"Unfortunately the "truth" is not binary (even in physics - think of quantum mechanics) , it is not true or false, on or off - there are all shades from white to black, one man's truth is another man's fairytale - nobody will ever know why the transponder was turned on again, we can speculate, assume and try to estimate a probability but we will never know."
Sorry sir, this is classical mechanics, areodynamics, thermodynamics which can be analytically, acurately calculated, with given condition, to the great accuracy, it is not quantum mechanics. For an investigation like this, the most possible, educated speculation is what we are searching for, we can get close, closer to the truth by scientific analysis, calculations and even hyposises. No one can be convince with any criminal investigation by "one man's truth is another man's fairytale".
"The implication that the calculations are simple "high school" physics to back calculate when an item must have been detached from an aircraft to have ended up at a certain point on the ground is plain wrong."
An engine piece droped from an airplane can be calculated acurately, without considering wind, air resistance, high school physics will give you the acuracy in the meters, not miles, with educated guess on initial conditions: velocity and altitude. All experts in airline disarster investigations, space programs use these physics principles, in fact, all aviation is based on classical physics.
At an accurately known height, with accurately known winds and in full possesion of the characteristics of the dropped object there is enormous room for error ("dumb" bombs dropped during the second war were often hundreds of yards and even miles from the aiming point).
We don't need a great accuracy, the engine parts can be in the acuracy of hundred of yards (since the distance from the engine to the crater reported as 300 yards.) Rib bone can be calculated in the accuracy of the lake (half mile radius). If our calculation is sound within these type of margin of error, matching the found facts, then the hyposis is getting somewhere.
"If (and that is a big IF) an engine became detached, an object as complex in shape as an engine (with potentially some residual thrust) falling from an aircraft flying at uncertain speed, at uncertain height in an unknown attitude would make any "calculation" no more valid than a guess."
Correct, if we don't have any information about anything. A single piece of metal piece found on the ground doesn't tell you anything. But with educated assumptions based on the information collected, reported altitude by control center, eye witness's account, reasonable speed in this altitute for 757, you defitnely can calculate, with great uncertainty of cause, but the result can be cross checked with other observations. The calculated result is much betterh than wild guess. It called "ball park" calculation. If such an calculation makes sense, then one can dive in with models, computer simulations....
"I appreciate that you are trying to discover the most likely sequence of events on that terrible day and I am sure that those who know will answer your aviation questions as honestly as they can, but I fear that you are on a futile mission because of the lack of good data. (Either because it is not available to anyone, or only available to a restricted few)."
Yes, I got sucked into this by curiosity, refuse to be fooled by either government experts nor consipiracy theories. The result will not be futile, because there are plenty of "first order of approximation data" available, which can be used to paint a rough picture of what happened.
As educated people, we need educated sound explainations of such kind of disasters, not fairytales nor imaginations. This was not a starwar movie. No one, no matter if it is the conspiraciors or government should get away with lame stories which doesn't match the known facts.
Last edited by SUPERMNNN; 10th Aug 2006 at 14:16.