MH370 - When is it enough?
Posted by: winkyincanada on 29 March 2014
Any views on how much longer the search should go on in the absence of confirmed debris or new information?
What if they find confirmed debris? How long should they spend then looking for the "black box" and recovering wreckage?
I'm not sure what the rolling-total cost is, but at some point, isn't it better to spend the money on something else?
I'm afraid I don't follow the logic of the "better things to spend the money on" argument. This is always going to be the case. Governments would never spend money on art or sport, or even transport and education for that matter, when the health of others is at risk. And then we'd all become animals again.
At its primordial level, selfishness is a preservation thing. Essential, and not necessarily bad. I'm sure there are human beings for whom we would all willingly lay down our own lives to save theirs. In exceptional cases, they might even be strangers (although people whose company we are in at the time). But this doesn't mean you should stave yourself to death in order to send food to people who don't have enough. There are better ways to try to solve that problem. A nation should not decide whether to buy a painting on the basis of whether or not it can cope without the hospital that the money could build instead, it should decide on the basis of whether it is in the interests of the nation for the painting to be owned by the nation or not.
They should continue to search for the plane, and even if they shouldn't, they will. It's human nature to want to know, and this is a good aspect of human nature.
It's obscene to be sending robots to Mars in the pursuit of knowledge when there are babies in Africa dying of curable diseases. Except - the thirst for knowledge that gives rise to the former is the same thirst for knowledge that made the latter curable in the first place. We need to do both.
Having said all that, this graphic suggests that the chances of finding out are rather slim:
http://apps.washingtonpost.com...oblem/931/?tid=sm_fb
We're both saying that we make trade-offs. They're not always (hardly ever?) rational in an objective sense, but that's what it means to be human.
I only make the point about knowing when it is time to call it a day on this search to counter they "we must find it at ANY cost" overly simplistic logic. For me personally, the cost of the search is trivial. I have no vested interest.
The cost of the search for Air France in the South Atlantic was c.£25m
We've now estalished in this thread that different people would direct global resources to different ends. Nothing new in that, we hear politicians telling us each day how they think we should allocate resources.
When this thread was started, the "pings" hadn't been detected. They might still be unrelated to Flight MH370.
Should "we" continue the search or cut "our" losses now ?
Indeed, should "we" have even bothered about this missing plane in the first place ?
As winky says, the cost of the search is trivial and I agree. IMHO its still worth directing resources to this search.
Just been sent this e-mail,make of it what you want.
Mista h
What I would make of it is the spelling suggests its author uses American English and the Americans don't 'alf enjoy a good conspiracy yarn. This is a good one!
Inside info, Mistah ? Brilliant deduction. I knew the details would leak sooner or later......
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-...-20140417-zqvul.html
So now they have spent a couple of months, a hundred million dollars, and have narrowed the search area down to a reasonable size, the aussie PM thinks they should give up in a week.
the aussie PM thinks they should give up in a week.
That's not exactly what he said, even according to your source.
....and on a slightly different note, if the Americans have better search equipment readily available, why do they need the Australians to ask for it ? It was after all, an American built aeroplane that is lost .....
Yes, but according to Mista H's cast-iron and wholly convincing explanation, it woz the yanks wot dunnit...
the aussie PM thinks they should give up in a week.
That's not exactly what he said, even according to your source.
Agree it isn't exactly what he said, but I'll bet it's what he meant. With only one aussie on the plane, his caring won't extend very far. There are no longer any votes in it.
Yes, but according to Mista H's cast-iron and wholly convincing explanation, it woz the yanks wot dunnit...
....good point Rod.....
Mista h's explanation would make for a very good blockbuster film plot.
I'm in agreement with Winky's original sentiments. Why all the fuss and bother. There are obviously no survivors. In the old days when ships went down they were just 'lost at sea'.
Waste of money and just an academic exercise after all this time IMO.
I do wonder who imagines that a more or less fully laden passenger aeroplane could possible also carry six large military cases weighing 20 tonnes in the baggage hold?
Mista H's reported story seems, literally, to have a hole below the waterline. That would not stop the story being made into a popular film in time of course ...
ATB from George
Looks like your titled question is being answered, ie another $60m (Autralian) and another 8 months.
Looks like your titled question is being answered, ie another $60m (Australian) and another 8 months.
And then what? The odds are lengthening again. This is getting ridiculous.
Australia lost 6 of its citizens on that flight. I think their PM is better placed than any of us to judge whether they should spend another $60m or not.
Australia lost 6 of its citizens on that flight. I think their PM is better placed than any of us to judge whether they should spend another $60m or not.
What does the nationality of the deceased possibly have to do with the decision at hand? Are Aussie lives worth more than Chinese or Malaysian ones? No, this is just the PM pandering to the irrational voter majority, and perhaps trying to make up with the Malaysian PM (relations are often a bit "frosty", ever since Keating called Mahathir "recalcitrant"). The PM is in a terrible position to make this decision. He must consider the political angles, rather than the rational ones, and will therefore buy votes and international favour by wasting money. It is the way democracy works.
I don't really buy into the argument that we must find out what caused the incident to further improve air safety. Air travel is already incredibly safe. The 777 is one of the very safest aircraft ever built (flew on one yesterday). One more unexplained aviation incident wouldn't change that.
At some point (already long since passed, IMO) the number of lives that potentially might be saved is much, much lower than the number that could be saved by spending on humanitarian causes such as the eradication of diseases in developing countries.
I don't consider the risk due to the lack of checking of passports to be a significant finding. Has a no-fly list ever really achieved anything except inconvenience those inadvertently caught in the drag net?
Air travel is incredibly safe BECAUSE they spend so much time and effort investigating crashes and accidents.
No doubt this is true. But at some point we must reach a point of diminishing returns where the money will save more lives elswhere.
