[HN Gopher] An Air Force officer who spent $11M searching Earhar...
___________________________________________________________________
An Air Force officer who spent $11M searching Earhart's plane may
have found it
Author : rntn
Score : 174 points
Date : 2024-01-29 17:20 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.businessinsider.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.businessinsider.com)
| zelos wrote:
| Surely to search a plane have to have already found it?
| Arainach wrote:
| Nonsense. For instance, I do a search every morning for
| "tomorrow's winning lottery numbers" on several search engines
| and haven't found them yet.
| lainga wrote:
| _for_
| echelon wrote:
| Tangent - wouldn't it be absolutely fantastical (and perhaps
| scary) if we could break the deterministic universe?
|
| Time travel movies about sending people and things never made
| sense to me. To receive information from the future alone
| would be all you needed. Not only could you get stock prices
| or a lead on innovation, but you could also perhaps perform
| instantaneous, constant time computation of any function. And
| you'd have perfect foresight of anyone trying to disrupt you
| and take away your advantage.
|
| But then maybe the future sends instructions for a machine
| that destroys you. Or it could be even simpler - it knows
| where to send you to die. So maybe you can't trust what it
| tells you at all. It has all the time to plan around your
| choices, and if you're still listening in any capacity it can
| coerce you to do its bidding.
|
| Wild science fiction ideas searching for novelization, I
| suppose.
| 1024core wrote:
| Bruce Willis starred in one such movie, "Looper".
| lb1lf wrote:
| Arguably in two - 12 Monkeys, too...
| asystole wrote:
| The 2004 indie film Primer is a very good take on this.
| mikestew wrote:
| Reminds me of DirecTv's Black Sunday[0]: the future machine
| gives you all the pieces you need to build the machine
| that, as the final puzzle piece is put into place, explodes
| and kills you.
|
| [0] https://blog.codinghorror.com/revisiting-the-black-
| sunday-ha...
| dllthomas wrote:
| Not quite the same thing, but https://qntm.org/causal is
| related.
| Sunspark wrote:
| The reason time travel movies don't make sense, while
| absolutely lots of fun to watch, is because the Sun is
| travelling through space. If you were to hypothetically
| build a time machine and set it for any given year, you
| would materialize in a hard vacuum. So, you need more than
| a time machine, you also need a spacecraft to be able to
| fly to where the Earth's previous position is. Chemical
| propulsion won't do it, you need something with significant
| velocity and energy.
|
| Unless of course, you are able to enter specific
| astronomical coordinates to appear in and match velocities.
| Would suck if you got the coordinates right, but were off
| on the velocity by 1000 km/hr.
| p1mrx wrote:
| > you could also perhaps perform instantaneous, constant
| time computation of any function
|
| See the first section of HPMOR chapter 17:
| https://hpmor.com/chapter/17
| paulddraper wrote:
| The article title currently says "for"
| kylebenzle wrote:
| There would be hundreds of WWII planes in that area that would be
| indifferentiable from what Mr. Tony Romeo says he's looking for.
| More likey he's just looking to fund his retirement hobby.
| OJFord wrote:
| That's what I thought, not even WW2 specifically, but (and I'm
| no expert) the image supposedly showing 'the distinctive shape
| of the fuselage, tail, and wings' is not that compelling? To
| paraphrase _Jaws_ : it certainly looks like an aircraft, but
| not _the_ aircraft.
|
| It could be! Wings broken off/up a bit. But is it that likely?
| It could also be some other aircraft. Seems a bit
| sensationalist until they go back for a better look.
| wharvle wrote:
| Maybe. Looks to be a bit (... by Pacific standards, so,
| hundreds of miles) off the Easternmost part of the Pacific that
| would have seen lots of air traffic in the war, which should
| leave it relatively clear, but I may be wrong.
|
| [EDIT] I still doubt it's _the_ plane, but this area may be far
| less-cluttered with 1930s-40s aircraft wreckage than others, is
| all I mean.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Howland island was pretty far from the fighting in WW2. The
| Phoenix Islands were not used by the military. All the
| fighting was to the west or the north (Hawaii).
