As readers of this blog or my Kindle Single (or, now, New York magazine) know, I’m intrigued by the possibility that MH370 might have been hijacked and flown north to the Yubileyniy Aerodrome within the Baikonur Cosmodrome. If so, it would have come to rest on the specially-milled concrete at approximately an hour and a half before sunrise on Sunday, March 8. And then what? If it stayed where it was, it would have been easy to spot by land-imaging satellites overhead. To avoid detection, it would have to have either refueled and taken off again, or found some kind of shelter.
As it happens, the Kazakh steppe is a terrible place to hide a 210-foot long, 60-foot-high airplane. The flat, desert plain is sparsely populated and almost featureless, so that anything large and unusual is apt to stand out. There is no natural canopy of trees to shelter under. Though there are large buildings at the cosmodrome where space vehicles are serviced, there are no large structures near Yubileyniy.
After I began developing my “Spoof” hypthesis I spent days scouring first Google Earth, then free commercial satellite imagery looking for any hint that a plane could have been stashed in the vicinity. The pickings were slim. The Yubileyniy complex was built in the ‘80s as the landing site for the Buran space plane, and after the program was cancelled in 1989 it has largely sat disused. Occasionally the runway is used by planes carrying inbound VIPs and cosmonauts, but otherwise nothing has really happened there in decades. An overview of the area is depicted above.
The dark, fishhook-shaped line is the rail line connecting the airstrip to the rest of the Baikonur complex. Alongside it is a road from which a series of driveways lead off to the north. One of them leads to an isolated six-story building that stands surrounded by debris, berms, and trenches. I came to think of the area as Yubileyniy North. Here’s what it looked like in 2006 (click on images to enlarge):
As you can see, the area is desert, where vehicle tracks persist for many years. The six-story building casts a dark, short shadow to the northwest — the sun is nearly overhead. The road from the airstrip comes up from the bottom of the frame and curves to the right. Here and there rectangular patches of debris suggest where buildings once stood. Essentially, it’s a ruin. Here’s the same area, six years later:
Not much has changed. The sun is lower in the sky, so the six-story building’s shadow is longer. But nothing seems to have changed at all. The entire area of Yubileyniy is like this—the place seems have been left to slowly crumble in the desert sun for decades. There’s nowhere to stash a 777. On the other hand, the most recent imagery viewable here in Google Earth comes from 2012. Perhaps something has happened since then? I didn’t know anything about what kind of imagery is available from commercial sources, but I set out to learn. Before long I came upon a company called Terraserver, which lets you view high-resolution satellite imagery for free. I used it to scope around the general area of the Yubileyniy complex, and here’s what I found in an image of Yubileyniy North from October 31, 2013:
Suddenly, things are happening. A number of trucks are lined up in the parking lot in the upper-right part of the image. The six-story building is being disassembled. And what looks like a large rectangle of dirt has been bulldozed to the left of the building. The image resolution is so good that you can make out what I take to be the stripes left by the bulldozer blade as it worked back and forth horizontally. At the northern end of the rectangle is a berm which casts a shadow to the north. At the far northeastern corner lies what appears to be a trench with a well-defined corner on the upper right, with treadmarks leading out of it toward the southeast. I’m not sure what this dirt rectangle represents — are they building a pile of dirt, or a hole? — but what really gets my attention is the size of the thing. To give you a sense of scale, I’ve superimposed an equivalently proportioned 777 silhouette onto the image:
This struck me as interesting, to say the least. Naturally, I wondered what happened next. Fortunately, Terraserver had one more image that I could browse for free. This next one was taken on April 26, 2014:
Holy cow. All traces of both the building and the dirt rectangle have been erased. Various debris piles have been swept away, too. At first I thought that maybe the image had been digitally scrubbed, but if you look closely you can easily make out individual pieces of junk in between the cleared areas. So my interpretation is that the site was actually cleared and swept up.
So here’s the situation: nothing happens at Yubileyniy for decades; then, four months before MH370 disappears, the Russians start building a 777-sized something-or-other a mile and a half from a giant disused airstrip. Then, a month after the plane disappears, the area looks like it’s been erased.
What had happened in the meantime? To find out, I had to shell out cash from my own pocket to buy imagery from the main commercial satellite imagery provider, Digital Globe, via one of its resellers—in this case, a company called Apollo Mapping. The cash drain was painful, but at this point I was very far down the rabbit hole. Here’s what Yubileyniy North looked like on December 17, 2013:
The sun is low on the snow-dusted steppe; it’s almost winter. In a month and a half, workers have removed all but the bottom-most floors of the six-story building. You can make out the shadow of a crane projecting to the north from the middle of the remaining structure. A handful of trucks can still be seen in the parking lot. The dirt pile has been extended a few yards to the north; the berm at that end now overlies the what we saw as the sharp corner of the trench in the October image. Beyond the berm lies either a dark strip that could either be a long trench or just a shadow; to my eye the line of brightness at its northern edge implies the lip of a trench, but who knows. Work is clearly continuing. The next image, in black and white, is from three weeks later, January 9, 2014:
Now winter is in full effect. Snow blankets the entire region, and cold has descended: in the four days before this picture was taken, the temperature fluctuated between -15F and +14F. The disruption of the snow cover shows that work is very much underway. The building seems to be down to its last story. Trucks can be seen in the parking lot. I’m not sure what to make of the northern end of the rectangle; two dark strips are visible, perhaps one of them is a trench and the other is the shadow of a berm. Unforunately the resolution is not very good because the image was taken at a fairly low angle. The fact that work is continuing under such harsh conditions suggests a sense of urgency, to my mind; or perhaps these are simply hardy mofos. By the time the next image is taken, nearly two months have passed.
