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[richie conroy]

Ric interview on CNN.



Also for some humor.


gl

Thank's for posting link Gary

 

[jgf1944]

From my sport SCUBA days I remember how submerged objects could be so encrusted by marine  growth that they were functionally "cemented" to the surface below them. When I look at the Jeff photo I wonder how retrievable the objects of interest are. But certainly the ROV people have ways and means to dislodge encrusted targets without altering them substantially.

Hoping for many more objects to fret over!  John #3245

[richie conroy]

This area in video needs investigating, to many round and straight edge's to be coral 

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

Your statement could have been clearer  . "They saw something that looked interesting on sonar, and they went to look for it." How about  "on the way to investigate an interesting object on sonar, the ROV captured this frame in a different location.."

I don't know why the ROV was in that area.  I am presuming on the basis of the daily reports that they had some reason for being in that area--but since the frames highlighted by Glickman came as a surprise to Ric last week, I surmise that the passage of the ROV over that area was serendipitous, not guided by AUV sonar results.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

We know what TIGHAR went through just getting the tools into the work area and looking around; now we know a bit more about how that environment might treat something deposited there and tend to hide it. 

I think that TIGHAR can now claim that it is the world's leading expert in how to search the side of Pacific atolls.

It seems to me that the reason why there is no off-the-shelf technology to do what TIGHAR wants to do is that no one else has attempted this kind of search in the past.

I imagine that the information collected by TIGHAR will be of great interest to oceanographers.  If there is another Symposium, I hope that one of them will tell us what oceanographers can learn from the expedition's data.

[jgf1944]

As I understand what Ric said on CNN, the large object in the ROV image under discussion could be one of the Electra's curved undercarriage fenders. For my old eyes to see that better, I outlined the edges in red and inserted white lines to indicate the object's obvious concave nature, which means that the curved fender has to be lying upside down. That is when I ran into a problem. If the curved fender is inverted, then the downward bend of its long axis, indicated by the yellow line, looks stange to me (check out the attachment). Try this little demonstation. With fingers touching and palm down, cup your hand to replicate the curved fender. Now roll you hand over and note your finger tips--the edge of the fender--point up, not down. So if the pictured object is an inverted fender, why does the object's tip point down? I know it is way early to reach conclusions, but this stuff is truly engaging!  All best, John #3245




   

       

[Brice Payne]

as a novice to all this but a professional and experienced speculator and hypothesisator, i inquire as to how long until the suspected objects from an actual electra are photographed at the proper angles and are compared dimension-wise to the objects in question from the photo. shouldnt this have been abled to be done w/in 48 hours of the underwater still having been taken? wouldnt this comparison either confirm or deny a probability within a certain significant % right away? i am confident and optimistic. lets see a photo of an actual lockhead electra fender from the same angle and see how they match they up!

[Malcolm McKay]

As I understand what Ric said on CNN, the large object in the ROV image under discussion could be one of the Electra's curved undercarriage fenders. For my old eyes to see that better, I outlined the edges in red and inserted white lines to indicate the object's obvious concave nature, which means that the curved fender has to be lying upside down. That is when I ran into a problem.etc...

I see the point you are making and I agree.

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

Shouldn't this have been able to be done w/in 48 hours of the underwater still having been taken?

It's not a still photo.

It is a frame from the High Defintion (HD) video.

The crew on board the KoK didn't have a chance to review the 19 hours of HD video until AFTER leaving the search site.

They did not notice the apparent objects if they did review the tapes during their return trip to Hawaii.

Jeff Glickman found the interesting frame in the video around Tuesday of last week while reviewing approximately 30% of the HD video taken by the ROV.

Could the interesting frame have been found sooner?  If Jeff had been on board with sufficient equipment, perhaps.  I don't know how much post-collection processing had to be done to ready the video for viewing and analysis.

[Adam Marsland]

Just an observation:  As a professional musician, I once spent three years nearly constantly touring, booking my own shows, trying to make a thing happen.  It's something very few people did or still do, and to make it happen, I had to be very creative about how to fund my time between tours, how to promote the shows, and put myself at great financial risk every time I put out an album or went on a tour.  I was one car breakdown from oblivion a lot of the time.

