The search for Steve Fossett

[Hill]

I mentioned the use of human-computer interaction to allow human eyes and minds to help computer programs help humans to do certain tasks in the initial post of this thread:

Classifying galaxies - citizen science

Once again a variation of this method is being used to help in the search for aviator Steve Fossett.

Amazon Mechanical Turk allows computer users to help in the search for Fossett. Follow the directions and you can be looking at very recent (a few days old) satellite imagery of a portion of the area that needs to be searched. You can either use the small pictures provided or you can use Google Earth to download and view a super-overlay. Then cut and paste latitude/longitude values to go to the spot within the imagery and search. If you do take part, please reply using the Mechanical Turk form, not the Google Earth Community Forum.

[Buffy]

A sobering piece in today's SF Chronicle on the side effects of the search and what does not happen in these situations when you're not world-famous:

Originally Posted by SF Chronicle, 9/10/2007

The search for Fossett across a 17,000-square-mile swath of the Sierra Nevada has revealed the wreckage of eight other small planes that had never, until now, been discovered. And each of those crash sites holds clues to the fates of other fliers who went missing in what is starting to look like the Bermuda Triangle of the western United States.
...
Little is known about the eight crashes spotted in the past week, because searchers have swooped in only long enough to ascertain they were not Fossett's plane, said Civil Air Patrol spokeswoman Maj. Cynthia Ryan. The Fossett mission involves dozens of planes including state and federal aircraft as well as some owned by private volunteers, hundreds of ground searchers and new technology that can scan the rough, dense terrain with more than 15 times the detail of the naked eye.

"Yeah, there are special resources being devoted to this because of who he is," Ryan said at a news briefing last week. "We wouldn't have a Cessna Citation at our disposal unless it came from (hotel magnate) Barron Hilton's ranch. So yeah, there are some differences, let's not be coy about that. But the basics of what you see here today is what we devote to every search."

The article goes on to recount a disappearance of a pilot in 1964 that has gone unsolved for 40+ years, leaving just as many agonized family members in its wake...

The rich are different from you and I,
Buffy

[Hill]

The rich are different from you and I,

No doubt, but like all new processes and technologies this one is starting with something specialized and may well soon be utilized for more "mundane" searches.

One would hope, anyway.



By the way this has been tried before under much less favorable search conditions: Jim Gray (computer scientist - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Hill

I mentioned the use of human-computer interaction to allow human eyes and minds to help computer programs help humans to do certain tasks in the initial post of this thread:

human minds? i assert the door is open and my right to stick my foot in it. i also acknowledge your right to slam it a good one. for the sake of argument, we are the humans and these communications are our computers. Hang on.

Remote viewer Major Ed Dames says look here: >> COAST TO COAST AM WITH GEORGE NOORY

FWIW

[Hill]

Originally Posted by Turtle

human minds? i assert the door is open and my right to stick my foot in it. i also acknowledge your right to slam it a good one. for the sake of argument, we are the humans and these communications are our computers. Hang on.

FWIW

???????????????????

Remote viewer Major Ed Dames says look here: >> COAST TO COAST AM WITH GEORGE NOORY

If that nutcase Dames has guessed correctly, I guess I'll have to entertain the possibility maybe he has something going with that "remote viewing" business. Somehow I doubt it.

I will say this: the search has brought the GEC Forum lots of new members, many attracted because of the search. Many of those don't read the many reminders not to post results in the forum, at least not without also posting their positions in the Mechanical Turk site so somebody with the power to do something about their find can double check it. But we are now to 1000000 posts, most made during the past two years.

Re: Steve Fossett Missing -Possible wrecksite #1000000 - 09/13/07 10:11 AM

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Remote viewer Major Ed Dames says look here: >> COAST TO COAST AM WITH GEORGE NOORY

FWIW

AFAIK, the scientific and statistical consensus is that remote viewing is worth precisely nothing. That said, isn’t remote viewing supposed to work like … the psychic sees what he’s looking for, then can look around, find landmarks, then give precise directions to it? Narrowing it down to a few hundred square kilometers north of Yosemite because “Steve might have wanted to do some sightseeing over Yosemite National Park on the way back to the Flying M Ranch, so took a detour in that direction” seems more like un-psychic guesswork than remote viewing.

Ed Dames seems as a shadow of his former charlatan self. No more predictions down-to-the-year-and-season predictions of the end of nearly all life on earth, deadly fungus bioweapons launched from comets, or other creative stuff – just a rather lame “we’ll give authorities a more detailed fix of Fossett if they ask”.