In this black-and-white image, the building has been completely dismantled and the dirt rectangle bulldozed flat. No berm remains at the northern end. Horizontal bulldozer tracks are still visible. The dark dirt is framed with a lighter border, suggesting perhaps a snowy slope. No trucks are visible, suggesting that the work crew has moved on. A color image taken four days later looks almost identical:
This image was taken two days before MH370 disappeared, on March 6. The next one was taken eight days after, on March 16:
When I first saw this picture, my heart leapt. The two scenes, taken just before and after the disappearance, looked so different that I was certain that something significant had occurred in the interim. Perhaps what was a rectangular depression in the March 6 image has now been filled in with sand (along with maybe, oh, who knows, a plane?).
I began pricing out tickets to Kazakhstan and searching the internet for advice on detecting large buried things with metal detectors. I located a Russian from St. Petersburg who’d made a gonzo two-day bike trek across the steppe to reach the Yubileyniy strip and sought his advice on how to get to the area without permission; he told me that he’d camped out at the airstrip overnight without anybody noticing him but then had tried to visit a busier part of the cosmodrome and gotten arrested. After he told them he was just scouting around because he was a huge fan of the Buran project, they let him go. I figured that if I was more careful I had a good chance of making it in and back.
But then I looked more closely, and examined the weather records. It just so happened that during this time interval spring fell on Baikonur like a hammer. On March 6, the temperature had only just peeked above freezing, by the 16th the daily highs had been in the 40s for the better part of a week. The thaw has completely changed the color palette. Everything that was covered in snow, and hence lighter colored, is now sodden and hence darker colored. White plains of snow are now damp brown sand. The darker earth of the rectangle is now drier and lighter-colored. After staring at these images for many hours I concluded that the most likely interpretation is that nothing has changed except for a temperature change.
And so we wind up back at our April 26 image:
By now the desert has returned to its normal dried-out state. The cluttered jumble seen over the winter has been replaced by almost featureless swatches of tan. A vehicle track overlies the northernmost part of the dirt rectangle, its borders now smudged and indeterminate.
I showed some of these images to construction experts and satellite imagery professionals, and received very little encouragement. Most likely, they told me, the work being performed was site remediation: a building was torn down, and construction debris thrown in a trench and covered up. As successive trenches are dug and filled in, a rectangular shape is formed. Simple as that.
And yet: the entire cosmodrome is littered with decades of abandoned equipment and derelict buildings, evincing a constitutional lack of interest in the concept of remediation. There is no commercial or residential activity for miles of Yubileyniy. Why, after decades, did the Russians suddenly need to clear this one lonely spot, in the heart of a frigid winter, finishing just before MH370 disappeared? And why is it that the greater part of the dirt rectangle was already laid out in the Oct 31 image, before the building was substantially demolished?
I don’t know. I tried to reach out to people who might know, but had no luck, and eventually I had to turn my attention to projects that might earn me some money. But I’d love to find out. If any readers have any special insight, I’d love to hear it.
UPDATE 4/3/2106: Since I wrote the above, Google Earth has added a new high-quality image of the site, taken October, 12, 2014. It gives a different impression from the last image–it doesn’t look any longer like the dirt was swept flat, like someone trying to cover their tracks.
@littlefoot: Since we are in the mode of speculating, I find it interesting that relations between Kazakhstan and Malaysia have been improving, especially after the marriage between the Malaysian PM’s daughter and a Kazak with ties to the President. The Kazak, educated in the US, has been accused of being a conman in a story in the NY Post.
http://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2012/06/12/najibs-future-son-in-law-a-conman/
Rather than implicate Russia, I think it is more probable that the disappearance was a heist orchestrated by the elite in Malaysia and Kazakhstan. To me, the BTO data seems to point to a landing at Kyzylorda Airport. I am still working to explain the BFO data.
GlobusMax – on the mounds of dirt I agree they are tall, I’ll go a bit further and say a few stories high in my opinion. Picture them sloping all the way to middle and you have a bloody decent excavation. And they are 60 metres long. That’s a lot of dirt.
At this point in time I agree we should explore alternative theories, including the northern route. However, it is hard to comprehend why any nation state or terrorist group with money would steal a 777 for the airframe to be used as a weapon when it would be far easier, less noticeable and not terribly expensive to simply purchase an older used 777, through a proxy if necessary.
Jo Blo – looking at those pics, the idea of towing a jet across the ground looks a lot easier, as long as the ground was firmed up by the winter freeze. If the Russians wanted to nick a jet for whatever reason, really getting it there is the tricky bit, the rest is simple logistics. And Putin does have a large and shady apparatus to call on, look at Ukraine. It gets on with the job and doesn’t blab. I wouldn’t rule out a quick demolition of the plane either. Smart operators can drop or dismember it very quickly with minimal mess.
