The Hunt for Steve Fossett Ends

That's pretty sad for his family and friends. The finding of 6 other crashes (some of aircraft reported missing long ago) says a lot about the the area he was flying in. Vast and difficult to search. Hopefully Fossett's family won't have to wait 40+ years for 'closure'. The chances of him being alive seem bleak.

R I P

Steve will be sorely missed. People with such drive and passion don't come along that often. The fact that he hasn't been found will add to the legend that was his life, and might have been the type of passing he would have chosen. I offer the following poem to Steve and all who knew him.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

also known as... I. M. R. T. HAMILTON BRUCE (1846-1899)
by William Ernest Henley (1849-1903)
Composed circa 1875.

Is he dead? Maybe, maybe not, I'm not counting him out yet.

jack

Sorry to be a bit stupid but who is / was Steve Fossett?

John.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fossett

Ain't he Branson's of Virgin fame partner in some of those around the world balloon rides.

That's my recollection as well (although I got the impression that Branson was more of a sponsor/ passenger). This article indicates that it was Branson who approached Google Earth to set up an Internet search. Whatever the facts of this disappearance, conspiracy theory etc will run and run.

You know Chris, you would think with Steve Fossett's advanced knowledge of aeronautics, he would at least have one of those GPS locator units in that small plane-just in case of an accident. James

That does seem a logical assumption.

Perhaps made useless when submerged to great depths?

I think he did. Here is some speculation as to why one may not work.

This is a blog site where users and post and review sightings of interest from Amazon's Mechanical Turk search for Steve Fossett:

http://fossettsightings.blogspot.com

Hmm couple of things i noted, having spent some time in the Nevada Deserts. They didn't look very far, since 20,000 square miles is about 141 miles by 141 miles, so they must think they have a pretty good idea where he went down and are looking in the wrong place. Also Nevada is not all that rugged, it is a lot of relatively flat high desert with a few very old and weathered volcanic ridges, except along the western and eastern edges of Nevada. I do find it interesting that the planes six other missing american crews weren't worth the time of the State of Nevada to search for and were so easily found coincidental with a search for a wealthy foreigner.

This may help exlain.

How long has it been since anyone has read Ayn Rand´s "Atlas Shrugged"? If you will recall, a major thread in that novel was that all the real movers and shakers (NOT politicians and accountants), the real innovators, began disappearing...flying off to a private retreat founded by John Galt...

I had a go using Google Earth and the newly updated satellite photos of the search area. I can now appreciate the difficulties of searching using this method.

To view a large area, I zoomed to a height of about 10,000 ft. I had a wide search area but very little detail. I decided to check out a small airport and get a feel for the size of a small plane. It turns out that you'd need to be at around 1,500 ft to be able to identify a small plane. Zooming down to that height showed additional problems.

If he had crashed in a wooded area and ended up underneath the forest canopy, you'd probably miss the plane altogether. If the plane had broken up, being able to identify the broken pieces requires more resolution than is available.

What's more is that the search area is huge! I scanned a section sequentially for about an hour and got only a few square miles searched. It was only an hour but I got a crick in my neck when I paused to rest.

It's easy to search for a large landmark such as a building, a dam, an airport, or even an aircraft carrier. A small plane, probably not intact, under the trees or in an almost white area, is almost impossible to see.

Respect for taking the time to investigate this. Is there any king of intelligent scanning programme that can ID possible man made objects in such terrain ? Even if it turned up numerous spurious geographical/natural features it would have been of some use (?) in quickly targetting potential crash debris. I guess the technology is way short of that yet. Another thing is that presumably the guy would want any ammount of his millions spent on searching for him,yet his estate is probably bound up and not free to use in doing so.

Watching National Geographic a couple of days ago, they featured such technologies as the Predator and the Global Hawk, both Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV). They showed how technologies such as thermal imaging and ground scanning radar can pick up objects on the ground.

The problem that remains is identifying the wreck. To get a clear picture, you need high magnification which reduces your field of view. That translates to less area covered per unit time.

