What is most important to me about this message from Ric is the willingness to take it as it comes and call things as they are when we can know more. It also clarifies that despite our enthusiasm and the many positives we believe we've found, we still do not have all the answers. This remains a search.
The need for this kind of truth of process has become more crucial to me as I have matured here than finding Earhart, actually. No matter how this matter settles, I still believe TIGHAR has a great hypothesis about Gardner / Niku. But how we get there - or fail utlimately if we must, has grown to be everything from my view if we'd be the laboratory we seem to want to be.
I don't know if we're going to find significant enough differences between mid-thirties metals and those of later millwork through this effort - that's over my head, but this is an interesting exercise. That the lab is working with us this way is generous and heartening not only for us, but should be for anyone who's interested in answers to the Earhart loss. Yes, it is good that the lab found enthusiasm for working with TIGHAR - but the whole community ought to note what can happen if we keep a sense of open-minded exploration and a desire to find answeres wherever they might be found. This lab demonstrates that spirit as I see it and I'd like to think they're responding to that same thing in us: maybe in going there we are saying we still need answers; many can respond to that when they see that spirit.
I also hope that more direct information might come from the Miami photo effort coming up next week. Nothing could define this whole thing faster and more clearly than a single better-enough photograph that can once and for all give us clear information about the cover and how it mated to the airframe.
I welcome the outcome, whatever it is. Of course I'd love it solve the mystery, but if it doesn't I am not swayed from searching. Let's just do it right.