@Victor, thanks for the link.
Will think about it and respond later.Have located Qyzylorda on google maps already.
How would they get the plane from the runway to the area you outlined? There seems to be no clear path.
So let’s assume the satellite tracking south is wrong – the plane flew north- and landed, was buried or hidden in the ground or dismantled on site. Wouldn’t it make perfect sense that they are trying to make someone on the plane rather than the plane itself disappear? Who on the manifest is that important to “purge”?
@jeffwise, you’ve drawn a compelling narrative.
What’s the next step to continue to support or disprove this theory?
What further leads are there to follow up on?
What additional information that hasn’t yet been disclosed could be used to substantiate this?
Military Demolition is a Winter Sport…
I have yet to meet a contractor who willingly bids on: Summer Time Demolition.
One Demolishes, because it is winter. No heat exhaustion, less dust, We need the Government Contract, lest we have to stay home for 4 months. No one can tell your red nose is the Vodka Talking. No way I’m spending summer here, when I can work in St Petersburg. No way I’m working under 3 meters of December snow in St Petersburg, It’s warmer here.
I’ll pause here…..
I prime, before asserting an Idea.
I don’t know my audience, so some will be aware before, some after I assert an Idea.
I fly aircraft, and teach aviation.
I work on and with Inmarsat equipment.
I work on microwave, X, K, & L band, satellite communications.
I teach microwave, X, K, & L band, satellite communications.
I work on a remotely piloted aircraft system.
I work on a precision GPS, used for landing UAVs.
I concurrently work in: Military Construction.
I’ve decommissioned abandoned military buildings.
That said, thank you for having me here.
I’ve flown over construction sites: I’m the Inspector. That my work paid me to fly a Piper Tomahawk, rather than walk down the street to see if mud was being tracked into the storm drain, well I’m still pleased at that hard day’s work.
It looks like any site I’ve seen.
Demolished Concrete is buried. Salvageable steel & copper are driven away.
No heavy roadways, surrounded by Parking and Offices.
Open Fields for Sports, and the Running Track just to the south.
Six stories, light construction, no windows at one end (Stairwell), minimal air handling equipment on roof: School/Barracks.
The Trenches, that look like the Nazca Peru Lines, were the old sewer mains. The Bull Dozed area appears in the right place to be the Septic Tanks & Leach Field. No local Waste Water Treatment Plant, that I could find.
Dig up the iron pipe, break open the tanks, dig out the leach field, mostly gravel by now, dump the concrete in. We use sewer vaults to dispose of non hazmat every chance.
Now saying that, the Sewer Vaults might be big enough to accommodate the bulk of a 777.
Otherwise we would see the extra mass in a higher ground level and or, in the soil’s water absorption rate. Mass graves are found by the vegetation growth being out of sync with the environs.
I’m just inspecting, ‘not my place to make conclusions.
@ALSM,
You write: “This is no time to abandon all the hard science in favor of hypotheticals that are unsupported by the real data we have.”
I couldn’t agree more. This is no time to be trawling around in the SIO based on some hypothetical models developed from a few log files pulled from the Internet.
We’re all pushing hypotheticals here.
@Oleksandr,
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand your DG comment to suggest that the closer the AES is to the satellite, the easier it is to spoof a BTO, because a spoof mechanism can only spoof a distance larger than its actual distance.
I honestly don’t think this limitation exists, though. The return signals were all received several seconds after the request from the satellite, usually at exactly .405 and .905 after each second. Unless the log is wrong, the signals are clearly timed to reach the satellite at a specific time, rather than sent at a specific time, so there’s no reason a spoof tool couldn’t spoof a signal with zero BTO if it wanted to. As long as the spider knows the actual distance to the satellite, it can send the signal early enough to be received at the designated time.
At last some critical thinking about what happened to that flight – outside the PRUNE forums so much nonsense has been written and not necessarily by conspiracy speculators.
Those who have attempted to label this and other articles simply are too lazy in their thinking -normalcy bias at work. As with September 11 there are too many ill-balanced, speculative views.
Your articles show the way forward to getting at why this airplane vanished and why our authorities know but are hamstrung by geopolitics.
As for September 11 and the endless debate, sometimes verging on insane, you might agree with the view that we will not be told the simple truth as it would be too shocking for many to accept.
I believe that the foreign hijackers with their inadequate piloting skills as demonstrated by their failures to learn at the flight schools they attended, were the front men for what was an insider job. That doesn’t mean the American Govt did it – that means American complicity or even orchestration of the plot for reasons we will never know. I doubt most Americans could handle that truth despite the fact they can engage in all sorts of paranoia about their government.
Military Demolition is a Winter Sport…
I have yet to meet a contractor who willingly bids on: Summer Time Demolition.
One Demolishes, because it is winter. No heat exhaustion, less dust, We need the Government Contract, lest we have to stay home for 4 months. No one can tell your red nose is the Vodka Talking. No way I’m spending summer here, when I can work in St Petersburg. No way I’m working under 3 meters of December snow in St Petersburg, It’s warmer here.
I’ll pause here…..
I prime, before asserting an Idea.
I don’t know my audience, so some will be aware before, some after I assert an Idea.
I fly aircraft, and teach aviation.
I work on and with Inmarsat equipment.
I concurrently work in: Military Construction.