If a technology that can provide extremely high resolution images even from satellite altitudes existed, a computer can make the scan automatically. It would still take time since the scanning will still be pixel by pixel and then grouping those pixels together to see if there is a pattern.

This is where the advantage of the human eye and brain over the computer comes in. A human eye/brain can look at a picture and spot an anomaly almost instantly.

I agree with you Vulcan, but maybe one day we might be able to approximate the human brains pattern spotting ability. I think it's one of those weird statistics comparing the number of logic gates needed to atoms in the universe. Meantime, hows about this for a strange one ! I didn't believe it when I first heard it, but supposedly it was tried by coastguard to spot orange life-rafts in a bleak Atlantic ocean. I don't want to digress from the serious nature of this thread ( ie it's directed at a man who may have lost his life) , but there are some interesting technologies that it raises. Perhaps some one will initiate a new thread on the overall concept of using technology for this type of thing, but it's a little beyond my trivia type input here. I've enjoyed reading your comments here and hope this particular situation proceeds without any undue trauma to Fossetts nearest and dearest. I struggle to find the level of useful input when a thread is 'person-specific', but the overall topic would be an interesting one to read and learn more on generally. Kris.

Uh...Kris this...here...is taken from your own previous post. Is that what you are looking for?

cr3

Nope....I was thinking fancy satellite images of the whole region. No aircraft deployed until some super 'gee-whiz' software has interpreted possible sites. Something like an upside down Hubble transmitting to a couple of Cray's. Maybe one day ?

I've always wondered about that.

They claim that today's optical satellites (sats with cameras) cannot resolve objects down to a meter in length. You can tell if an object is a car, for example, but you can't tell what make or type (station wagon, sedan, sports, etc.).

Yet, they can build a super telescope that can reach into deep space. Can they use Hubble to look "down" to the Earth and photograph the ground in high resolution? They don't seem to be doing that. Of course, I'm not an optics engineer or such so I may be giving it abilities that it can't have.

I recall reading a long time ago that Sat's could pick up an object the size of a dustbin lid. Google earth can certainly pick up my tiny garden and cars parked outside. The military undoubtedly must have some very high resolution stuff, but I doubt they'd brag about just how good. I reckon the type of car could be narrowed down quite a lot. If the technology and money spent on Hubble was applied to a downward looking scope, then some fairly amazing results could be achieved (using all the various types of imaging). Moving objects would be more of a problem, but static features might be easier. There's a new type of aircraft mounted technology that can 'see' through trees, and has been used to identify previously unknown man-made features. If the name of it comes back to me I'll post a link here. The 'upside down Hubble' was more of an analogy, but I think you see what I mean in general terms. It's probably only the military who would want such a thing, and they wouldn't want to tell anybody what they could/can do.

This link ....here....has some interesting data. These guys ....here....have probably got something they wont tell us about.

And this site.....here.....is just scary and cool and scary and cool all over again.

cr3

Hey, cool links. For some reason, Google Maps didn't want to go closer than this ;

Here's a US carrier in dry dock or under construction.

Here's a Russian carrier plus a submarine

The altitude in both is 1295 ft and 1100 ft. Note that you can't make out any people. When you try a lower altitude, the picture starts to pixelate (separate into pixels). If they can improve the resolution so that 1 meter objects can be seen, we will start to see people but you won't be able to recognize them. I doubt that you would even be able to tell a man from a woman.

Getting closer....

It has been long rumored that there is technology that will allow a license plate to be read from space. Of course the vehicle would have to be up-ended . But the legend exists. Even stating a golf ball could be identified. I haven't tried too hard to verify these claims but you never know.

cr3

One thing to remember.

Google Earth (and other "earth viewing" programs I suppose) utilize aerial photos as well as satellite images. Some views of cities, for example, are actually aerial photos so the quality down to 1000 ft below are much better. Ever wonder why some areas are so much clearer than others?

....figuring out why some places are inked out is fun.