order of a couple of hours (depending on depth). Any shorter, and we could infer a mid water column implosion.
Of course all the above is only useful if sounds are proven to be originating from a sinking MH370.
Cheers,
Will
Fuselage implosion? At M1 it would be in many pieces? AF447 did a belly flop of sorts and not a spiral dive, ditto AirAsia. There will be a big difference in the energy generated.
Oleksandr – no, the military don’t own the hydraphones. The Cape Leeuwin ones(CTBTO) are an intl organization and Curtin is a University.
@JS
m.imgur.com/kVv3lon
Not sure if this is what you were hoping for, but I’ve had this image saved for some time now.
http://m.imgur.com/kVv3lon
MuOne,
In reverse order: the depth of 5 km and delay of 1 hour would imply sinking speed of order 1.4 m/s = 2.7 knot. Consistent with what you say, isn’t it?
——-
Matty,
Yes, I meant Cape Leeuwin. I did not find much information about it online. In my understanding it is being used to monitor nuke explosions (who knows what else), which implies military involvement either way. And as long as it is on the Australian territory, it implies the involvement of the Australian military. Anyway, subordination does not really matter in this case.
@Jocet ~
Thanks for providing the link to the “MH370 Logical Reasoning” flow chart/decision tree. I’ve been looking for that one!
http://m.imgur.com/kVv3lon
~LG~
@GlobusMax re: timing: it does not surprise me that the Antarctic ice-cracking event LANL rebranded as “evidence” MH370 impacted on the 7th arc would indicate an event time close to 00:19 UTC – because it would not surprise me to learn that this was the very property LANL used to pick it out of the crowd of near-identical ice-cracking events that day.
@Matty re: fuselage: agreed. Even if we reject the signal data, the Curtin event only becomes, in Dr. Duncan’s words, “worth a much closer look”, and in my words, “back in play”. If I sound like I’m CONVINCED of anything at all related to this detection, I’ve phrased things badly. I don’t know whether that event is related to MH370. The timing and location are very curious, is all. If the 7th arc dries up (and LANL’s pathetic attempt to “corroborate” it drives me FURTHER away from any trust in it – I mean, who DISSEMINATES this propaganda?), then Curtin is to me is a logical place to go next.
@Brock, @Matty, since we are apparently in the mood to question everything, we can also question the high impact scenario. The alledged sighting at the Maldives described a curiously low and slow flying plane, which could’ve led to a fuselage implosion scenario after a low altitude crash.
But maybe this discussion has now taken more room here than it should.
German tourists coming back from the Maldives had a very mundane and slightly humorous explanation for the sighting of the low flying plane. Apparently a lot of pilots from charterflights enjoy to approach the islands lowly, sometimes several times,in order to entertain the arriving passengers. Since most charterflights arrive in the morning the timing would be about right.
German tourists who had visited the Maldives explained this btw as common practice of charter flights
@Brock McEwen:
Very true, could be confirmation bias, but you quoted Dr. Duncan as saying:
““I checked the data and there certainly is a burst of energy prior to the ice cracking arrival, however if I look at signals from other strong ice cracking events in roughly the same direction I see exactly the same thing.”
Plus you said his team had analyzed the same event – was than before or after they heard of LANL?
I have no way to judge, but whatever it is, it seems to have been big enough to note by two teams, albeit the ocean seems a noisy place if every point on that graph is an event.
Phil,
The GES is most definitely hooked into a specific satellite.
The antenna at the teleport hosting a GES will be tightly focused on that GES’ satellite.
GES to satellite is the central line, it won’t be flipping over to another sat.
:Don
@Littlefoot, Brock, Matty:
“Apparently a lot of pilots from charter flights enjoy to approach the islands lowly, sometimes several times,in order to entertain the arriving passengers. Since most charter flights arrive in the morning the timing would be about right.”
That’s an interesting bit. But do these low-flying charters happen regularly over Kuda Huvadhoo island? The comment of at least one witness suggests their sighting on 3.08 was not the usual:
“he could ‘clearly make out the colors of the aircraft.
It was mostly blue with a red stripe. Usually I can’t see the colors on planes overhead'”
https://twitter.com/nihonmama/status/446326016626024448
@Oleksandr,
Yep.
@Nihonmama, I’m all for taking potential eye witnesses seriously, but you have to remember that the confirmation bias GlobusMax was talking about, is a grave concern with witnesses, too, since they knew everybody was looking for an MAS plane. That’s why they were coming forward – and rightly so. But maybe the pilot of this plane simply took the fun too far and was especially low. Other witnesses described a different color scheme of the annoying plane.
Also, the missing-debris conundrum is a problem for a Central Indian Ocean crash theory as well. Yes, there has been no search, but shouldn’t some debris – besides that funny metal ball – have turned up somewhere?
Shortly after this plane disappeared, I was with a small group in Nebraska & crossed paths with a CBS reporter who shared with us that one of his contacts revealed that a large shipment of gold was aboard this aircraft.