I’ve decommissioned abandoned military buildings.
That said, thank you for having me here.
I’ve flown over construction sites: I’m the Inspector. That my work paid me to fly a Piper Tomahawk, rather than walk down the street to see if mud was being tracked into the storm drain, well I’m still pleased with that hard day’s work.
It looks like any site I’ve seen.
Demolished Concrete is buried. Salvageable steel & copper are driven away.
No heavy roadways, surrounded by Parking and Offices.
Open Fields for Sports, and the Running Track just to the south.
Six stories, light construction, no windows at one end (Stairwell), minimal air handling equipment on roof: School Building/Barracks.
The Trenches, that look like the Nazca Peru Lines, were the old sewer mains. The Bull Dozed area appears in the right place to be the Septic Tanks & Leach Field. No local Waste Water Treatment Plant, that I could find.
Dig up the iron pipe, break open the tanks, dig out the leach field, mostly gravel by now, dump the demolished concrete in. We use sewer vaults to dispose of non hazmat every chance.
Now saying that, the Sewer Vaults might be big enough to accommodate the bulk of a 777.
Otherwise we would see the extra mass in a higher ground level and or, in the soil’s water absorption rate. Mass graves are found by the vegetation growth being out of sync with the environs.
I’m just inspecting, ‘not my place to make conclusions.
Ionospheric Irregularities and Scintillation
Irregularly structured ionospheric regions can cause diffraction and scattering of trans-ionospheric radio signals. When received at an antenna, these signals present random temporal fluctuations in both amplitude and phase. This is known as ionospheric scintillation. (AKA) Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.
I have made a concentrated effort to find any mention of this in the Inmarsat investigation.
No mention from Inmarsat found.
This one phenomena will rule out, one of the possible routes of MH370.
I’ll pause here…..
I prime, before asserting an Idea.
I don’t know my audience, so some will be aware before, some after I assert an idea/ fact.
I fly aircraft, and teach aviation.
I work on and with Inmarsat equipment.
I work/teach, microwave, X, K, & L band, satellite communications.
I work on a remotely piloted aircraft system.
I work on a precision GPS, used for landing UAVs.
That said, thank you for having me here.
Electron Density Perturbations & The Total Electron Content (TEC)
The Scintillation that occurred during the flight of MH370 is a Five Dimensional Filter,
(Fingerprint,) superimposed onto the radio signal, and it’s ensuing Doppler Shift,
during the Inmarsat radio traffic, to and from MH370.
The travel time of the radio signal also changes due to, Total Electron Content, of the Ionosphere.
It adds a ‘Dimension’ to the data. As our atmosphere expands and contracts the TEC changes with it.
It can appear that the fixed ground station is moving due to timing/frequency shift.
Each ground station has a ‘Fingerprint/Map’ used to correct back to Zero Velocity.
The TEC Correcting Function will be established for the Ground Station to Satellite, leg of the journey.
The TEC Correcting Function IS NOT established for the Satellite to MH730, leg of the journey.
This leg has to take into account That ‘TIME’ (the rate that Time Passes) at the GPS Satellite is very different than time at 30,000 Feet ASL. (Relative Theory Vs General theory of SPACE/TIME, see Einstein, Albert 🙂 On top of that is, ‘TIME’ is not the same at the ground station as aboard MH370.
Add to that the, Missing Total Electron Content Travel Time Correction. (for that place and time)
Once all of that is removed from the data, the actual Distance and Doppler Shift due to the relative motions of the Satellite/MH370 can be teased out.
The one we want, the information missing, is the ‘Fingerprint’ (TEC CF) unique to the Time and Route of MH370.
Ionospheric Electron Density & Geologic Features
I assert that Total Electron Content (TEC) is measurably dependant on the electric field above each geographic feature and It’s Tectonic Plate. TEC values are different over an Ocean, Vs a volcanic range, Japan is very well documented.
So far as we know.
MH370 started over the Eurasian Tectonic Plate, Crossed the Java Trench onto the Australian Tectonic Plate and….
IF: Flown North; Australian Plate to; Indian Plate, passing over the Himalayas to; Arabian Plate; Back onto the Eurasian Tectonic Plate.
IF: Flown South; Australian Plate; Onto Antarctic Plate…….
I surmise/assert, that a definable, irrefutable difference, can be shown by filtering out the TEC maps for the Indian Ocean verses an Overland route.
The correct MAP will filter out the original disturbances in the data, leaving a markedly clearer signal.
NASA and others have the complete [MAP] diurnal, seasonal, space weather induced, and earthquake-induced TEC disturbances. Over six Earth Quakes above 5.1 where reported along the Eurasian/Australian Tectonic Plates, 7 – 8 March 2014.
I have not been able to find the GPS/TEC map for 7 to 8 March 2014.
(see example for Japan http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14430 )
Needed is the TEC map of, 7 to 8 March 2014, for the Indian Ocean, the Andaman Sea – North to Yubileyniy Airstrip.
I hate to stop here.
@Hyberbolic Arc, Very interesting indeed!
JS: “…some hypothetical models developed from a few log files pulled from the Internet…”?
