Malaysia Airlines Flight Vanishes

[philip964]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -boss.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Novelist believes airliner shot down by US military as it neared Diego Garcia.

[Jumping Frog]

Novelist believes airliner shot down by US military as it neared Diego Garcia.

If the plane was approaching a naval base at low altitude, it should have been shot down.

[suthdj]

Novelist believes airliner shot down by US military as it neared Diego Garcia.

If the plane was approaching a naval base at low altitude, it should have been shot down.

Agree, but why hide it if that is what happened.

[Keith B]

Novelist believes airliner shot down by US military as it neared Diego Garcia.

If the plane was approaching a naval base at low altitude, it should have been shot down.

Agree, but why hide it if that is what happened.

They wouldn't because it didn't. Typical conspiracy theorist propaganda.

[KD5NRH]

Novelist believes airliner shot down by US military as it neared Diego Garcia.

If the plane was approaching a naval base at low altitude, it should have been shot down.

Agree, but why hide it if that is what happened.

It's the Obama Administration; transparency doesn't apply to their actions.

[cb1000rider]

It's the Obama Administration; transparency doesn't apply to their actions.

And prior administrations were totally transparent? No domestic spying, secret prisons, in-determinant detainment. The grass wasn't really greener on that front.

It'd be more like the current administration to take steps to black out the whole thing under executive privilege.. At least that would fit.

I wonder if we'll find this thing in the next year or next 20 years... It still amazes me that something this big can just disappear.

[philip964]

It's the Obama Administration; transparency doesn't apply to their actions.

And prior administrations were totally transparent? No domestic spying, secret prisons, in-determinant detainment. The grass wasn't really greener on that front.

It'd be more like the current administration to take steps to black out the whole thing under executive privilege.. At least that would fit.

I wonder if we'll find this thing in the next year or next 20 years... It still amazes me that something this big can just disappear.

Amelia Earhart in 1937 is one thing, this is something unbelievable today.

[philip964]

http://news.yahoo.com/malaysia-airlines ... ories.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Malaysia Airlines towelette washes up on Western Australia beach. Found about 4 months ago but reported on the anniversary of the disappearance.

This narrows down the search area to the Indian Ocean. So it must have been the Southern arc they reported not the Northern one.

[oohrah]

I wonder if we'll find this thing in the next year or next 20 years... It still amazes me that something this big can just disappear.

I'm not surprised at all. I used to fly a military jet in that part of the world. The radar and voice coverage is spotty once you get away from land. I've been between countries over water with no voice or navaids for hours. Unless you have satellite comm (and use it, which I read MH 370 did not subscribe to), you can disappear very easily, intentionally or not.

[VMI77]

It's the Obama Administration; transparency doesn't apply to their actions.

And prior administrations were totally transparent? No domestic spying, secret prisons, in-determinant detainment. The grass wasn't really greener on that front.

It'd be more like the current administration to take steps to black out the whole thing under executive privilege.. At least that would fit.

I wonder if we'll find this thing in the next year or next 20 years... It still amazes me that something this big can just disappear.

Yeah, but the thing is, THIS administration campaigned against those prior abuses and promised to be the "most transparent administration in history."

If us peons can go to prison for lying to the Feds, seems like a guy running for president and lying to the whole country should go to prison too.

[philip964]

http://houston.cbslocal.com/2015/06/10/ ... -nosedive/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Plane entered the ocean in vertical nose dive says team from Texas A&M at Qatar.

[KD5NRH]

Plane entered the ocean in vertical nose dive says team from Texas A&M at Qatar.

Taking into account suggestions from other aviation experts, Chen says the vertical dive entry would have caused the wings to break off almost immediately at the surface. But the wings and other heavy debris would have sunk to the bottom of the ocean, leaving no trace of the airplane crash site for search teams to find.

So all the fuel and hydraulic connections between the wings and fuselage would somehow seal themselves up to prevent any sort of oil slick on the surface?

[ShootDontTalk]

So all the fuel and hydraulic connections between the wings and fuselage would somehow seal themselves up to prevent any sort of oil slick on the surface?

I think here I would go more with NTSB investigators than someone who has never set foot on a debris field. History is replete with video (film) of kamikaze aircraft hitting the water in near vertical dives - how fast? How fast would a 777 in a vertical dive be traveling? I think the professor has been watching cliff diving on TV too much.

[ShootDontTalk]

I'm not surprised at all. I used to fly a military jet in that part of the world. The radar and voice coverage is spotty once you get away from land. I've been between countries over water with no voice or navaids for hours. Unless you have satellite comm (and use it, which I read MH 370 did not subscribe to), you can disappear very easily, intentionally or not.

The ocean is a LARGE PLACE. I think U.S. airliners are required to have HF radios? Others maybe not?

[KD5NRH]

How fast would a 777 in a vertical dive be traveling?

I can't find a couple of the numbers I'd need to calculate the terminal velocity in free fall, but its drag coefficient appears to be .026. That's pretty streamlined. For comparison, a sphere is around .47.

Max speed is listed as 590mph, with a 560mph cruise, and I'm sure there's a fair safety margin built into that max...at least for a well maintained aircraft, but still, a very streamlined object in free fall can get past that, especially nosing over into it from 500+mph level flight. An aluminum sphere of 1m diameter has a terminal velocity of 523mph and the same of lead gets into supersonic transition calculations, so we're well into the realm of possibilities for normal gravitational acceleration in air.
Even if it doesn't exceed max speed during the fall, that's calculated for air; I doubt anybody ever bothered figuring up how fast a 777 can go in water without breaking up a heck of a lot more than just ripping the wings off. Now throw in the progressive but very rapid change in fluid density; the nose enters the much denser water while the tail is still in the air. Once the cabin breaches, (generally by the tail coming off) you're going to have various bottles, seat cushions and other floaty stuff coming up in addition to several petroleum-based fluids.