Seriously, though, Fossett’s death, which seems more certain as time passes and searches, conventional and Mechanical Turk-based, come up empty, saddens me more than I expected. After years of chortling when his balloons, etc. left him in dire need of rescue at sea, and grumbling about him being more of a guy with too much money than a real pilot at his successes, I realize I really do admire Fossett. Of all the billionaires of whom I’ve heard, his behavior seems closest to how I imagine I’d behave if I were one, striving to set records in vehicles of all sorts.

Assuming he doesn’t turn up alive – which seems increasingly unlikely - the world’s a slightly less colorful place for me without Steve Fossett. I’ll miss him.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Hill

???????????????????

If that nutcase Dames has guessed correctly, I guess I'll have to entertain the possibility maybe he has something going with that "remote viewing" business. Somehow I doubt it.

I will say this: the search has brought the GEC Forum lots of new members, many attracted because of the search. Many of those don't read the many reminders not to post results in the forum, at least not without also posting their positions in the Mechanical Turk site so somebody with the power to do something about their find can double check it. But we are now to 1000000 posts, most made during the past two years.

Sorry for the confusion; I was taking a poke at Dames in an attempt to interject some levity. If he's right...well, even random guesses can be right sometimes. He's got something going alright...I think it's called a scam.

I see someone over at GEC may have found an impact crater while looking for Steve Fosset! Google Earth Community: Is this a small Meteorit Crater on DG_60cm Map

I didn't look 'cause the "download first" business made me suspicious. Is it safe?

[Hill]

Originally Posted by Turtle

Sorry for the confusion; I was taking a poke at Dames in an attempt to interject some levity. If he's right...well, even random guesses can be right sometimes. He's got something going alright...I think it's called a scam.

I see someone over at GEC may have found an impact crater while looking for Steve Fosset! Google Earth Community: Is this a small Meteorit Crater on DG_60cm Map

I didn't look 'cause the "download first" business made me suspicious. Is it safe?

Looking at the old imagery underneath, it simply looks like vegetation that was once green is now dead.

"download first" refers to the kml file that includes the very recent imagery. If you are nervous about doing it from the poster's file, go directly to Mechanical Turk and download the latest network link from there.

[htawebs]

I posted in my hello that most people haven't taken in account a simple possibility. Maybe, just maybe, Steve suffered a heart attack while flying. He wasn't in the best shape. Also, there was no S.O.S., no Mayday, no nothing. It has also been speculated that he had a GPS-enabled watch which was never activated.

There is no mystery here. A logical conclusion, based on age, circumstance, and outright balls suggests he died on that fateful day. You know, if whether or not he had a heart condition, G-force will drain blood from the upper body to the lower body. If his heart was weak (which we don't know), that would be enough to cause heart failure.

He was a great man, but he is dead. That is a fact.

May future pilots look up to you, Steve. You were one of the best.

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, htawebs!

Originally Posted by htawebs

I posted in my hello that most people haven't taken in account a simple possibility. Maybe, just maybe, Steve suffered a heart attack while flying.
He wasn't in the best shape. Also, there was no S.O.S., no Mayday, no nothing. It has also been speculated that he had a GPS-enabled watch which was never activated.

Definitely a possibility – although Fossett was in pretty good shape for a 62-year-old. He’s done a lot of serious climbing and swimming, including finishing a full triathlon in 1996 in 15:53:10 (compare to a possible winning time of about 12:00, or a world-class winning time of 8:15 or so).

This doesn’t completely resolve the mystery. Live pilot or dead, there ought to be some recognizable wreckage of his Decathlon (for Aviation old-timers, basically an improved Citabria). This is a plane with a stall speed/cruise/max speed of about 60/120/200 MPH, so unlike a small or large jet, not really capable of reducing itself into tiny pieces on impact.

I suspect the true reason the extensive search isn’t finding anything is because the plane is in a strange place - down a narrow crack, under thick tree cover, or underwater. Searchers sonar scanned a lake near the Flying-M Ranch on the hunch that he might have crashed in it shortly after takeoff, but there are many, many lakes, woods, and narrow cracks within range of his flight.

Alas, I agree with htawebs that it’s very likely – though not quite a certain fact – that Fossett is dead.

Another possibility that came to mind when I first heard of his disappearance is that he was kidnapped. He’s very rich, and was out in some very remote country. Forcing down a light aircraft to kidnap its pilot doesn’t seem a particularly far-fetched plan. Of course, since the purpose of a rational kidnapping is to demand a ransom, and no such demand has been made, if such an attempt was made, it must have been unsuccessful. If Fossett was killed in such an attempt, it seems reasonable that those responsible might have disposed of any wreckage in a manner that even the most thorough ordinary search will never reveal.

It’s possible that Fossett has been kidnapped and a ransom demand made, but those to whom it was made are not making it public, but given the risk being incurred by those continuing the search (mainly the CAP), I doubt this would be allowed.