Your demeaning comments show how ignorant you are of the (1) scientific method, (2) established, validated, tested facts, and (3) the value of the many confirming analytical results developed inside and outside the ATSB. Thankfully, not everyone on this blog thinks like you do about the IG, ATSB, Ulich, and now a dozen or so others that agree it is on the 7th arc, in or very near the current search area, and it will be found there, sooner or later.
@HyperbolicArc: http://cdaac-www.cosmic.ucar.edu/cdaac/postProcess.html ?
@nihonmama: Everyone surprises in this saga, including the dedication of the volunteers and cranks working on it. 🙂
@HyperbolicArc: or perhaps http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/components/prods.html ?
@ALSM,
It wasn’t meant to be demeaning, just pointing out how “hypothetical” is a matter of perspective.
I’ve also never said anything negative about the IG, or Ulich – in fact I have repeatedly commended all of you. My disagreement is solely with the assumptions, not the models. The data can’t validate itself.
Again, I only raised it to make the point that we all have to make assumptions, and all of our theories are hypothetical. To those that question some or all of the Inmarsat data or motives, Kazakhstan is no more hypothetical than the SIO. I’m not sure why that comes across as demeaning but it isn’t intended that way.
@All
Anyone have but ONE shred of evidence directly linking ANYTHING RUSSIAN to the plight MH370 (other than the nationaities of a few of the pax)???? I thought not.
And yet Malaysia sits high and mighty on its catbird seat, unscathed, under investigated and hermetically sealed.
This article only further aids in the distraction from where the focus MUST be.
Sad that the families have to endure this cockamamie rubbish.
Someone needed to say it.
Spencer
If Putin wanted the plane it was only for twenty passengers that were aboard it that day the 20 tech employees working for Freescale Semiconductors, based in Austin, Texas. Among these programmers and systems designers
Here’s the problem with your theory. What does one do exactly with all those passengers? After 9/11, I think everyone would storm whoever was taking them hostage. No?
Hyperbolic Arc ~ Posted February 24, 2015 at 8:55 PM ~ Ionospheric Irregularities and Scintillation
@ Hyperbolic Arc ~ Fascinating! I wished your post hadn’t ended. I look forward to more about this subject.
@ GlobusMax ~ Thank you for everything you’ve contributed on MH370 everywhere!
spencer ~ Posted February 24, 2015 at 10:46 PM ~ “Sad that the families have to endure this cockamamie rubbish.”
@ spencer ~ On the contrary, the Families told me they are pleased that the MH370 community is looking at alternative paths, especially along the northern arc. They acknowledge and are grateful for everyone’s efforts here at JW.
~LG~
Jeff, Victor, et al — To run with your theory Jeff, perhaps someone decided to simply screw with Malaysia, – twice. I’ve found the various Malaysian interests in Kaz to be fascinating — especially, why would a group of inefficient corrupt foreigners would be awarded the contract for the management and building of a massive new airport in Kazakstan. I wonder if any local mafia, or Russian groups, who were bidding on the job simply had their noses put out of joint, and retaliated?.
http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/business/article/malaysian-firms-finalising-talks-on-us1-billion-new-astana-international-ai
Welcome, Hyperbolic, very interesting, thanks!
@GlobusMax,
@Airlandseaman,
GlobusMax, you said “The LANL point is astounding. As far as I know it’s the only hard evidence of a location on the 7th arc other than Inmarsat.”
I have not read the unpublished LANL 7th arc prediction, and I suspect you have not either, so I will ask why you characterized their result as “hard evidence”?
There is a different LANL paper that addresses the unclassified undersea acoustic data, but it does not even conclude there was a definite detection, much less determine a location.
I suspect the other LANL paper predicts an end point location based on the same Inmarsat numbers we have all used, so I would put it in the same category as all end-point predictions (including Inmarsat’s). The accuracy of the end point depends primarily on the validity of the assumptions about the FMT and AP.
@LGHamilton
>On the contrary, the Families told me they are pleased that the MH370 community is looking at alternative paths, especially along the northern arc. They acknowledge and are grateful for everyone’s efforts here at JW.
I’m not now, nor did not, suggest that the families weren’t pleased.
What I said is that, IMO, it is sad that they are subjected to this garbage. And make no mistake about it, it is garbage of the highest order.
But you go on and continue to delude these poor souls with your ‘Northern paths’. Good lord, the nuts are running amok.
Spencer/airlandseaman/whoever – Investigative journalism is not pseudoscience or a conspiracy fetish. It is what it is, and Jeff IS actually a journo. Mike, in the absence of debris the public are walking away because it fails the sniff test after 12 months. You might have your great moment of vindication yet but if you’re right it needs to show up in the next 8 weeks. I doubt there will be a “later”
KgB-Agent – I agree the Iranian thing got swept aside very quickly to the disquiet of some retired Israeli security experts. Asylum seekers? Iranian asylum seekers are some of the dodgiest bastards on the planet. All combat age males with govt and military backgrounds. Where the investigation is really we don’t know however. It’s not everyday that a US President makes a statement about a ‘plane crash’ but Obama did pipe up just to say it’s in the water, everyone go home – and nothing since. I believe they know what happened, and I think we also know that he does not want to tangle with Putin.
spencer ~ Posted February 24, 2015 at 11:56 PM
@spencer ~ These “poor souls” are a highly intelligent group of people who are capable of forming their own judgments about the veracity of any theories being presented and examined. They are not being deluded by anything. Although a Northern path is my greatest hope I am not aware of any scientific support or physical evidence for such a path.
