Originally Posted by Mr Optimistic
Have skimmed it and am a bit surprised. Throwing Kalman filters around is all well and good but I wonder if that isn't just convoluting the noise. Why not get a pristine galley section, inflict equivalent damage, lob it in the sea, measure currents and winds, watch its motion and then apply the estimated environment.
I know you're not the only one thinking along those lines. Some success has been had with this sort of thing in the past, finding sunken ships and such, but it could be that the winds and currents in the equatorial sea are just too variable for an analytical approach.
There has been talk of experimenting with some model parts, as you suggest, but I don't know if that effort happened. I'm not sure that it would help anyway, because the wind and current during the critical days are really as unknown as the effect they would have on the debris.