Not really since new aircraft come with new technologies, materials and manufacturing methods. Old investigations therefore may not be relevant. They'll thoroughly investigate any air accidents until the end of time.
I didn't mean the policy of investigating air crashes in general. Just this one (and any specific one where the possible gains in insight are outweighed by the rapidly escalating costs and diminshing likelihood of a useful outcome).
Also....
Due to the comparitive rarity of actual crashes, much of the reliability engineering is based on failures that do not cause crashes at all. Aircraft have many duplicated/redundant systems - most failures occur, and can be addressed without an accident occurring. Investigation into these is a key part of making our aircraft more reliable. In these non-crash cases, it is also much more likely that critical evidence is not destroyed.
The other rapidly improving area is in simulation. The likelihood of failures (both engineering and human) and their consequences can increasingly be simulated, analysed and mitigated without waiting for a plane to fall out of the sky.
It may already be the case that information gleaned from actual crashes is a only a minor part of the combined "intelligence" on aircraft systems' reliability. Crashes typically result from a number of failures aligning e.g. critical mechanical failure + poor crew response, rather than single "cause". Each of the individual failures occurs for more frequently than the critical combination.
This thread went off my radar!
I think there's the need to know what happened. There's the need to make sure it's not something that's potentially going to affect all aircraft of that type. There's the need to rule out terrorism. There's the need to tell the families of the missing how their loved one's died.
There will come a point where the search is scaled back but I believe the Chinese will keep looking until they find it. They have the resources and maybe they don't have the 'spuds' to tell the families they're calling it off.
I don't really buy into the argument that we must find out what caused the incident to further improve air safety. Air travel is already incredibly safe. The 777 is one of the very safest aircraft ever built (flew on one yesterday). One more unexplained aviation incident wouldn't change that.
At some point (already long since passed, IMO) the number of lives that potentially might be saved is much, much lower than the number that could be saved by spending on humanitarian causes such as the eradication of diseases in developing countries.
I don't consider the risk due to the lack of checking of passports to be a significant finding. Has a no-fly list ever really achieved anything except inconvenience those inadvertently caught in the drag net?
Air travel is incredibly safe BECAUSE they spend so much time and effort investigating crashes and accidents.
No doubt this is true. But at some point we must reach a point of diminishing returns where the money will save more lives elswhere.
Not really since new aircraft come with new technologies, materials and manufacturing methods. Old investigations therefore may not be relevant. They'll thoroughly investigate any air accidents until the end of time.
I didn't mean the policy of investigating air crashes in general. Just this one (and any specific one where the possible gains in insight are outweighed by the rapidly escalating costs and diminshing likelihood of a useful outcome).
Also....
Due to the comparitive rarity of actual crashes, much of the reliability engineering is based on failures that do not cause crashes at all. Aircraft have many duplicated/redundant systems - most failures occur, and can be addressed without an accident occurring. Investigation into these is a key part of making our aircraft more reliable. In these non-crash cases, it is also much more likely that critical evidence is not destroyed.
The other rapidly improving area is in simulation. The likelihood of failures (both engineering and human) and their consequences can increasingly be simulated, analysed and mitigated without waiting for a plane to fall out of the sky.
It may already be the case that information gleaned from actual crashes is a only a minor part of the combined "intelligence" on aircraft systems' reliability. Crashes typically result from a number of failures aligning e.g. critical mechanical failure + poor crew response, rather than single "cause". Each of the individual failures occurs for more frequently than the critical combination.
This thread went off my radar!
I think there's the need to know what happened. There's the need to make sure it's not something that's potentially going to affect all aircraft of that type. There's the need to rule out terrorism. There's the need to tell the families of the missing how their loved one's died.
There is no "need" for any of that. Nice to know, perhaps, but the world won't change.
The 777 has been flying for a long time and is one of the safest aircraft ever built. This doesn't change that.
What would we do if it was determined to be terrorism? Become even more irrationally scared of bogeymen? We surely don't need even more security theatre, designed primarily to keep us terrorised.
The families will move on, one way or another. Time heals.
If it was determined to be a terrorist act then there'd be serious investigations into the incident and the case would never be closed until people were brought to justice.
If you really were that concerned with saving lives you'd ditch all your expensive electronics and send the cash to Africa where a pound is enough to save a life.
If it was determined to be a terrorist act then there'd be serious investigations into the incident and the case would never be closed until people were brought to justice.
If you really were that concerned with saving lives you'd ditch all your expensive electronics and send the cash to Africa where a pound is enough to save a life.
Yeah, I don't have $100m plus worth of electronics to ditch, though. We all make our selfish choices, don't we.
Justice, revenge, whatever you want to call it. Might make us feel good but would not make one iota of difference to the risk of future attacks; which would remain absolutely and utterly trivial in relative terms.
People need to know what's happened. It's human nature. The money spent is peanuts in the overall scale of things and may help bring closure to those involved and also add to the sum of our knowledge.
Please take off your "I'm a complete tit" hat for just a moment.
People need to know what's happened. It's human nature. The money spent is peanuts in the overall scale of things and may help bring closure to those involved and also add to the sum of our knowledge.
Please take off your "I'm a complete tit" hat for just a moment.
I don't need to know. I just don't care. It makes no difference. Hat firmly in place.
That bit is correct.
Sometimes politicians get it right, even if not everybody agrees they got it right.
Of course we don't "need" to know. And we should, in a democratic sort of way, decide how to use our resources. Your opinion is that we should use them in some other way. Many on this forum seem to agree with the current action of continuing the search/investigation. "We" actually "do" care, even if you don't. ie we think it worthwhile for a number of reasons, even if that simply turns out to be a rather pityful attempt to aleiviate the grief of the affected families.