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Air Force pays goooood[0].
|
| But seriously:
|
| >> but then we're thinking: 'How do we lift the plane? How do we
| salvage it?'"
|
| Don't. Just leave it. Be happy it was found, but just be
| respectful and leave it.
|
| [0] Yes, I RTFA.
| deadbabe wrote:
| It can be raised respectfully.
| yardstick wrote:
| Probably can. Should it though?
|
| Like the Titanic, maybe we just let it rest in peace? Send a
| sub down to confirm what it is. Then maybe update a few of
| the monuments to her to indicate her final resting place has
| been found...
|
| My only concern would be looters. If it is quite feasible to
| access "easily" then yeah maybe we should recover it just to
| protect against looters and pillagers.
| not-my-account wrote:
| The titanic is massssive, making raising it a much more
| difficult challenge compared to raising a single aircraft.
| notbeuller wrote:
| There was a rather silly 1976 thriller "Raise the
| Titanic!" predating it's actual discovery by about 10
| years. They made a movie from it too in 1980. Based on a
| premise that there was something valuable the government
| wanted on board)
| RegBarclay wrote:
| Then Arthur Clarke wrote "The Ghost from the Grand Banks"
| in 1990 (after Ballard discovered it was in pieces) with
| a slightly more plausible approach to raising the bow.
| The wreck has deteriorated now to the point where raising
| it would probably destroy more than what would be
| recovered.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| It appears that there would be significant questions about
| ownership and whether maritime salvage laws apply [1].
| Remember that Earhart was a faculty member at Purdue
| University, the aircraft was owned by the university, and
| it was filled with student experiments. They're going to
| claim that it still belongs to them. You're going to spend
| millions to recover it and then immediately get hit with a
| lawsuit demanding you turn it over to them. By an entity
| that will have no problem collecting enough donations to
| fund the best lawyers for as long as it takes.
|
| [1] https://www.perthilj.com/blog/2019/2/19/aircraft-
| salvage-in-...
| reaperman wrote:
| Seems like a situation where it would be best to get all
| parties with any claim that wouldn't be summarily
| dismissed to agree on details of what should happen with
| the salvage before committing to recovering it.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Yes absolutely, there's no reason for the plane to rest at
| the bottom of an ocean forever. The bottom of the ocean is
| the opposite of rest, it's hell.
| Beldin wrote:
| To you, there's no reason. To others, there is. That by
| itself shows the need for discussion (where either side
| ought to listen to the other).
|
| With respect to the argument of putting the plane rests
| in a museum: I do not see how that would be better than
| being able to visit the actual place where the crash
| occurred, with the plane still somewhere below the waves.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > Should it though?
|
| Yes, it's a plane not a person. We can learn from it, and
| Earhart won't care.
| paulddraper wrote:
| If it were a feasible to raise the Titanic as a small
| aircraft, it would have been done.
| MeImCounting wrote:
| Aside from the practicality of the two, the Earheart wreck
| seems much more like something our society would want to
| honor. An explorer and adventurer who's legacy and life
| pushed equality forward for women across the west vs a
| failed engineering project which was mostly a status symbol
| for rich people.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Looters are exactly why we should raise it. Protect it from
| unscrupulous people.
| cozzyd wrote:
| Yeah, but then amateur submariners can't offer expensive
| tours in their homebuilt craft.
| jdawg777 wrote:
| Salvaging the plane could give interesting clues about what led
| to the crash.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| That's just morbid curiosity...
| quatrefoil wrote:
| I find it odd to see geeks, on a site essentially devoted
| to idle curiosity, speaking out against idle curiosity.
|
| There is value in showing respect for the dead, mostly for
| the benefit of those near death and the grieving families,
| but the arguments made here seem weird to me. Do we seal
| homes and turn them into tombs when a person dies inside?
| Do we leave car wrecks on the side of the road?
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Curiosity is great but that doesn't mean it should always
| take priority. Would it be nice to know how that plane
| crashed? Sure, but we also figured out how the Titanic
| sank without lifting it out of the water.
|
| > Do we leave car wrecks on the side of the road?
|
| No, but we also don't need 80 years to find car wrecks on
| the side of the road, and there are various reasons to
| remove them. This comparison is ridiculous.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| I think the "risks" of disturbing a grave site are
| greater than any "rewards" for doing it.
|
| A home in which someone died can be used again by another
| person after proper cleaning and what not. Wrecks on the
| side of the road are usually removed because they are a
| danger to other motorists.
|
| In the case of Earhart's plane the air frame and
| navigation systems are 75ish years out of date so it's
| not like there is a pressing need to solve a potential
| safety issue. IMO there is nothing of value to be gained
| besides "solving the mystery" and perhaps gathering a few
| personal artifacts that could be displayed in a museum or
| returned to the families.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| Every time Earhart is mentioned here, someone pops up with
| authoritative info that she and Noonan were not well prepared
| / equipment was faulty / more Hollywood salesmanship than
| navigation skills / that island was always going to be a
| stretch on gas... point being that while in the collective
| memory they are heroes, my lay understanding is that
| scholarship on the subject has already determined there were
| major problems with their flight plan
| filleduchaos wrote:
| It's been several decades in saltwater at unbelievable
| pressure - I somehow doubt that.
