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April 9th, 2014
08:43 PM ET
Robert Ballard, explorer who found the Titanic says Flight 370 search crews are in the 'end game'
Two new signals have been picked up by search crews that could help lead them to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Robert Ballard is the man who discovered the Titanic wreckage.
Does he think we're any closer to finding the plane?
I am wondering why pings from the black boxes can't be made to transmit the coordinates of where they are. Could they not keep a running trace of where they are and, if something happens, always keep and transmit the last known recorded coordinates? For that matter could there not be a radio signal transmitted with coordinates? Since batteries are a problem could they have several batteries such that when one runs out the next kicks in??
boxes can't recieve GPS isignals under water because of the frequencies involved.. in fact, no RF transmissions can be received at all at the depths we are talking about, so no coordinates to send and they still have the transmission problem... only a couple of miles in a 6000 miles expanse
they have newer digital boxes with longer batteries, but the accident aircraft was manufactured in 2002 using boxes from 200 or so, which means 30 day batteries and no digital recording... magnetic tape...
the airline would have had to upgrade the aircraft to boxes that eject on crash, which are expensive and no airline ever does
the only other alternative would be to have the aircraft phone home via satellite every x minutes or so including it's location, but there is no legal requirement to do so, so no airline does it.... which is very surprising after Air France 447... the airline industry moves very slow because it's very expensive to make these sort of changes