Posted on 09/11/2007 8:53:30 AM PDT by Hal1950
For a moment on Sunday, rescuers in Nevada searching for the aviator Steve Fossett thought they might have found what they were looking for. Reporters were summoned to Minden-Tahoe airport and a helicopter was scrambled to check out a possible sighting of the wreckage of a single-engine aircraft.
But 30 minutes later the helicopter crew reported back that the wreck was not Mr Fossett's plane but the debris from an old US navy crash.
"Once again you had your hopes raised and dashed just as we have," civil air patrol major Cynthia Ryan told reporters. "This search is big, it is frustrating and it is exhausting, physically and mentally."
But as the search for the 63-year-old enters its second week, rescuers have received help from an unlikely source: Google Earth. The satellite imaging program has released new, up-to-date images of Nevada which, through a collaborative system run by Amazon called Mechanical Turk, enables individual users to search from their homes and notify rescuers in Nevada of potential leads. The system's creators say the plane Mr Fossett was flying would appear as an object about "21 pixels long and 30 pixels in wingspan".
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
This is surreal. Its really cool, but surreal. Getting one of those “future moments”
Maybe they should show updated images of the hills of Paskistan.
“Captain, sensors show there is life down there..... but, all 450 people on the Enterprise are glued to their terminals at the moment so you and I will have to down to make contact...”
“Captain, sensors show there is life down there..... but, all 450 people on the Enterprise are glued to their terminals at the moment so you and I will have to down to make contact...”
They could get higher-resolution images than that but the search would be called off the first time some geek finds a nekkid lady sunbathing somewhere.
I think I found “Tourist Guy.”
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