| not-my-account wrote:
| If we raise it, it will almost certainly end up in a museum
| where many many people will see it and connect with Earhart and
| her story. Earhart would near deification, I'd guess. Plus the
| inspiration of many young boys and girls to adventure. I don't
| quite see where the lack of respect would come from. Or, if it
| is disrespectful to raise the crash, that disrespect would be
| repaid many times over with honour in a museum, no?
| digging wrote:
| > Earhart would near deification, I'd guess.
|
| Let's not get hyperbolic. She's already well known. Agreed
| though that displaying her plane in a museum would seem
| respectful to me.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| I can't imagine what would be recovered of a crash of a
| light aluminium aircraft after a century at the bottom of
| the ocean would bear much resemblance to an aircraft.
|
| I think it's a great thing to locate and document the
| discovery but I don't see much to be gained from raising
| it.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Frankly I think her story is a bit less inspiring without the
| mystery
| s_dev wrote:
| >Don't. Just leave it. Be happy it was found, but just be
| respectful and leave it.
|
| I don't see anything inherently disrespectful about rasing the
| plane from the seabed. I recall people telling James Cameron
| that he should leave the Titanic alone but he made a great
| movie and brought the ship back in to the public imagination
| and didn't disrespect the fact many souls were lost tragically.
| The ship was deemed not economically viable to salvage but this
| plane is much much smaller and it may be worth putting in a
| museum.
|
| I'm presuming you are offended on behalf of other people but if
| not can you elaborate why you find the idea so offensive or
| disrespectful?
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Because there's little to be gained save morbid curiosity.
| She did amazing things alive, celebrate that. Putting a wreck
| in a museum will emphasize her death.
|
| Enjoy disagreeing...
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| That's such an odd opinion. Her death is already emphasized
| whenever the disappearance is mentioned because it's super
| interesting. Being concerned that someone who died doing
| something interesting will have their death emphasized is
| just super weird imo. Everyone in history is dead.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Her disappearance is emphasized. Her death is not. There
| is a difference.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| But like, who cares? It kinda just doesn't seem like a
| big deal to me. I really don't get it.
| TylerE wrote:
| The big problem with Titanic is how deep it is. Very, even by
| ocean standards.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Titanic (12,500ft) is pretty close to average ocean depth
| (12,080ft).
| TylerE wrote:
| The Pacific is several thousand feet deeper on average
| than the Atlantic, though. Especially the parts of the
| Atlantic near the US mainland are quite shallow, with the
| continental shelf extending outwards well offshore. I
| guess it would have been more accurate to say that for a
| ship in the major Atlantic shipping lanes, Titanic is
| quite deep.
|
| Even looking for Titanic was a cover story in the first
| place. They were actually looking for a sunken Russian
| sub that was sorta in the area. It was only when they had
| a bit of left over time at the end of the mission that
| they ACTUALLY found Titanic, almost accidentally.
| aeturnum wrote:
| > _I recall people telling James Cameron that he should leave
| the Titanic alone_
|
| I think HumblyTossed is suggesting this group do exactly what
| Cameron did: investigate and document but not remove. If this
| is Earhart's plane, it's probably also her grave. We
| generally frown on disturbing the resting places of the dead
| for commercial purposes.
|
| What "worth" do you see in placing it in a museum?
| executive wrote:
| So people can know about it
|
| Example: https://www.facebook.com/RoyalAviationMuseumofWest
| ernCanada/...
| jncfhnb wrote:
| We don't frown on that at all, nor do we apply any sacred
| virtue to graves comprised of accidental wrecks.
| malermeister wrote:
| While I agree with you, there's sarcophagi in museums all
| over the world.
| markstos wrote:
| And on the tour these days, you are more likely to year
| "Yeah, maybe we shouldn't have moved it".
| cortesoft wrote:
| > If this is Earhart's plane, it's probably also her grave.
|
| Only because no one knew where she was to bury her
| properly.
|
| I assume you don't say that we shouldn't recover bodies
| from ANY plane crash; most people would expect bodies to be
| moved from a plane crash to be buried properly.
|
| Why is this one different? The length of time it took to
| find the crash, I assume. So how long before we can't move
| the body because it is a grave? 3 months? A year? 10 years?
