Guys, I apologize.
I re-read my earlier post this morning and realized it was a little harsh. We have a political mess over here in the colonies, and reading the morning papers always gets me riled up.
I did not mean that we should give up. Or even give up hope of finding the BB's. (Is that a double negative?)
I am pretty sure what I was posting was the frustration of not KNOWING yet. OK, there MAY be some politics involved, but not necessarily. I would hope that SOMEONE would spend whatever (impossible sums) of money to find my last words in a CVR, if that was all that was left to tell the story. There are large sums of money being spent to do as methodical a search as can be designed. It may not look it from here, but tougher underwater search tasks have been accomplished, eventually.
We will not know any more until the following order of retrieval is complete. CVR (I believe the answer is there), DFDR (may be some more data, but I doubt it). I am earnestly praying that the bus power lasted long enough to keep the boxes recording. The ACARS transmissions (from a relatively minor bus) lasted long enough to provide pretty much everything we know so far, so that fact that the ACARS bus was alive pretty late in the sequence gives GREAT hope of there being invaluable data in the CVR. Next would be complete autopsies, crash debris, an eyewitness or a survivor would be even spectacular. Sorry for the black humor, but I cannot think of another single thing that would tell the ending of this story.
I tell every one of my newbies that each and every word on our checklists are written in blood (even the 'Printed in China' at the very last page...). Having been involved with some of my many types from the very beginning, I could cite the incident/accident that spawned every item on the checklist.
There is an answer out there in the mid-Atlantic to learn from. It will be found. It must be found.