British ship HMS Echo arrives in area where (3) 'pulses' were heard (MH370?)

Daily Mail ^ | 4/6/2014 | Richard Shears and Lizzie Edmonds

[Bryan24]

“Then why did the first ones require a B-29?”

Because it was the first one and was over-engineered by about 1000% due to the VAST sums of money spent to develop the nuke.

[steve86]

Disagree on the wildly over-engineered. Father worked both at Los Alamos and Hanford (where I am today) and didn’t ever suggest that was the case. The implosion-type devices received only minor changes in the next few versions.

[PghBaldy]

Australia now saying on live news conference that US towed pinger finder heard 2 hour signal of a signal.

[PghBaldy]

I am not sure what I meant to type there ;) had a few dozen head injuries over the years ;)

[Intolerant in NJ]

... Malays & the NTSB, on the basis of the Imarsat Data, established the prior flight paths of the plane as noted below...actually each of those arcs probably represent a plot of the possible locations of the plane at the time of one of the pings picked up by the satellite - the only way to come up with the actual flight path would be to connect one point on each of the arcs (unless you thought the plane was flying precisely along one of the arcs), say in a more or less straight line from Malaysia toward India, maybe into Pakistan even.....

[cynwoody]

Actually, it is.

No, it's not.

Check out the manufacturer's page. They call their product a beacon because that's what is. It doesn't receive and transmit back. It just transmits. Until its battery runs out.

It is the brainless drive-by media who have applied the misleading name "pinger" to it.

[cynwoody]

Makes a person wonder that the jet successfully performed a water landing mostly intact and then sank in depths around 16,000 feet down.

No distress calls were received. It seems highly unlikely that human beings were managing its contact with the sea. That of course, assumes Inmarsat's analysis is correct and it really did head for the Roaring Forties and not the 'stans.

On the other hand, if it flew to Waziristan and landed at Taliban International, wherever that is (hopefully the NRO knows), then why haven't we heard any ransom demands?

My theory is, it was hijacked, probably by one or both of the pilots. At some point not far in, somebody else realized what was going on and tried to intervene. There was a struggle which somehow resulted in depressurization, incapacitating good and bad guys alike. The plane was headed south at the time. And the autopilot flew it until it ran out of fuel. It replied to Inmarsat's pings until it didn't (the bad guys having forgotten to pull that particular breaker).

Maybe in the nest 24 hours they may pinpoint by triangulation where its at.
Range is what 3 miles? What about when pinger is nearly three miles down, you would have to be almost directly on top of it.

Its spec sheet doesn't actually quote a range.

What's for sure, however, is unless those black boxes are found, what really happened is going to remain a mystery.

[cynwoody]

Disagree on the wildly over-engineered. ... The implosion-type devices received only minor changes in the next few versions.

Well, you could use the W87 as a benchmark.

Yield ~20 time Fat Man. Weight ~1/20th Fat Man. Twelve of them, independently targetable, fit on one Peacekeeper missile. Obviously, there were major improvements over the years!

If you want to go to the other extreme, there was Tsar Bomba, aka Big Ivan. It weighed 30 tons and yielded 58 megatons. Once, in 1961. Over Novaya Zemlya. The fireball was five miles wide. Biggest gadget ever.

A Boeing 777 Freighter has a revenue payload capacity of 112 tons.

Of course, if your plan is to ship a gadget to the infidels, a standard intermodal container would likely be a better choice. No missing PAX. No angry ChiComs. Just a big anonymous box, with a maximum gross weight sufficient to accommodate Tsar Bomba.

[DuncanWaring]

If MH370 went into the water at high speed, its last milliseconds would have resembled this:

Anything still floating after that impact would be indistinguishable from all the other floating garbage.

[logi_cal869]

HMS ECHO

Yes, it is.

I never wrote anything at all about the box signals.

Regardless, without respect to that (my comment...the ship), you’re absolutely right. Hope that helps.

You completely missed the joke apparently. I stopped being serious about this sideshow long ago...

[bert]

There are three or four path shown. Actually there an infinite number of paths between those at the divergent extremes.

The path must be depicted as a fan rather than a line

[bert]

now that is a full blown epic conspiracy theory.

It is so huge and detail filled that I believe it

a corollary would be that the flight did contain some really bad stuff and the escorts on board commandeered the flight and flew it to the least accessible point they could find, the South Indian Ocean.

[logi_cal869]

(unless you thought the plane was flying precisely along one of the arcs)

Oh, boy...

The 'arcs' are not flight paths; I never stated that.

However, I did and have questioned the Inmarsat data analysis (they still never released the data)...

[Intolerant in NJ]

The 'arcs' are not flight paths; I never stated that...sorry - badly worded - I didn't mean to say that you personally thought they were - it should have been a more general "someone thinks the arcs are actually flight paths" - I agree the satellite findings seem kind of fishy, especially since the press keeps describing what they put out as representing the path the plane took......

[CodeToad]

We got real good at nuke design. The first ones were very crude. The latest are rather small.

[steve86]

For the third time: He said “No matter how crude”.

[jonrick46]

I disagree. There would be a great debris field from any crash into the Indian Ocean. All of the crashes that I have heard about have had pieces from the plane and bodies floating on the surface. Air France Flight 447 is a case in point. There is a lot of things on a 777 that will float.

The reconnaissance satellites we have looking down at the Earth should have seen Flight 370 as it flew on its diverted course. These things do see things like license plate numbers. A big 777 should be no problem. It is very strange that not one word has been said about what these satellites did or did not see. That tells me they did see something and they don’t want to reveal what they saw. Perhaps a “combat landing” in Iran is something they want to keep quiet.

[AFret.]

The reconnaissance satellites we have looking down at the Earth should have seen Flight 370 as it flew on its diverted course. These things do see things like license plate numbers. A big 777 should be no problem. It is very strange that not one word has been said about what these satellites did or did not see.
____________________________________________________________

This event occurred in the middle of the night. Perhaps it was cloudy..who know’s.

[jonrick46]

These satellites have radar, optical, infrared and ultraviolet capabilities which see through clouds and in darkness. They have to be able to quickly detect a missile launch day and night in all kinds of weather conditions.

[DuncanWaring]

If the pilots were incapacitated/dead and the airplane flew itself into the water more-or-less straight and level, you’re correct.

If the pilot(s) were in control and played “lawn dart”, the only parts likely to survive impact with the water in a recognizable configuration would be the main shafts of he engines. They’re made of very good steel. And they don’t float.