
MH370 search team finds second shipwreck - Cyberdog
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-35302512
======
tristanj
If anyone is interested on the current state of the search, the Australian
government kindly shares weekly updates on the progress. So far, the team has
throughly searched 80,000 square km of seafloor out of the planned 120,000 sq
km. They expect to finish the remaining 40,000 sq km by mid-year. If nothing
is found by that point, the search will be called off for cost reasons
(Australia and Malaysia have spent well over $100m on the search). Best wishes
to the team; hopefully they find the plane so we can finally get some closure
on this tragedy.

Here's a link to their search progress page:
[http://jacc.gov.au/families/operational_reports/](http://jacc.gov.au/families/operational_reports/)

~~~
cantrevealname
> spent well over $100m on the search

It sounds huge, but to put a different perspective on this, look at the cost
of what was lost:

\- The Boeing 777-200ER aircraft is worth US$261.5 million[1].

\- The average payout for each of the 9/11 victims, including passengers and
crew on the planes, was US$1.8 million[2]. We know that MH370 had 239
passengers and crew, so at the same "cost" that would be 239 x 1.8 = US$430.2
million.

So the total value of the MH370 loss is at least US$691.7 million.

Looked at this way, the $100 million spent on the search so far doesn't seem
that much to bring closure to the families and to solve the mystery for legal,
technical, and future flight safety reasons.

Suppose you lost something very valuable and sentimental, even if you knew it
was destroyed, is it unreasonable to spend 15% of its value ($100M/$691.7M =
15%) to find out what happened to it? (Personally, I do think it's worth
spending more to keep the search going.)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11th_Victim_Compensa...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11th_Victim_Compensation_Fund)

~~~
tim333
Also compared with putting satellite trackers on all planes it may be cheaper.
Apparently there are about 20,000 commercial jets and I saw one quote if would
cost $120k/plane.
([http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11325824/AirAsi...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11325824/AirAsia-
QZ8501-why-do-we-still-rely-on-black-boxes.html))

Then again sat phones seem to cost $300 and up on Amazon so you'd think they
could make something cheaper than $120k.

~~~
madaxe_again
If it's for aviation, it's incredibly expensive. This is largely down to the
monopolistic supply chains that operate - you want a widget for your aircraft,
it's gotta come from Lockheed, Boeing, BAE, EADS (Airbus), Northrup, GDC,
Raytheon and that's pretty much it - yes, there are other suppliers, but
they're the ones that the huge manufacturers pick. Because of the closed
nature of the market, and the infinite pockets of their governmental buyers,
they can charge whatever they fancy.

I spent some time in RAF repair hangers ~15 years ago, and remember being
absolutely blown away by the cost of parts (for a Jaguar GR1B in this case).
Torch lightbulb? £10,000. Red LED? £25,000. 50cm of 16swg wire, £5,000. Seat
cushion? £90,000.

So a satellite tracker for £100k is an absolute bargain, in aerospace pricing
terms.

~~~
jon-wood
How do they justify charging £25,000 for an LED? Is there something special
about that LED, or is it literally just that they've got a defense contract,
and once the contract is signed nobody is paying any attention?

~~~
pixl97
When you have to keep an enormous amount of paperwork and for that single
lead, tracking every single point in the supply chain, things get far more
expensive.

~~~
madaxe_again
This is part of it, yes. The MOD and others have an incredible filing system
that hasn't changed in about 40 years. In essence, it comprises generating an
absurd amount of hard-copy documentation for everything (buying a new LED for
a fast jet, for instance, is probably 80 pages all said and done), filing that
documentation (every department and even hangar have their own way of filing
documentation), storing that filed documentation, and then 40 years later
destroying that filed documentation without anyone having ever looked at it.

It boils down to "cover your ass".

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sisk
Article on the first uncharted shipwreck discovered back in May, 2015:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32719284](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-32719284)

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wycx
Does anyone know if datasets generated by the search e.g. bathymetry are being
made public?

~~~
TranquilMarmot
Yes, here's a nice article about the bathymetry:
[http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2014/mh370-bathymetric-s...](http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/2014/mh370-bathymetric-
survey-fact-sheet.aspx)

And a link to the data itself: [http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-
topics/marine/bathymetry](http://www.ga.gov.au/scientific-
topics/marine/bathymetry)

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Shivetya
So how many ship wrecks are assumed to be in the areas they are searching?
Finding two doesn't sound like many but granted shipping lanes have changed
through history

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zeristor
They've scanned 80,000 km, and found two ship wrecks. Just with a bit of
reality testing I would have thought they would have found quite a few more.
Over the last few hundred years a lot of ships must have passed through that
area, and with the rough seas a fair proportion of them have sunk.

How many may they have missed?

~~~
WatchDog
Its a quite remote area of the ocean away from major shipping routes.

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randomsearch
> The hunt for MH370 no longer makes headlines

Irony.

~~~
pc86
What is ironic about that?

~~~
borplk
He means the search just did make headline

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rubberstamp
maybe we should start adding some traceable marker with paint or something so
that planes won't disappear like this

~~~
kbart
There are better and more reliable technical means. It's simply mindblowing
how in XXI century a plane can be _lost_ with all these radars, satellites and
transceivers around. There are many technical solutions using already existing
technologies for tracking planes, it looks more like organizational and
political problem.

~~~
ivanmilles
On the contrary. If you look at the projected search area, it's a huge swath
of deep ocean. A plane is very small. Once it breaks up against the waves it's
really, really small. The debris sinks into silt at the bottom of a deep
ocean. Currents spread them out. Even if we knew where it went down, finding
it is a difficult problem.

On top of that, we don't have radar tracking over the oceans. Transcievers
don't communicate all the time while in flight. There are long periods of time
where you are outside any national radar system. Compounded, it's entirely
reasonable to lose a plane.

There are 15-20 planes that have never been found since the 1980s.

~~~
TeMPOraL
In other words, 'kbart is right. We could track planes over the water, but for
some reasons we don't bother. Not the future we've been promised. Maybe MH370
will make us start caring though.

~~~
pixl97
> but for some reasons we don't bother.

Probably the massive amount of money involved, and for very little gain. Most
of them are going to crash hard and end up in the bottom of the ocean in
little bits. Knowing where they crashed isn't going to save anybody, they're
dead on impact.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
_for very little gain_

But there's a _lot_ to gain in analyzing the data. E.g. AF447 was a perfectly
flyable plane that was lost due to bad piloting.

I don't know if Air France has actually started training and/or screening
their pilots to help prevent a similar accident. But that's why we search so
diligently; we need to know what went wrong so we can try to fix it.

~~~
dogma1138
AF447 Is a bad example they found bodies (first 2 were found within 5 days of
the crash) and some wreckage pretty much immediately. In this case the last
known position wasn't "that off" our understanding of currents and ocean
topography was.

Even if Radar will give you the exact point of impact with water (which it
will never do) there are still so many variables that it might not be that
much of a help to begin with over a general grid area.

