Throughout this month, the first tab on my mobile browser has been refreshing the same URL: News feed from Google News (Search Tool : Past 24 hours).
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| After reading hundreds of promising articles through the month, today's news about ping from some black-box just before its battery is about to die don't fill me with excitement but a bit of anguish |
Some of my friends have questioned my sanity in this regard? Well, not that harsh, but they've stopped following this news item and would rather like it if I too could ignore as though this is a non issue.
Why do I relentlessly refresh this page few times every day? Apparently I shouldn't have to unless am a close relative, news reporter, NTSB agent, government assigned search/rescue worker, a Chinese or a Malaysian or a pilot or ... someone affected in some immediate way.
Am none of these. Am not even remotely related to any of those on board or the concerned agencies, professions, governments or even a frequent flyer! While not particularly insensitive, am not that sensitive. So short of empathy, it is perhaps just the right mix of associated mystery or the associated anger at those responsible.
For a moment, lets forget the inadequacies in reporting and searching after the flight vanished. Lets think about the flight before it took off. Please let that moment last till you reach the end of this post.
How in the heal could a huge flight carrying 239 people vanish in this age!?! What happened to all those technologies? Satellite phones have been used by crew and first class customers on some flights ever since 1989! Yes, I am aware that GPS is just passive receive stuff. But what stops one from pinging deduced GPS based location from two ends of a plane independently on modern passenger flights to some base through satellites? Okay encrypt it if you must. Why should the pilots even need a switch or have to turn this thing on? This doesn't cost battery. This must be a modular independent fitting on non-military aircrafts. There are so many humans you'd be carrying on daily basis. Isn't there associated responsibility? Then of course you could transmit black-box's content if bandwidth and battery/power allow.
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But what stops one from pinging deduced GPS based location from two ends of a plane independently on modern passenger flights to some base through satellites?
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Most relevant engineers (including myself) could build one such with a near zero budget and access to few kilo bits of low earth orbit (LEO) satellite bandwidth per annum. Boing and Airbus claim that some of these technologies are available now but haven't been back-ported to older aircrafts. How dare you charge hundreds of millions for a flight, and further few millions for annual maintenance but won't be bothered to retrofit a device that won't cost even tens of thousands in the first place and again couple of thousands to run and maintain per year?
There are several possible explanations now - equipment failure, terrorism, pilot lapse, sabotage, collision, … all the way to alien abduction. Choose what suits your whim but this mystery would've been lot simpler had we used this (relatively low-cost) multi-decade old technology properly.
Hence I blame it all on the lack of basic business ethics. On Airbus? On Boeing? No.
I mean yes, those too but collectively on the entire system run by those without least level of respect, concern or empathy for human life, without a grain of business ethics once payment is made, once their cut is received, once their political or business needs are satisfied. I blame the companies, the respective agencies responsible for mandating rules and regulations, the concerned fake democracy funders, lobbyists and benefactors, the politicians and ourselves who'd love to ignore these.
Yes, I blame you too, 'mister closest relative of the passenger', we let such things happen and collectively agree to ignore till we're the affected party. Thousands of such atrocities don't even reach the common man for we don't care and even if we did, complexity confuses the tired eyes, take the financial system for instance. Sorry, actually forget it, am not going to start on it today. We let many such events happen today too. MH370 was just one of those to reach our eye. But wasn't enough to be a wake up call. Lets sleep well tonight after bad mouthing the airlines, the urgently famous and immediately notorious Malaysian minister(s), the search/rescue agencies, the terrorists, the pilots and the aliens to our satisfaction. Amen.
Dedicated to all those on board and the dumb prick who spins alien conspiracies to lighten our heart in such times. Sorry and thanks respectively.
