Steve Fossett Missing: Help find him by searching satellite imagery

M4RK · 2 Oct 2008 at 16:01

My mistake

Messiah Khan · 2 Oct 2008 at 16:13

Well RIP Steve Fossett, and I hope they find his body so his family can bury him. (Or put him onboard a Spaceship1 and launch him into space (Once they manage to get one to go out of orbit.))

LoadsaMoney · 2 Oct 2008 at 17:25

Is he doing a John Darwin.

Slinwagh · 2 Oct 2008 at 17:26

I doubt the conspiracy theories will end until they find a body, even then I am sure some people will keep floating their conspiracy ideas.

Slinwagh · 2 Oct 2008 at 17:30

LoadsaMoney said:
Is he doing a John Darwin.

Slinwagh said:
I doubt the conspiracy theories will end until they find a body, even then I am sure some people will keep floating their conspiracy ideas.

Some people think so.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2008/oct/02/fossett.usa

Soviet · 2 Oct 2008 at 19:14

I reckon he was ordered to land at the nearest AFB, kidnapped by the CIA, he gets cloned at Area 51 and his clone gets put into his plane, his plane crashed into the mountain via remote control, and the real Steve Fossett is forced to work on the US government's black op military space flight program.

Yup.

Andelusion · 2 Oct 2008 at 19:57

Has anyone gone back to look at the original images in the location where the plane was found?

TaKeN · 2 Oct 2008 at 20:02

interesting, I saw this on the BBC Page earlier,

It seems he was quite close to where he took off, so why didn't they start their search from the airstrip going outwards?

craptakular · 2 Oct 2008 at 20:19

TaKeN said:
interesting, I saw this on the BBC Page earlier,

It seems he was quite close to where he took off, so why didn't they start their search from the airstrip going outwards?

because there american

gumbald · 2 Oct 2008 at 21:33

Andelusion said:
Has anyone gone back to look at the original images in the location where the plane was found?

I was going to ask this...

Pinter75 · 2 Oct 2008 at 21:48

^ I think the place where his plane was found, was miles away from where they were looking.

Energize · 2 Oct 2008 at 22:11

Still seems strange that there was no transponder, you'd think anyone with half a brain would have one.

Pinter75 · 2 Oct 2008 at 22:33

Energize said:
Still seems strange that there was no transponder, you'd think anyone with half a brain would have one.

When you hit the side of a mountain that hard, nothing much will work afterwards.

Energize · 2 Oct 2008 at 22:44

Pinter75 said:
When you hit the side of a mountain that hard, nothing much will work afterwards.

Black box transmitters seem to work quite well after a crash.

Besides which, transponders can be set to constantly function providing atc with a constant location throughout the flight.

Pinter75 · 2 Oct 2008 at 22:46

Energize said:
The black box transponders seem to work quite well after a crash. Besides which, transponders can be set to constantly function providing atc with a constant location throughout the flight.

On large commercial aircraft yes, little private ones, hmmm

Drukk · 3 Oct 2008 at 01:44

rghjones said:
A GPS beacon that you have to deactivate every hour else it goes off?

The number of false alarms due to people forgetting would be immense!

Phate · 3 Oct 2008 at 02:01

Andelusion said:
Has anyone gone back to look at the original images in the location where the plane was found?

?? Be interested to know

Neoni · 3 Oct 2008 at 02:02

Body parts are reported to have been found inside.

R.I.P

Energize · 3 Oct 2008 at 18:03

Pinter75 said:
On large commercial aircraft yes, little private ones, hmmm

I'm not sure what type of aircraft he was flying, but all aircraft weighing 5,700kg or more must have a constantly functioning transponder for tcas, so it's not limited to large or commerical planes.

Scuzi · 4 Oct 2008 at 01:46

Energize said:
I'm not sure what type of aircraft he was flying, but all aircraft weighing 5,700kg or more must have a constantly functioning transponder for tcas, so it's not limited to large or commerical planes.

You seem to be getting mixed up between a transponder and an ELT. A transponder is an an aircraft system which broadcasts specific information during the flight. Once the aircrafty crashes and battery power is lost, the transponder ceases to function.

An ELT (Emergency Location Transmitter) is a beacon which is activated either automatically or manually after a crash. It broadcasts an SOS in morse on 121.5MHz and 243MHz. IT can be located using VDF (VHF Direction Finding) equipment to home in on the signal. Some sophisticated ELT devices actually know their position taken from GPS data where available and can broadcast that.

After the crash, a transponder would be useless. It may have helped identify the crash site by tracking the aircraft from a radar replay but a vast expanse of America does not have radar cover at such low levels so it would probably have been useless.