The Search for Steve Fossett’s Plane

[Appletom]

A fascinating use for Google Earth. Google has obtained new satellite imagery and they are asking Google Earth users to assist in the search for Steve Fossett’s plane.

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/ - near the top of the page there is a thin yellow box that says:

To help search for Steve Fossett click here (http://www.mturk.com/mturk/preview?groupId=9TSZK4G35XEZJZG21T60), then click "Accept HIT". New users may find the tutorial here (http://www.mturk.com/mturk/tutorial) useful.You then download a kml network link that gives you a random 10 x 38 mile patch of the Nevada desert to review.

[Tom Baldwin]

What's this stuff about Amazon's Mechanical Turk??:slant:

[Gandolf]

A fascinating use for Google Earth. Google has obtained new satellite imagery and they are asking Google Earth users to assist in the search for Steve Fossett’s plane.

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/ - near the top of the page there is a thin yellow box that says:

You then download a kml network link that gives you a random 10 x 38 mile patch of the Nevada desert to review.

Google Earth Blog has more info on this as well as more imagry updates from Digital Globe.

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2007/09/new_digital_globe_imagery_for_steve.html

[Jrod]

Very good idea they have here, but the network link errors out when I open it. I've tried it three times so far and I keep getting the same thing. Does anybody else have this problem?

[BillyBob]

I abandoned it when they started asking for my name, address and phone number.

[SpiderX22]

I abandoned it when the network link ran really slowly and, like BillyBob I saw I had to register personal information.

The idea is great, but the way they implemented it was awful.

[McMaster_de]

I have no problem, because AMAZON has allready my adress.

[Appletom]

The idea is great, but the way they implemented it was awful.

You know, I agree with you Spider. What an awesome opportunity, and for a very good cause, and with huge potential in the future.

But the network link gives you a random overlay. So I have no way of working with somebody else, for instance, "Hey Spider, check out "this" location on "this" overlay."

Second, is Google Earth the best tool for this? Let me download the overlays as image files where I can open them in Photoshop and use the tools there to sharpen, adjust contrast, etc., etc. If I find something promising, then I can open the kmz file in GEarth and compare the base imagery to the overlay.

[BillyBob]

I wonder how long it will be before Google Earth is made up of live video instead of still photos?

[Jrod]

It's a good idea to use GE in such a way. but there are alot of drawbacks to it. one being detail of what you looking at. Secondly, I wonder if this steve fosset doesn't want to be found. They said on some news station the other night that they found his plane but not him. Then they went on to mention something the use of his credit card and bank cards, They didn't specify but leads me to wonder.:slant:

[BillyBob]

Where did you get all that from?

There is NO news, and they haven't found his plane.

[Jrod]

Yeah, they came back on a few days later saying that made a mistake and they haven't found his plane. I still think he doesn't want to be found though.

[kenbo11]

The idea is great, but the way they implemented it was awful.

Don't forget, this was thrown together in a hurry in response to an emergency situation. They really didn't have time to make this into some user friendly, commercial application.

[Poomuckl]

They said on news some weeks ago they might have found the right one. But after further investigation it wasn't his plane.
All the planes they found were from other crashes.

The basic idea behind it is great. It's like a giant computer cluster with up to millions of single units.


But in my opinion the biggest weak spot is, they are all searching for his plane. Looking for a plane implies he landed somewhere more or less safe.
But what's with his radio or his two distress signals?
Even if the landing had been too rough for him to survive but the plane is still intact to search for it, there would have been an automatic distress signal.

So i think they should look for pretty small leftovers of an airplane. The impact must have been that hard, that even the automatic signal got destroyed.

However this is lot more difficult to identify via GE. If not even impossible.