To all my fellow Nuts, February 26 is World Pistachio Day. Get crackin’ and solve the MH370 mystery!
http://www.worldpistachioday.com/
~LG~
@jeffwise Yes stereo images would be fine as long as you have enough overlap. There is a now booming field of 3D imagery from photogrametry with many on-line sites. There is also method of extracting 3D info from a mosaic of isolated photos. If you can source enough of a photo library you can re-create a 3D model from them from a program like Photosynth from MS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p16frKJLVi0
With these buildings you only need a portion of building to get height and rest is mapped from aerial image. From a quick Google image search there is not a lot of clear images but I am sure there is probably much more on VK or an adventure travel website somewhere. What you are looking for is volumes to work out what has gone into ‘remediation’ and what has come out. I cant figure out any reason that such a large area would be levelled. You can see from shadows the northern berm is a lot higher. From Google Earth thhe northern boundary is approx 3m higher so there is a massive amount of cut into the ground. Then the other strange thing is the main building floor slab has also been dug up. This is a massive amount of work for no real purpose that I can think of. If there was contaminated soil underneath the slab you would leave it as the slab would form a primary barrier. And to excavate for demolition when nothing was proposed for site seems crazy.
This is millions of dollars being spent on a seemingly pointless exercise from a country that has just been downgraded to junk bond status.
For your theory to work there is one thing not shown on photo. There would need to be a taxi-way wide enough to man-oeuvre a 777 all the way from landing strip and there would still be evidence of it. The turning circle of a 777 is massive and the wheels would need a pavement at least 13m wide which means doubling moft of the existing road pavement width. From my quick back of hand calc’s the best route I can see would still involve 3.5km of widening which is not going to be done overnight. There are also buildings interfering with engine clearance path of 24m wide on each possible route. I would look for buildings that have been demolished along roads and widening of pavement to give further credence to theory. Alternatives are to use a heavylift trailer system that could navigate over unsealed roads, or they dis-assembled on runway & trucked to ‘disposal’ area. Both of these alternatives I would not think feasible.
My proposition would be to chop wings and tail off 777 and park fuselage in building at eastern end of runway which can just fit it. Wings and tail would go in second building. They could then breakup in peace and dispose of remains at your earthworked site & avoiding pesky satellites.
If you can get some finished levels of earthwork area plus building debris volumes & breakup volumes of a 777 I think question could be answered.
All – could that rail system come in handy to move a plane?
GlobusMax – The current thing is a bit of an unknown I reckon. So far oceanographers have said it will go to the SW of Australia, Africa, and Indonesia. But as Harry points out stuff shows up on the WA coast from just about everywhere so to see nothing of the plane is odd.
Both times a Malaysian plane has gone ‘down’ it was the start of an escalation of Russian aggression?
Curious – Putin treads a funny path with Islamists. He helps them to oust Israel but he combats them on the home front. If Vlad got who/what he wanted from the plane then I always envisaged it ending up with Al Qaeda/Iran fro example. SO where could Malaysia fit in? I have posted this before, this time for the newies. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aK4daf8MD.Bw
Dr. Ulich,
I read the first paper. It was dismissive but it did suggest an acoustic event to the south “of the broad search area” so I presumed they had a point in mind, refined it and that it was to be discussed in the upcoming paper. Perhaps I presumed wrong.
Another BTO/BFO analysis is great, but would not be “hard evidence.” We need a third ingredient at the 7th arc or the FMT. For what it’s worth, I have a running hypothesis from the beginning based on the soft evidence of “human intent” and come to an endpoint on a waypoint path very close to yours.
@LGHamiltonUSA Thank you for being a font of information.
While I don’t think the rectangle is relevant, I wouldn’t rule out this being the place where the plane landed. I’m more interested in seeing pre-March 8 and post-March 8 shots of the runway itself. Planes tend to burn some rubber when they land. Are there any new skidmarks that appear in the interim?a
@LGHamilton
>Although a Northern path is my greatest hope I am not aware of any scientific support or physical evidence for such a path.
Right. NONE.
Yet, here we are spending countless hours contemplating EXACTLY that which there is NO evidence to support. It’s just patently absurd, and it does the families a grave disservice.
FYI, I’ve donated a large sum of money to these same families that you evidently represent.
You should spend your time looking at Zaharie and Malaysia, rather than wasting it indulging this manner of crazy.
Good luck
Spencer
@LGHamilton
Oh, wait. I see you’ve already labeled Zaharie a ‘hero’. Or, rather, ‘it’s your belief that Z is a hero’.
And these families are in close contact with you??
Unbelievable. I think an intervention is quite necessary. With that, I’m outta here—off to join Dennis, Luigi, Rand etc…
@Matty
If conditions are right, and it’s far enough south: http://s3.amazonaws.com/oceanmotion-visualizers/drifters/web/m02/la09/d025109.png
Other than that I have no idea what lack of debris means.
Spencer,
The sole difference between a northern route and an early FMT southern route is the assumption that the BFO data and model is correct. Both routes fit the mainstream BTO assumptions, both routes require a radar flyby that was never reported, and neither has a discernible motive.