|
| I don't think I would consider this a grave, and recovering
| the body and burying it properly is not grave robbing.
| aeturnum wrote:
| That's super fair - I think recovery and reburial is
| probably a respectful option. My impression is that our
| decisions about what to do with human remains often
| relies on finding a living member of the family to speak
| about preferences. To go back to the titanic example - I
| don't know of any families who agitated to have the
| remains in the ship reburied. One of the ways this
| situation is different is that there would be no
| ambiguity about remain identification.
|
| > _I don 't think I would consider this a grave_
|
| If by not a "grave" you mean not an "intentional burial
| site" I agree. But it would be a final resting place and,
| to the question I was answering ("why would people
| object") that's a thing that people care about being
| handled with the proper care and consideration.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Yeah, this one is always a tricky topic for me because I
| have literally zero emotional response to human remains
| and really don't care at all what is done with my remains
| or the remains of my loved ones. Once a person is dead,
| the body is just random matter to me.
|
| Trying to guess how other people would feel about things
| is a complete academic exercise in this case for me.
| bogantech wrote:
| There are no bodies to recover. The crabs ate them long
| ago
| lmm wrote:
| > What "worth" do you see in placing it in a museum?
|
| The same value as anything else in a museum? It's
| historically important, and also really cool, the kind of
| thing that inspires kids and even adults.
|
| (I saw Halifax W1048 at an impressionable age and am very
| glad I did)
| whycome wrote:
| Good use case for Apple Vision Pro, etc. Capture the plane in
| situ and then have it available to view as an AR model (at
| home, or in a 'museum' space). Let users 'walk' or 'swim'
| around the wreck.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It looks like there's something similar for the Titanic
| already, so, not a weird suggestion to make.
| TylerE wrote:
| No so sure. Titanic is essentially unique, her two sisters
| not lasting much longer, the last going to the scrappers in
| 1935.
|
| There were quite a few model 10 Electras built. Over a dozen
| survive, with several still flying. The Earhart museum
| already has a 10E, even.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > just be respectful
|
| IDK if littering wrecks is more respectful than putting them in
| a museum.
| whartung wrote:
| Indeed. Just leave it.
|
| Document it, photograph it, leave it.
|
| There's no reason to lift it, to "restore it", etc.
|
| It's a wreck. Leave it alone.
|
| Go find a "modern" Electra, and make that as "close to
| Earharts" plane for your display. But there's no reason to drag
| this thing up.
|
| If this plane were shot down, it would be considered a war
| grave and left untouched. No reason to not treat this the same.
|
| Rejoice if she has, indeed, been found. Peace for the families,
| finally.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| In a surprise twist, when they explore it in detail, it turns out
| to be MH 370.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. Someday I or my kids will read
| about finding MH370. Will they put that in a museum?
| rand1239 wrote:
| No because it's not mysterious anymore. Also not many museums
| in the world that can fit one.
| bell-cot wrote:
| I - Howland Island (near which they seemingly found this
| wreckage) is in the Central Pacific Ocean. Vs. MH370 seems sure
| to have gone down in the Central-ish _Indian_ Ocean.
|
| II - If they have even the vaguest sense of scale from their
| image - MH370 was a
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777-200ER. Vs. Earhart was
| flying a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_10E. There is a
| ~10X difference in wing area, and ~50X difference in weight.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| The interesting thing about this is that it doesn't appear to
| involve TIGHAR at all.
|
| TIGHAR, for those unfamiliar, are the people who pop up every few
| years with tantalizing new evidence that certainly will prove
| once and for all some novel theory about Earhart's disappearance
| and raises a couple of million dollars to mount an expedition
| which of course reveals nothing but some tantalizing new evidence
| that requires a new expensive expedition to investigate.
|
| So, there might be something to this.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I seem to recall these guys. Last time I read an article about
| them, it read like they were in cahoots with the government of
| Kiribati to promote tourism. Fun read though!
