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Author
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Topic: Steve Fossett (1944-2007) (was: Search for aviator Steve Fossett)
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FutureAstronaut
Member Posts: 372
From:
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted 09-04-2007 01:39 PM
  
There is word that world famous aviator Steve Fossett has gone missing when his Citabria Super Decathlon vanished while on a flight in Nevada last night.The Civil Air Patrol has many search teams out looking for him, but nothing has been found at this time. His aircraft contained over five hours worth of fuel. Steve Fossett is famous for holding many world records in aviation, including the longest flight in history while circumnavigating the globe non-stop, and non-refueled in the Scaled Composites Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer designed by world famous aircraft engineer Burt Rutan. |
fabfivefreddy
Member Posts: 1067
From: Leawood, Kansas USA
Registered: Oct 2003
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posted 09-04-2007 03:30 PM
I hope this turns out okay. |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 09-04-2007 04:50 PM
Latest BBC report: US adventurer Fossett is missing With Robert's help I had the pleasure of meeting Steve after his round the world flight. You couldn't imagine a more modest high-achiever. I do hope this turns out ok. |
spaceman1953
Member Posts: 953
From: South Bend, IN
Registered: Apr 2002
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posted 09-04-2007 04:52 PM
This has GOT to turn out OK. It just HAS to! |
KSCartist
Member Posts: 2896
From: Titusville, FL USA
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted 09-04-2007 06:12 PM
Our prayers are with Mr. Fossett's family and the search and rescue teams. |
ejectr
Member Posts: 1751
From: Killingly, CT
Registered: Mar 2002
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posted 09-04-2007 07:55 PM
A Citabria Super Decathlon is a fabric covered high wing, tandem seat, aerobatic qualified aircraft.They are quite light and glide quite a distance if the engine goes out. They also use very little distance to become airborne and land. Hopefully he found a safe place to put it down. |
Jay Chladek
Member Posts: 2272
From: Bellevue, NE, USA
Registered: Aug 2007
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posted 09-04-2007 08:50 PM
To me, the fact that the ELT beacon hasn't gone off could be a good thing as if the plane did go down, it would mean it soft landed. Still, usually a pilot who is forced down knows to manually hit the beacon on his own if he can't get off again.That being said though (and I am not trying to be pessimistic as I want this to have a good outcome as well), there are types of crashes or incidents that can occur which could be really bad for the pilot and not set off the ELT. Data from the transponder on the plane probably won't mean much either as the terrain in that area is somewhat high and mountainous. As such, radar coverage can be a bit spotty at low altitudes between mountains, where a Super Decathalon flies. A radar beam needs to hit the thing in order for it to transmit a transponder squak back to ATC. |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 42981
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 09-04-2007 11:17 PM
My thoughts tonight are with Fossett's family and friends, and with Fossett himself, as we all hope he is safe and just waiting to be picked up. But another thought came to mind reading this and similar threads on other websites. So many people on the net, from all over the world, just wishing they could do something to help. It's a common desire to similar plights, from downed airplanes to missing boaters to hikers gone off-path. At the same time, we have hundreds, if not thousands of people who spend their free time sorting through Google Earth and similar satellite imagery services looking for interesting things. They've found planes in mid-flight, submarines in drydock and sunbathers, well, sunbathing. And we have people using the power of distributed computing looking for specks of interstellar dust on aerogel, searching for Earth crossing asteroids, finding gravitational waves, and even seeking signs of extraterrestrial life. So I wonder, how long before we can combine these two, giving the internet access to updated satellite imagery of key areas (such as the Nevada desert) and unleashing them to find who or what is missing? I am aware of the technological hurdles that stand before such an idea, but I only wish that such a service were available tonight, as I know I would be spending my time sorting through virtual western Nevada. |
FutureAstronaut
Member Posts: 372
From:
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted 09-04-2007 11:47 PM
Wow Robert. I never even thought of that. I hope someday this will be possible. I'm just wishing that I was in Nevada Civil Air Patrol instead of New York. We did have our own missing plane search just last week though. One person, who's life was no more important than Mr. Fossett's, and just didn't get a lot of media coverage. I really do wish there is something I could do with this search, but I know that the CAP people on this mission are trained the same way, and no less qualified than I am, and have full confidence that they will find him alive and well. |
Philip
Member Posts: 5952
From: Brussels, Belgium
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 09-05-2007 03:07 AM
News mentioned he didn't file a flight-plan! I can't believe that... |
ejectr
Member Posts: 1751
From: Killingly, CT
Registered: Mar 2002
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posted 09-05-2007 05:21 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Philip:
News mentioned he didn't file a flight-plan! I can't believe that...