The northern route is the heir to the throne if the SIO theory sinks.
It would be interesting to see these theories on a Sankey or Minard-style diagram showing the commonality of their assumptions. Kazakhstan and the SIO would appear on the same branch.
Russell-Bunbury/Jeff: I’m wondering, could(n’t) they get the plane from the runway to the site by using the actual railroad? I assume that’s how they moved the Buran off, and more recently the big (http://www.leninsk.ru/gallery/displayimage.php?album=394&pos=1) cargo payloads coming in.
Or… could the plane actually cut straight across, using the concrete that goes through (and past) that larger rectangular pad in the middle (with the big yellow towers)…? Does it look to you like the smaller, darker grey roads beyond would be wide/strong enough for a 777 to maneuver?
I’m still trying to work out why they flattened the only decent looking structure in the whole joint? And overall the dilapidation is amazing, I’ve never seen concrete buildings in such a state that hadn’t been bombed. Put it down to Soviet construction? What was the urgency to level that building when there literally is shit everywhere? Exploring the sinister side it allows plant and equipment to remain present over long periods without raising suspicion? The hit and run nature of MH17 was instantly conspicuous. How Vlad must hate the advent of camera phones.
SignalHill/Jeff, Given the weight of aircraft you would need a pretty serious railfreight transport. I have seen bigger items than 777 transported by road so rail could work but it then runs risk of someone taking a happy snap. Every car in Russia seems to have a dashcam so I think it would be to risky to take off-site. To transport a load like 777 across roads would need a high end transporter like the one they use to transport buildings & rockets to launch pads. The extra wheels spread the weight. The only issue is gradient and compaction of soil. These transports have a maximum grade they can travel and you also need to get 777 on the transport. If I see evidence of a cleared path overland or even tracks from transport then I could be convinced. I think cutting off wings\tail and using other buildings is still simpler and more plausible. The only way to really prove\dis-prove theory is to get some intelligence grade photogrammetry or photography. There have been a lot of new low-orbit imaging satellites planned\launched and one of them I think was aiming for daily flyovers of the whole world but you would need some contacts to access data. Has anybody thought of approaching Boeing and getting them to assist? If I start seeing a lot of Boeings falling from the sky’s then I would think they might take this theory a bit more seriously… and anyone who is responsible for Air Force One.
One thing that also shows how the Russians re-act when confronted was after MH17. A few days after crash when the Western media was pillorying Putin the entire Russian GPS network went off-line for half a day. I was working with Surveyors at the time and they were laughing that it was Putin’s revenge. A few days later the official excuse was a solar flare knocked out the Russian satellites…but didn’t affect any other network.
So to speculate on why..
Jeff’s narrative lends to the Cosmodrome aria is a great location for Russia to hide and demolish a 777. That only makes sense for the plan as theories of re-using the plane are refuted by so many.
So that makes the passengers the motive. What did Russia get from these passengers? Freescale employees or others? Possible information or passwords for network data related information? US gov UAV technology? They certainly learned the value of cyber secure info from Snowde n.
Another one bites the dust. Such an angry, small-minded fellow. Good riddance! I’ll simply carry on to seek the truth and hopefully find the airplane.
~LG~
A graphic of the Baikonur area:
http://www.leninsk.ru/gallery/albums/userpics/10003/baiik_%D1%81%D1%85%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B0_%D0%A4%D0%9A%D0%90.jpg
The history of the site details that the central area (north of the Buran complex) was first used for development of the R7 ICBM.
TEx
You know when Sean Connery delivers the Sub to a river in Maine, he went through all that effort to get what he wanted but nobody would suspect he had it.
If it is in the north, they did it so they could use the people or plane in a way that nobody would suspect that they have them. Adding to the theory that information from the passengers was the goal and as long as they are presumed dead that information is useful.
Welcome back to the hunt for red october.
@The Examinator,
Great graphic, thanks. It’s a bit lo-res and hard to read, the area shown adjacent to Yubileyniy looks a bit like 254 but is actually 251. Anatoly Zak (http://www.russianspaceweb.com/baikonur_energia_251.html) describes it like this:
“The construction of the Buran’s landing facility started at Site 251, north of the Energia-Buran launch complex in 1982. The airport featured concrete-paved landing strip 4,500 meters long and 84 meters wide. The new process was developed to lay out concrete of the landing strip. Only highest quality reinforced concrete, known as “Grade 600″ was used in the project. The thickness of the runway pavement varies from 26 to 31 centimeters depending on the loads projected for the particular area of the runway. According to pre-construction standards, the surface of the runway could fluctuate no more than 3 millimeters per every 3 meter of the surface length. The requirement for the regular airport would be 10 millimeters per 3 meters. No technology available at the time could meet such requirement. The unique polishing machines were developed for the project. They were equipped with 130 diamond polishing disks, each 50 centimeters in diameter. Entire surface of the landing strip was polished this way. At the edge of the runway a special mating-demating complex was built. It was used to lift the orbiter off its carrier aircraft and load it on a transporter, which would carry the vehicle to the processing building at Site 254. Long before the Buran orbiter was ready to blast off, the airport known as Yubeleiniy entered service. It received heavy transport planes carrying elements of the Energia-Buran system. Partially assembled Buran was also delivered here on top of a converted bomber. The runway was used for its main purpose only once, on November 15, 1988, when unmanned Buran orbiter safely landed here. The facility had remained abandoned in the first half of the 1990s, until Khrunichev enterprise did not start commercial launches of the Proton rockets from near by launch pads on the left flank of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. The runway was then repaired and the airport reopened as cargo and support facility for Baikonur’s commercial operations. The most commercial payloads would be transported here onboard Antonov-124 cargo plane.