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| For others curious about the acronym:
|
| The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery,
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIGHAR
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| I have no idea how to interpret that sonar image. Am I supposed
| to see what looks like an airplane when viewed from above?
| Because the Lockheed Electra didn't have swept-back wings. I
| don't think any airplane had swept-back wings until the 1950s.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Could it be either sonar distortion or that the wings were
| damaged in the crash?
|
| Speaking of which, it looks pretty intact, which means
| (armchair air crash specialist here) it wouldn't have crashed
| but done an emergency landing on the water.
| jlbooker wrote:
| That would match with the leading mis-navigation theory. She
| and her navigator were fine and healthy, as was the plane.
| They were looking for the island to land on, but had messed
| up the navigation and were sufficiently off-course. There
| were US Navy boats in the area of the island that heard their
| radio calls. There was no emergency -- they just reported to
| be searching for the land that they should've found.
| Presumably they flew until they ran out of fuel and likely
| set it down in the water as gently as possible.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| There's literally a side by side diagram showing you how to
| look at. Not that your wings comment is wrong.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Ha, I clearly didn't scroll far enough. Thanks :)
| entangledqubit wrote:
| Still, seeing as how I don't look at these kinds of images
| all day it's really hard for me to gauge if the sea floor is
| littered with false positive images that may seem to be a
| good match. I could also imagine a true match to also have
| some other confounding blob attached to it. It'd be nice to
| have some kind of score to summarize that aspect.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Post crash many planes have swept-back wings
| WalterBright wrote:
| Swept wings wasn't a thing until after WW2. The Me262 had
| swept wings because the engines came in heavier than
| expected, and sweeping the wings back was the easiest fix.
| whycome wrote:
| Title reaction: How much does an 'Air Force Officer' make?!
|
| Answer:
|
| > But Romeo, a former real-estate investor who sold commercial
| properties to raise the $11 million needed to begin funding the
| search, returned in December from a roughly 100-day voyage at sea
| with a sonar image that he believes shows the lost plane in the
| ocean's depths.
|
| (Also, article title uses 'former air force officer')
| wharvle wrote:
| 20 years in + take retirement + _also_ work for a government
| contractor at 3x+ your former pay rate (while collecting
| retirement!), can equal a _lot_ of money in a hurry at a
| relatively young age (say, money to fund a real estate
| investment venture without risking being penniless in old age).
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > government contractor at 3x+ your former pay rate
|
| And then some. Friend of mine rode backseat in F-15s. After
| retirement, he spent two-three years as a contractor for
| Boeing training allied military in the Middle East and paid
| off his mortgage, and much much more (I want to say at least
| 1, maybe 2 investment properties owned effectively outright).
| wharvle wrote:
| Yeah, the "+" is doing some heavy lifting there :-) 3x is
| what you can basically just fall into after military
| retirement without trying very hard, with a bad network,
| and with poor luck.
|
| Another factor is that your expenses can be _quite_ low
| while you 're in, even with a family. Put an officer's
| salary on top of that--which isn't amazing, but isn't
| terrible either--and you can save a fair bit of cash even
| before you even start the contractor + retirement double-
| dipping.
|
| Though there are real costs--the schools are generally very
| good, but you may have to move every couple years. The
| bureaucracy is hellish (though, for all their dysfunction,
| they've got a lot of shit figured out way better than your
| average bigco). You'll probably serve under and with some
| real assholes at some point. And there's ever the
| temptation to get out early and start taking those sweet
| contractor dollars before you secure the government
| retirement check. Plus, you know, you may have to go kill
| people or get killed or what have you.
|
| [EDIT] Oh, another downside: it can be really hard for your
| spouse to have a career, due to all the moving and often
| living in places without much economic opportunity.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Thanks for adding that last one - it's really important
| to remember. (It's even a movie trope.)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > [EDIT] Oh, another downside: it can be really hard for
| your spouse to have a career, due to all the moving and
| often living in places without much economic opportunity.
|
| And it may be really hard to get an actual spouse instead
| of gold diggers of either gender.
| warner25 wrote:
| As an active duty officer approaching 20 years of service
| myself, I think this is a good comment except for your
| first couple of statements. I'm very skeptical.
|
| I think that an enlisted service member who's good
| enough, and lucky enough, to learn and do some technical
| things can easily 3x their pay by working as a contractor
| after their initial enlistment. But their starting point
| is low as an E-3, E-4. They can go from making $40k to
| $120k, sure, especially if they're willing to work in a
| combat zone.
|
| I don't know a single O-4, O-5, O-6 (and I'm talking
| aviators and IT/cyber officers) who has "fallen into"
| making 3x as a civilian. Their pay in uniform is
| $160-240k. Many of them seem to opt for civil service
| jobs as a GS-14, GS-15, which will match their previous
| pay at best (but be in addition to the $50-90k pension).
|
| I hope you're right, but I'm certainly not counting on a
| $600k job offer when my time comes.
| jjackson5324 wrote:
| Could you give a range if possible? I've always been
| curious as to what those salaries are like.
|
| Are we talking 300-600k / yr? More?