May have been a good idea as it would have plotted his course for them, but it's not required flying under VFR(visual flight rules) conditions. A VFR flight plan is only good if you don't deviate from it or report it to flight service when you do deviate from it. Very few VFR flight plans are filed. Usually students in training that do it the right way. |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 09-05-2007 09:22 AM
I understand he was searching for flat areas for a land speed record, so presumably this was an out-and-return from the Flying M (and it was Barron Hilton's a/c). No need for a flightplan then.Regardless - the important thing is that he's safe. |
tegwilym
Member Posts: 2331
From: Sturgeon Bay, WI
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 09-05-2007 11:14 AM
The media makes way too much of a big deal about "no flight plan". It's not needed for a short VFR flight, but of course it's a good idea if you have a specific flight in mind. But if you are just out puttering around, it won't do much good anyway. I'll file a flight plan usually if I'm making a longer flight, and out over some empty areas, forest, water, mountains...etc. If there is a chance that I'd end up in someone's backyard, then I won't bother since I'll be found easily. Often I'll just use flight following (where I'm in constant contact with ATC for traffic advisories or whatever) so if I have a problem I have someone to talk to immediately and I'll be on radar also. Unlike a flight plan where I could be anywhere left or right of a planned route. Anyway, I hope this story has a happy ending. I've always admired Steve's adventures and hope he's found waiting in the shade of a slightly bent airplane for a ride home. |
Philip
Member Posts: 5952
From: Brussels, Belgium
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 09-05-2007 11:50 AM
I believe he's flying a taildragger, not easy to land that plane in rough terrain if you someone who never piloted such a plane (only experience in Robin & Socata Morane here).  |
STEVE SMITH
unregistered
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posted 09-05-2007 03:00 PM
I had a chance to meet Steve and Sir Richard Branson at Salina, Kansas immediately after he deplaned from his solo around the world flight.An unforgetable experience and an unforgetable person. Many great accomplishments. Hopes and prayers with him, his family, and friends. |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 42981
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 09-05-2007 03:56 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Robert Pearlman:
sorting through Google Earth
Seems I wasn't the only person with the idea... Reuters: Branson hopes Google images help find Fossett "I'm talking with friends at Google about seeing whether we can look at satellite images over the last four days to see whether they can see which direction he might have been flying and whether they can see any disturbances anywhere that they can pin from space," [Richard Branson] said from Barcelona, Spain. |
ejectr
Member Posts: 1751
From: Killingly, CT
Registered: Mar 2002
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posted 09-05-2007 06:43 PM
Hey, Robert...maybe he read your post. |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 42981
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 09-05-2007 06:55 PM
With a friend missing and multiple companies to helm, I can't imagine Branson reading message boards (however nice the thought, though I wish it were under different circumstances). And as it turns out (as I am just now reading) this isn't the first time the idea has been put to the test, though without positive results. TechCrunch reports: When computer scientist Jim Gray was lost at sea earlier this year, Amazon stepped in to help. They arranged for a satellite sweep of the area and stored the images on their S3 storage service. They then created a task on their Mechanical Turk service to allow volunteers to scan the images to look for the boat. Thousands of people joined the search, but he was never found. |
FutureAstronaut
Member Posts: 372
From:
Registered: Mar 2006
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posted 09-05-2007 08:33 PM
I still have complete confidence that Mr. Fossett is alive and well, and will probably find his way back before anyone finds him, but I would like to pose another possibility.If he either got very disoriented, had a medical problem, or major system malfunction and hit the ground at a very high speed, would it be possible for the ELT to be hit so hard that it would break and cease to transmit? This scenario would also leave very little by way of debris to be viewed by aerial search teams. |
Spacepsycho
Member Posts: 818
From: Huntington Beach, Calif.
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 09-05-2007 09:40 PM
Steve's aircraft could not generate the energy required to destroy most of the ELT's on the market. Generally all ELT's exceed the TSO-C91 standard. They're able to withstand 1000+ Gs of shock, up to 24 hours complete submersion in salt water and will survive a flash fire of up to 1500 degrees F for two minutes.That being said, maybe his battery was dead or the coax & antenna were broken when he landed. Until the aircraft is found, it's all conjecture. Maybe Steve "crashed" near the famous Bunny Ranch in Nevada and he doesn't want to be found, until his credit card hits the limit. I'm not optimistic in his chances of being found in good shape, but we're all praying that he's sitting under his wing, eating his MRE's and waiting to be found. It's a real shame to lose an adventurer like him.