Kazakh authorities also opened a custom service at the airport, processing passenger and charter flights from Russia.”
It’s not clear from this description what the buildings north of the railway tracks were for, but their modest scale suggests they played a supporting role in the facility; other commenters have suggested that “Yubileyniy North” was a barracks, which seems plausible to me.
If I was planning to dis-assemble a 777 you would need some very big cranes, lifting supports and rubbish removal methods which is where the rail loop makes a very useful tool. If you look at Google Earth view of airport – find the end of rail loop. If you park the 777 next to rail loop you could have large scale mobile cranes delivered and use rail to remove a lot of excess material in covered wagons easily. Heavy lifting frames could be delivered by rail and I think major items could be cut up within hours.
Then there is a roadway pavement to previous mentioned storage buildings that look as if it was designed for maintenance delivery of large scale plane items. (The concrete pavement units are the same as runway). In this scenario there would be no need to modify any infrastructure and the only items disposed of at northern cleared area would be items too large or sensitive to rail out. A few metres of building waste and topsoil covering these items means no-one will ever find out what is there. And that is how you can make a 777 and 239 human beings disappear.
@GlobusMax Good point, but to flesh out my thesis. Any water impact is going to produce thousands of pieces of floating debris, but even if it is only in the hundreds and it dropped right into the middle of the Antarctic Circumpolar current the probability that 100% remained there for more than a year is close to zero. Lighter items will sit out of the water and be subject to wind more than current. My initial confidence in the search team had me very sure that something would turn up on the coast here or in Indonesia before the end of the southern spring. It is only in the last two months my confidence in their current search has gone. I reiterate until some physical evidence is found on the surface, given the scope of the search area, I believe the current search is a colossal, and curious, waste of resources. I also note the searchers are operating on less data than the HMAS Sydney search and that took 67 years. It is much, much easier to lose a heavy a/c into jungle, even in daylight. There were instances in WWII of a/c and chutes going down into jungle in daylight within line of sight of airfields in the south pacific, never to be seen again.
Some examples of crashed aircraft on land which took a long,long time to be found:
1) http://www.planecrashinfo.com/1947/1947-64.htm
Crashed 1947, found 1980
2) http://www.planecrashinfo.com/1947/1947-50.htm
Crashed 1947, found 2000
3)http://www.planecrashinfo.com/1968/1968-13.htm
Crashed 1968, found 2003
Other well known examples include “Lady be Good” over 15 years and that too in a featureless desert.
For those who are still interested in Christmas Island:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_Island_Airport
As others have pointed out, it should be possible to land something there without anyone from the local government knowing. But a runway of 6900 feet?
Hello,
maybe I’m wrong but I didnt find any explanation on the article nor in the comments on how would a B777 got to the rectangle ?
The only way coming from the runway to this place is 6 meters wide (measured using google earth), how a B777 could taxi within such a tiny path, that’s impossible .. Maybe I did not see another possible path ?
Anyone got an idea on this issue ?
@Spencer: door, hit, way out, etc.
@Harry: In a Bayesian search strategy, everyday there is no debris would increase the chance of a northern route a little more, and there would have to be a non-zero probability assigned that the BFO data is misleading, even if that probability is very small.
My gripe with the current search strategy is that it does not appear Bayesian at all. It is a broad sweep of the arc based on the mathematics of fuel range and BFO. There is no taking into account at all of what a pilot or criminal might do.
For instance, my pet theory is that whoever did this intended to get as far from land as quickly as possible, fly to fuel exhaustion and disappear the plane. Further, they flew waypoints all the way. If you intersect the likely fuel range curve with the 7th arc, it matches an early and long range cruise speeds in a geodesic path on waypoints, and Dr. Ulich has made a case for it matching BTO/BFO. Coincidence? I think not.
There are a handful of points like this on the 7th arc that are more likely than the mile they are sweeping now. The search strategy fails from both over reliance on mathematics (BTO/BFO) and under reliance (Bayes).
A Bayesian search would look very different: detailed sweeps of very specific points along the arc.
Exchange on gawker:
***
@jjdenim: Also, If you’re game: you asked your wife to assign a percentage to the likelihood that your theory was true, what percentage would you personally attach to your theory?
@jeffwise: Victor Iannello, another IG member, asked me this just the other day. I answered, off the cuff, “50-50,” and he said he was surprised by that, because for him there were no scenarios he would assign such a high probability to. I said, if you take all the possible scenarios, they have to add up to 1. But I think he had a good point—MH370 is a such a weird case than any explanation you can come up with is going to seem improbable. But one of them definitely happened.
*****
And this is the fundamental problem I have. In my mind, every scenario has major “problems” that are not easily explained. I still rank the crash in the SIO as most likely, but I hesitate to put a probability greater than 50%, and this probability gets lower every day no underwater wreckage or surface debris is found.