|
| Thank you
| FireBeyond wrote:
| My rough guess would be around $400,000. He mentioned "A
| thousand dollars a day, including weekends". Atop this,
| effectively zero living expenses (family still at home,
| to be sure), plus a whole host of stipends and per diems.
| tzs wrote:
| Here's a page that gives the range for each rank [1] to
| give an idea what they can make before they leave and
| start contracting. Click on a particular rank and you'll
| get a page with a slider for years to see how pay
| progresses within that range over time.
|
| A general makes the most, $221 900 per year.
|
| That site also has pay for non-military jobs. Lots of
| interesting stuff there.
|
| For example here's their page for computer science [2].
| Average government computer scientists makes $142k.
| There's a graph showing the distribution and it is very
| uneven--looks like you can make pretty good pay or pretty
| terrible pay. 5 times as many computer scientists at the
| FAA (250) than at the IRS (53). 180 at the FBI. Nearly
| 1500 computer scientists total.
|
| Some surprised me. The government has a little over 1000
| archeologists [3]. I guess that explains where all those
| other thing came from in the warehouse they stored the
| Ark in!
|
| [1] https://www.federalpay.org/military/air-force/ranks
|
| [2] https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/comp
| uter-sc...
|
| [3] https://www.federalpay.org/employees/occupations/arch
| eology
| jjackson5324 wrote:
| Very useful, thank you very much for sharing.
| warner25 wrote:
| That chart for pay levels at different military ranks is
| not a good reference. It's only showing "basic pay." I
| recommend instead playing with this:
| https://militarypay.defense.gov/calculators/rmc-
| calculator/
|
| You also have to understand how career progression works.
| Like it's nonsense to look at the basic pay for an O-5
| with less than two years of service, even though there's
| a number on the chart for that. Outside of exceptionally
| rare circumstances, an O-5 will have at least 15 years of
| service.
| wharvle wrote:
| I'd say $200k is about the floor, including enlisted, not
| just officers. Assuming they did 20 years in, they should
| be able to land at least that much for a boring office
| job in the US and if they didn't have something notable
| working for them (good network, what kinds of work they
| did, that sort of thing). That'll mean an NCO rank of
| some sort, for enlisted, and probably at least a
| bachelor's degree (it's strongly encouraged past a
| certain point) plus the all-important clearance. It goes
| up from there--way up, at the higher officer's ranks (O-6
| and up, say), where whole new tiers of job open up, like
| high-level lobbying jobs, think tanks, C-suite positions,
| and even media.
|
| Details of your service, who you know, what you're
| willing to do (travel, say) can start adding fives and
| even sixes of figures to your comp in a hurry (each!),
| from there.
|
| [EDIT] This is for post-"retirement" former military
| folks in general, not that specific case. You're probably
| not getting one at all for under $200k/yr unless they
| just don't _want_ to do one of the kinds of jobs that pay
| a premium for retired military. And that 's, again, way
| on the low end.
|
| [EDIT EDIT] Also if you account for _all_ benefits, the
| multiplier on military comp may not be as large. These
| places tend to offer good bennies, too, but not... you
| know, _housing_ and such.
| warner25 wrote:
| This comment has a lot more qualifiers than your previous
| comment, but I still think you're wildly overestimating
| things. Maybe everybody I know "just [doesn't] want to do
| one of the kinds of jobs that pay a premium for retired
| military" but it seems like _someone_ I know would at
| least _try_ the $500k+ job for a while if that were an
| immediately available option for them. I don 't think
| they're ending up in GS-14 or GS-15 supervisory positions
| in a big headquarters because the office politics,
| meetings, and emails are so much fun.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Relevant search: this presumed plane is at 16,500 feet of depth,
| and the record for deep sea salvage is, according to a quick
| search, about 19,000 feet. I had wondered whether it was feasible
| on the face of it to try salvaging this plane, and it may be. No
| comment on the advisability.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| How would/could you distinguish this from any of the hundreds or
| maybe thousands of planes that went down during WW2 in the
| Pacific? Assuming it's even a plane.
| jandrese wrote:
| I think the author is excited because he found the plane in
| roughly the area he expected to find it if she was thrown off
| course by an instrumentation fault that occurs when crossing
| the international date line. Also, it was about the right
| shape.
|
| Also, it wasn't near the fighting in WWII, and the shape
| doesn't match that of WWII carrier aircraft.
|
| I'll be more excited when they get out there with a deep sea
| probe and take some photographs.