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tegwilym
Member Posts: 2331
From: Sturgeon Bay, WI
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted 09-06-2007 01:14 AM
"I'm talking with friends at Google about seeing whether we can look at satellite images over the last four days to see whether they can see which direction he might have been flying and whether they can see any disturbances anywhere that they can pin from space," [Richard Branson] said from Barcelona, Spain. How often are those satellite images updated? Seems it wouldn't do much good if they are old images. I know my house still looks the same when I look at it. |
spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 09-06-2007 07:10 AM
Regarding the idea of people scanning satellite images to help look for someone:tegwilym - the idea obviously relies on fresh scans of the area being produced by a company with a keyhole satellite. GoogleEarth images are anything up to 3 years old. Regarding the failed search for Jim Gray, I don't know the details but it seems quite possible that the search failed because his boat had sunk without trace. The search method is not necessarily at fault. On the other hand there is no way a plane can vanish without trace. If you have high-enough resolution images of the area the plane or wreckage is likely to be visible. The worst case scenario in term of visibility would be if a plane went down in wooded terrain where it could be difficult to spot. Personally I find the idea of a massively-distributed search extremely compelling. News reports I've read talk of a search area of 1554 sq km which is really nothing for a distributed search of satellite images. Finding 1554 volunteers to each scour 1 square kilometer of imagery would be easy. At the highest resolution available to DigitialGlobe's QuickBird satellite (60cm) a 1 sq km image would be 1666 x 1666 pixels. It wouldn't take more than 5 to 10 minutes to carefully scan such an image. In the end I think you'd have vastly more volunteers (in man hours) than data, allowing large amounts of redundancy in the search (each area being scanned by multiple volunteers) which would make the system more reliable. The fact that such volunteers would be spread around the globe would also mean a search could be initiated at any time of night or day and would probably be completed within a few hours at most. In the end the most difficult thing would actually be acquiring the high res satellite passes necessary as these satellites are on fixed orbits and only pass a given area once every few days. The swath they can scan at high resolution on a single pass is very narrow. Anyway, I think the idea is a fantastic one. If anyone has Richard Branson's email I'll be happy to encourage him to follow it up. |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 09-06-2007 08:00 AM
quote:
Originally posted by spaced out:
On the other hand there is no way a plane can vanish without trace. If you have high-enough resolution images of the area the plane or wreckage is likely to be visible. The worst case scenario in term of visibility would be if a plane went down in wooded terrain where it could be difficult to spot.
Not wishing to rubbish the idea, but a strut and fabric airplane of the size of a Citabria would (in the worst case scenario) disintegrate into pretty small pieces which could get "lost" in the shadows of rocks and crevices. I believe lost ww2 aircraft are still found from time to time. And of course, this all assumes that the military would release real-time sat. photos.I'm still hoping he is trying to find his own way out of a situation, but having flown from Minden, NV over part of this area I know how inhospitable it is. |
spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 09-06-2007 09:00 AM
I agree the traces might be difficult to spot but I'm pointing out that it's not the same as searching for a yacht lost at sea, where there really may be no visible trace left at all.As for military data, I was talking about the capabilities of DigitalGlobe's private satellite QuickBird, and there are other equivalent satellites up there. It just struck me when they were talking about a 'huge' search area of 1554 sq km. If you could put one search helicopter over each and every single square kilometer of that area for an hour you'd be pretty confident of spotting the wreckage. Of course that's just not feasible but the equivalent search via keyhole satellite imagery is really not that far fetched. |
skippy in space
Member Posts: 251
From: Aberdeen Scotland
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 09-09-2007 05:32 AM
Looks like amazon and AvWeb have picked up the challenge. |
spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 09-09-2007 06:37 AM
Thanks for the link. It's nice to be part of the search party.From the number of hits available and the rate they're going down at present (which will probably increase dramatically once the US enters daylight) I reckon the current search area will be completed within 24 hours. I guess they'll extend the area if the hits run low. |
Scott
Member Posts: 3307
From: Houston, TX
Registered: May 2001
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posted 09-09-2007 09:43 AM
Thanks for that link. I spent about half an hour early this morning searching. It was heartening to see the counter number of unreviewed images on the right side dropping at a steady pace (lots of people helping). |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 09-09-2007 10:04 AM