During that entire period, there was a constant barrage of criticism -- about how I promoted, about my artistic integrity, about my motives.  I got called a begster, a wannabee, a poseur, a fraud, a con artist, a joke, a no-talent attention whore.  There was one interesting thread to all the criticism though:  it always came from musicians, or music fans, who never would be caught dead taking the kinds of risks that I did, and wouldn't want to risk anything that would make them look "uncool."  They made a profession out of watching the things I did, and finding things to criticize about them, without ever really leaving the house or even doing anything that might expose them to criticism themselves.  I would do three months straight of one-nighters in grimy, half-empty bars full of drunks and listen with grim amusement about how I had delusions of grandeur and thought I was a rock star.  Most of those folks are gone now.  I'm still a full-time professional musician 10 years later.

I think about this when I read some of the nitpickier posts and criticism about TIGHAR's expedition and methodology, and about Ric Gillespie personally.  I think about it a lot.

[Malcolm McKay]

I think about this when I read some of the posts and criticism about TIGHAR's expedition and methodology, and about Ric Gillespie personally. 

I think about it a lot.

Yes a very good point - however you weren't involved in a pursuit that was one of several hypotheses offered to solve a historical puzzle, nor one that is funded by public donation, nor I suspect did you offer as evidence for continuing support artifacts and theories that raise complex questions concerning their veracity and relevance to the hypothesis. Praise unaccompanied by reasonable questions and discussion is simple empty idolatry.

The people who visit this forum have a very wide range of expertise and I doubt that you can seriously expect anyone with scientific training and professional knowledge of areas of the research to simply swoon in a gushing worshiping heap at the persistence of TIGHAR. And I would also respectfully suggest that perhaps some of them had a fair battle to achieve what they have. I for one would like TIGHAR to succeed, just as I hope that those who are pursuing other hypotheses may succeed - it isn't a race it is just a search for an answer. Those answers cannot be found if the basic hypothesis has flaws.

[Brian Ainslie]

To put to rest the questions and conspiracy theories about why Discovery chose to air the show so soon, let me clear up that mystery.
The air date for the show was set weeks before we left Honolulu.  Like all networks, the bottom line for Discovery is ratings - delivering viewers for sponsors.  August 19th comes at the end of Shark Week - Discovery's biggest audience grabber.  Airing our show at the end of Shark Week is nothing more than Discovery's attempt to hold onto that big audience for one more day.

Discovery didn't know if we'd find anything but based on previous experience they knew that TIGHAR expeditions make great television.  The public loves Earhart, we do good science, we deliver vicarious adventure, and we're absolutely authentic.  Obviously, we all hoped for a big, dramatic, conclusive find but we also knew that rarely happens. 

At the end of the expedition all we knew is that we had not seen anything interesting in the standard definition video.  I hoped, but didn't honestly expect, that something would turn up in the HD video, but just getting it processed and ready to review turned out to be a time-consuming process. It was this past Monday before the first five and a half hour batch of video reached Jeff Glickman. Jeff spotted the debris field stuff late on Tuesday. He worked on it all day on Wednesday while I  matched the time-code on the video to the ROV logs to pin down where the debris is. By 04:00 Thursday morning Jeff had his initial report ready.  On Thursday we worked out with Discovery how to break the news and on Friday they were able to insert it in the show (way past the supposed deadline for changes).

So there was no "showmanship" beyond the desire to present the best, most accurate show to the biggest possible audience.

Wasn't August 19th also "Aviation Day"?

[Brice Payne]

It's not a still photo.

It is a frame from the High Defintion (HD) video.

The crew on board the KoK didn't have a chance to review the 19 hours of HD video until AFTER leaving the search site.

Martin,
'photo' vs 'hd video'. my point is that it's a photo now and the object has been scrutinized for over a week. what is the progress and the reason for a hold-up (if it can accurately be called a hold-up at this point) in getting proper photos of actual Electra parts so a side by side analysis can be done?

[Martin X. Moleski, SJ]

My point is that it's a photo now and the object has been scrutinized for over a week. what is the progress and the reason for a hold-up (if it can accurately be called a hold-up at this point) in getting proper photos of actual Electra parts so a side by side analysis can be done?