| rconti wrote:
| From the source linked in another comment: (edit, ugh, I hate
| HN formatting, can never get it right even after all these
| years)
|
| ----
|
| One piece of good news for Romeo's search is that there are
| probably very few other planes anywhere near Howland. An
| airstrip was built on Howland in the 1930s in anticipation of
| commercial trans-Pacific flights, but Earhart was going to be
| the first to actually use it. During the war it was bombed by
| the Japanese to prevent its use, and that's the extent of its
| aviation history. None of the WWII air-sea battles were fought
| in the vicinity, and it's much too remote for general aviation
| planes to ever go near.
|
| ----
|
| https://briandunning.substack.com/p/i-remain-very-guarded-ab...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Who is Brian Dunning and what do they know about the subject?
| NikkiA wrote:
| He's wrong because that is an area that the USN actively did
| carrier training in from 1945 to today, and lots of planes
| ended up in the ocean after missing a landing, a take-off
| failure, or just because the pilot had to bail for whatever
| reason.
|
| Heck, during the evacuation of Hanoi they were pushing
| perfectly good jets into the ocean just to clear enough room
| for helicopters and the odd cessna _, but that would have
| been further west.
|
| _ https://theaviationgeekclub.com/that-time-a-south-
| vietnamese...
| maplet wrote:
| > Roughly a month into the trip, the team captured a sonar image
| of the plane-shaped object about 100 miles from Howland Island --
| but didn't discover the image in the submersible's data until the
| 90th day of the voyage, making it impractical to turn back to get
| a closer look.
|
| To be a skeptic, this sounds like confirmation bias.
| gleenn wrote:
| Or maybe the computer they had analyzing the data takes a while
| to search and it had nothing to do with people at all.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| > The theory, which Romeo relied on partly to guide his search,
| suggests that when Earhart crossed over the international
| dateline during her 20-hour flight, her navigation system became
| inaccurate and misdirected her by about 60 miles, potentially
| leading to a tragic end.
|
| How would this happen? It's not like her plane would have
| contained a misprogrammed computer.
| ciscoriordan wrote:
| An electrical issue could cause a gauge to misreport. E.g.
| vibrations cause a bad ground.
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| An electrical issue wouldn't be caused by crossing the
| international date line.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| Maybe the Bermuda Triangle is on walkabout?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Crossing the equator causes the sun to flip around and go
| the other way in the sky.
|
| Source: When I went to Australia, the sun went the wrong
| way. It was curiously unsettling.
| Jgrubb wrote:
| Google brings me here - http://www.datelinetheory.com/p/time-
| and-celestial-navigatio...
| chernevik wrote:
| Probably a polite way of saying she screwed up.
|
| She had a reputation as an indifferent navigator and aviator
| which is consistently downplayed.
| bb611 wrote:
| Fred Noonan was hired as the navigator specifically for this
| leg of the flight because of his navigation skills, which he
| proved by establishing Pan Am's transpacific routes, so it's
| not obvious to me why a navigational error would rest on
| Earhart's lack of skills in that area.
| jameshart wrote:
| Journalistic misinterpretation of what an expert told them
| leading them to write something dumb.
|
| Earhart's "navigation system" was Fred Noonan, an almanac, and
| a chronometer.
|
| Fred looking on the wrong page of the Almanack because he
| forgot which side of the dateline they were going to be on is
| what's implied here.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 'Navigation system' could be paper, maps, compass, etc. It's
| modern bias to assume that means 'computer' or 'electronic'.
| bb611 wrote:
| No computer (device), but definitely a computer (person who
| computes) the location of the plane and destination in a
| formula that relies on the correct date for accurate long
| distance navigation.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Navigators used tables to determine the longitude that depend
| on the day. The theory[0] is that because their flight involved
| multiple day changes, Noonan might've done some on the fly
| calculation that plugged star positions into the wrong day's
| table, putting them off by 1 degree of longitude.
|
| [0]: http://www.datelinetheory.com/, no idea how plausible this
| is
| CSMastermind wrote:
| To quote Brian Dunning of Skeptoid:
|
| > The biggest secret of the Amelia Earhart mystery is that there
| is no mystery, and never has been. The USCG Itasca was on station
| at Howland and in partial radio contact with Earhart when she and
| Fred Noonan ran out of fuel and ditched after having slightly
| overshot the island in the dawn lighting conditions. The USN and
| USCG analyzed their data and identified this area as where the
| plane went down...
|
| > So the best news about Tony Romeo's find is that he's looking
| in the right place, unlike the TV networks and the random
| crackpots whose claims they promote. Romeo hasn't divulged the
| exact location, for obvious reasons; but his location has the
| endorsement of Dorothy Cochrane, a curator in the aeronautics
| department of the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and
| Space Museum. She knows where the USN and USCG have said where
| the plane is, so that tells me Romeo is probably right.