Yep, I've joined in as well. I was overly sceptical in thinking that these images would not be made available. The resolution is remarkable when you view in Google Earth. |
Frewi80
Member Posts: 120
From: Hawaii. Waipahu
Registered: Jun 2006
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posted 09-09-2007 07:35 PM
I really get a lot of desert images with nothing on them...Does anybody has some interesting coordinates that shows some interesting points or so. It seems that the counter is going up (?) When I started it was at 65,000 HIT's available now it's back to 72,300 HIT. |
spaced out
Member Posts: 3110
From: Paris, France
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 09-10-2007 02:00 AM
Freddy - a lot of desert with nothing in it is exactly what the area they're searching is. It's not supposed to be a sightseeing trip.I think the counter jumps up as they add new search areas to the program, or perhaps fresh images of areas that have already been covered (e.g. different lighting conditions). |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 42981
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 09-12-2007 10:04 AM
From AVweb via Wired Blogs: Geeks Spot Fossett? Sure, it's a long shot, but AVweb readers taking part in the Mechanical Turk effort to locate Steve Fossett through Google Earth imagery has found something that doesn't look like it belongs on a mountainside. Have a close look at the accompanying image. It looks to us like it could be the fuselage and wings of a small plane. We'll likely know soon enough if this is Fossett's Super Decathlon (or a combination of rock and shadow that looks like it) but in the meantime, the important thing is to keep looking. |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 09-12-2007 11:27 AM
This was posted on the net several days ago so I'm sure it has been discounted by now. As someone else posted, there should be approx. 3.58 million images to be scanned if the 10,000 sq miles are to be covered.(Each tile shown on Mechanical Turk is 85m x 85m). A huge but not insurmountable task if enough people could be motivated. |
Philip
Member Posts: 5952
From: Brussels, Belgium
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 09-14-2007 11:09 AM
The Google Earth images of the FREE version are at least 3 years old. How frequently is the official to-pay-for version updated? |
Robert Pearlman
Editor Posts: 42981
From: Houston, TX
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted 09-14-2007 11:34 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Philip:
The Google Earth images of the FREE version are at least 3 years old.
This is incorrect. Google Earth may have older imagery for some parts of the world, but I know for a fact that there are areas in the U.S. that were updated within the past year, if not the past few months. |
LCDR Scott Schneeweis
New Member Posts:
From:
Registered:
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posted 09-14-2007 11:48 AM
I believe Google relies in part on the QuickBird for geospatial data... revisit times are from 3-7 days on average... whether the folks import that information near-realtime into Google's database is a different matter. |
Philip
Member Posts: 5952
From: Brussels, Belgium
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 09-14-2007 12:49 PM
O.K. for the US territory but some areas in Western Europe aren't even covered.  |
capoetc
Member Posts: 2169
From: McKinney TX (USA)
Registered: Aug 2005
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posted 09-15-2007 10:46 AM
quote:
Originally posted by Philip:
O.K. for the US territory but some areas in Western Europe aren't even covered.
That's ok... Fossett's airplane didn't have enough gas to get to Western Europe.  |
Dirk
Member Posts: 933
From: Belgium
Registered: Jul 2003
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posted 09-22-2007 04:51 PM
I follow the search for Steve Fossett, but here in Europe there is almost no coverage about this. But my question... is there no radar coverage on the US territory, or did he flew too low. In Europe you can't fly without being spotted by radar. So it must be easy to fly in the US without beeing spotted by radar? |
Blackarrow
Member Posts: 3118
From: Belfast, United Kingdom
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 09-22-2007 08:19 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Dirk:
I follow the search for Steve Fossett, but here in Europe there is almost no coverage about this.
The "Times" reported on Friday, in a half-page news report, that the search has been abandoned. Part of the report dealt with the legal repercussions of declaring a missing person dead. Sadly, I suspect that the lack of any posts for the past few days suggests that most people are now resigned to the fact that Steve Fossett has joined the long list of famous aviators who disappeared while doing what they loved best. |
gliderpilotuk
Member Posts: 3398
From: London, UK
Registered: Feb 2002
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posted 09-23-2007 08:01 AM
I think it has simply been scaled back and many resources placed on standby. I'm sure the Flying M ranch are still providing private cover. After 3 weeks the odds are not in Steve's favour, though, like many, I still hope for a miracle. |
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