You are a free agent, Brice.  No one is stopping you from getting those photos and seeing what you can see.

If you mean, "Why is a man whose profession is photo analysis and who works as an unpaid volunteer on behalf of TIGHAR not submitting all of his raw materials for the inspection and criticism by members of the Forum?", then you will have to ask that question of Glickman himself. 

I have a few speculations, but no hard data that will stand up to the questioning ability of the Forum.  He may have had to return to earning a living after devoting most of last week to completing an analysis in time to compel a revision of the last minutes of Sunday's Discovery Program.  He may be taking a break from his labors.  He may think that quiet contemplation of the data and rumination about what should be done will not injure TIGHAR's research efforts.  He may not enjoy people peeking over his shoulder while he's trying to do his work.  It's possible that he is unaware that some members of the Forum feel unjustly deprived of information because he has not published the results of his labors five whole days after wrapping up his initial report last Thursday morning. 

Maybe he even has a life.   

[William R Warren Jr]

A suggestion to the roboticists, who MUST have thought of this but for some reason ...? Mount four cheapo little lasers that are set up to sweep out parallel lines, two vertical, two horizontal, that define a rectangular prism with a square cross section one foot on a side. Or a meter, whatever ... something that will give an observer or researcher an approximate scale, it could strobe once a second or be steady-state on or off, but it would be useful (IF the beams are parallel!) to the limits of vision (human or robotic).

I'm struck by the condition of a 1952 Air Force C-124 crash in Alaska, the wreckage of which was essentially chewed up for 60 years by a glacier rather than 75 years by a crushing surf, but the results are about the same. Google "Colony Glacier C-124 recovery" and you'll find it, I don't know if I can post URLs here. This is a new aircraft recovery, the wreck was spotted in June. Photos of the debris field are astonishing for the reduction of material to incomprehensibly tiny bits, and just look at the Norwich City in Bevington's photo as compared to today. The NC wasn't made to be aground, but neither was it built to fly.

I second the call for the .avi or .wmv or .mov or .mp3 of the 'debris field' pass, whenever you can find time! I was thinking that it might be possible, if the camera is at an angle rather than shooting nose-on (it'd have to be, right?) that running two windows side by side but a couple of frames offset from start would make a sort-of poor-man's 3D. Two videos running in color could be viewed by the "cross-eyed" or "wall-eyed" binocular separation method, or running one in red-only and the other in blue-only and compositing them to make a red-blue anaglyph that wants funny little cardboard glasses. (The binocular separation is definitely a better choice for this type of viewing: the eye and brain compensate for some of the mismatched motion merging if you're deliberately and independently moving the eyes out of normal position, whereas mismatching two videos into a single red-blue screen is conducive to nausea, headaches, and a fear and loathing of funny little cardboard glasses.)

Another thing I'd like to see is your underwater Digital Elevation data ... I'd be interested in seeing (or building) a 3D model of as much of the island as you have data for, particularly the reef and the Norwich City debris fan (which would help determine currents, storm surges, etc).  I wonder what a series of little (tennis ball or soda can sized) sondes, set to sink at different rates of speed to simulate aircraft wreckage of different buoyancies, would tell us about the currents around Niku at that time of year, once a year? Would the Republic of Kiribati possibly find such data useful, particularly in light of rising sea levels? It would be interesting to see if there's some little 'sargasso sea' nestled in the lee of Niku's little apostrophe that captures and collects flotsam and jetsam. There might be more than one. These would be places of interest, sort of like the LaGrange libration points where space debris collects. And, having roughly an airfoil shape (with the prevailing currents sweeping over the north side of the island, west to east) I would expect an ocean gyre, corresponding to the slower, high-pressure air on the underside of an aircraft's wing, somewhere south of the atoll.
 
I didn't get to see the program, either, but have worked with enough TV productions to know that, come hell or high water, the show was going to go on. I thought the silence after presumably making port in Honolulu was ominous, but like you said, Ric, there were tons of material to wade through, and I hope you're really on to something extraordinary, even for TIGHAR!

So: how much do you need to pay the bills and launch Niku VIII? -- Bill Warren, #3480