|
| https://briandunning.substack.com/p/i-remain-very-guarded-ab...
| rconti wrote:
| I was curious, but the link doesn't elaborate on how much is
| known about the "ran out of fuel and ditched after having
| slightly overshot the island" -- whether that's all fact, or
| partially fact, or all speculation.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Here's the US Navy's full report:
| https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305240
|
| Which references the radio logs from the day of the
| disappearance: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6210268
|
| tl;dr we know they overshot the island and were running a
| search pattern for it while running out of fuel because they
| told the radio operator on the other end as much. The only
| question is what specifically happened (did they manage to
| get life rafts out, etc.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| So like the fate of the Roanoke colony, the cause of the
| Tunguska explosion, the Dyatlov Pass incident, the explanation
| is what's right in front of everyone?
| bhickey wrote:
| > the fate of the Roanoke colony
|
| What is the prosaic explanation for the Roanoke colony?
| fwip wrote:
| The colonists, lacking food and supplies to get by on their
| own, went over and joined the local Native American tribe,
| the Croatoan. Their descendants are likely now part of the
| Lumbee tribe.
| nocoiner wrote:
| So weird that they all disappeared! And carved "Croatoan"
| into a tree before that happened! I cannot imagine where
| they might have gone.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Yeah, regardless of what might have happened to them
| there, it's pretty obvious that it was the destination of
| the colonists.
| runjake wrote:
| Great Wikipedia article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Colony
|
| Being a west coaster, I don't recall ever hearing about it.
| Colonial era Europeans observed that many people removed
| from European society by Native Americans for substantial
| periods of time - even if captured or enslaved - were
| reluctant to return; the reverse was seldom true.
| Therefore, it is reasonable to postulate that, if the
| colonists were assimilated, they or their descendants would
| not seek reintegration with subsequent English settlers.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Integration.
| francisofascii wrote:
| the exact location is a big part of the mystery
| saalweachter wrote:
| And to quote his article with the bit that matches my first
| impressions:
|
| > I am not super gung-ho about the image. Yes, it is vaguely
| airplane-shaped (though not a great match for the Lockheed
| Electra). It's also vaguely anchor-shaped, or the shape of most
| any random pile of rocks on the ocean floor -- you can see at
| the bottom left of the image there's another object right next
| to it, which would be improbable if this was indeed a lone
| aircraft sitting on the ocean floor. It could be anything.
| hondo77 wrote:
| What? That image looks just like Bigfoot!
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Romeo hasn't divulged the exact location, for obvious reasons
|
| The most obvious reason being he doesn't know the exact
| location.
| qxfys wrote:
| Can we do the same with MH370? I've got a classmate inside that
| plane. His family has been deprived of any form of closure or
| peace regarding his fate.
| stirlo wrote:
| Around $150 million was spent searching including with high
| resolution sonar[1]. But obviously nothing was found. The area
| they're searching is far larger unfortunately.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_for_Malaysia_Airlines_F...
| ianburrell wrote:
| A company, Ocean Infinity, is continuig searching with robots.
| chasd00 wrote:
| iirc when it was missing there was a lot of wild speculation
| and then someone (maybe it was on twitter) discretely said it
| was on the bottom of the ocean at some location i can't
| remember and nothing else. The conclusion was this person was
| from some three letter agency and knew exactly where it was
| because of all the listening devices in the various oceans
| hunting for submarines. They(agency) will never say where it is
| because it exposes their capability. I think a similar thing
| happened when that submarine imploded on the way to the
| titanic.
| GenerWork wrote:
| Is there a screenshot of this Twitter post?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > The conclusion
|
| Whose conclusion? On what basis?
| pfdietz wrote:
| This is likely Earhart's plane, as it has a fuselage and two
| wings.
|
| Also, I am likely the Pope, because like the Pope I have two arms
| and two legs.
| 0xDEADFED5 wrote:
| here you go, you earned it!
|
| https://discordia.fandom.com/wiki/Pope_cards
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| > the object, which rests more than 16,500 feet beneath the
| surface
|
| So 4000 feet deeper than the Titanic.
| Izkata wrote:
| So around 400 miles* from where (likely) her bones and shoes were
| found?
|
| https://www.npr.org/1998/12/02/1032135/bones-shoes-may-have-...
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/08/591950171...
|
| * Eyeballing it on Google Maps, distance from Howland island to
| Nikumaroro island
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