The Missing
Malaysian Craft, Escape Velocity & Perishable News
Speculation
is defined as ‘make guesses about something’s nature or identity,
or about what might happen.’
On Friday 7th March, 2014 1741 hours
GMT a Boeing 777-200ER craft flight MH370 belonging to Malaysia Airline took
off from Kuala Lumpur for Beijing. It would be a seven hour flight. On board
were 227 passengers and 12 crew members.
About 1 hour into the flight, the craft lost
communication with all radar systems, without distress signal or any
indication. Some online enthusiast termed it ‘blinking off radar.’ It is
speculated the craft may have been flying about 30,000 ft above sea level. And yes,
its last position was above sea waters between Malaysia and Vietnam.
Fast forward. As I write this article, it is Tuesday
0600 hours GMT. More than 84 hours after the craft was reported ‘missing.’ So
far, 40 ships, 34 planes and search crews from more than 10 countries are
searching for the ‘missing’ one plane; a machine 63.73M long, 18.76M high and
with a 60.93M wing span. Let’s pray the search doesn’t lead to more of these
crafts missing! Reportedly, nothing significant has been found that could
provide leads as to the whereabouts of the plane. Azharuddin Abdul Rahman, the
Director General of the Malaysian Civil aviation department is puzzled about
everything. From the causes to nothing. So is everyone globally.
Reports have it that, two members listed as
passengers in the flight are actually not. The two are reportedly alive, well
and at home with their families. Their passports are said to have been stolen
in Thailand in different times. The Italian ‘passenger’ lost his passport in 2012
while his Austrian counterpart lost his in October, 2013. How stolen passports
were used to book flights 5 months and 2 years later is a puzzle on its own. No
wonder everything about the Boeing 777 jet is a puzzle. How does a gigantic
metal, cables, electronics, paints combo machine carrying about 400 humans ‘blink’
out of Earth just like that! How? In this age of technology? How? Well, you are
allowed to speculate. Have a field day.
ESCAPE
VELOCITY: Out of Earth
Let me delve into a little physics. While in high
school, my Physics teacher said this to me: ‘Escape Velocity is the speed at
which the kinetic energy plus the gravitational pull of an object is Zero.”
At this velocity, a body may break free from the
earth’s gravitational pull and go ‘missing.’ For a given gravitational
potential energy at a given position, the escape velocity is the minimum speed
at which an object without propulsion needs to be able to escape from gravity. The
body cannot be pulled back to Earth. No matter the direction of travel of the
object is, the object can escape the gravitational field.
On the surface of the Earth, the escape velocity
of any object is about 11.2 km/s. At 9000km altitude however, the velocity is
much lower. The missing Boeing could have been cruising at 897kh/h, 35000 ft
ASL (You do the Math.) Once the object escapes the Earth’s gravitational pull,
it becomes an orbit. With the speed maintained at Zero, the object will move in
orbits until it meets another body with a much higher magnetic pull, maybe.
Which other body, you may ask. The Sun. I guess there is no need to explain
what would happen if a machine from Earth, designed to carry life and actually
carrying live people, were to be pulled to the centre of the Sun.
Back to speculation. Reports are rife that some
relatives of persons aboard flight MH370 have reported calling their kin and
the calls going through though they aren’t answered. This has led many to
speculate that the Malaysian plane is held somewhere by terrorists. Fingers are
pointing to two passengers travelling on stolen passports and 4 more passengers
with questionable security records. But where is this somewhere where there is
no signal? Where GPS doesn’t work? That is if all contact and visibility of the
plane has been ‘disabled!’ Why can’t the ‘ringing phones’ be tracked to
position Zero? Haven’t we heard or treated to private phone tracking! Cheating
spouses, Uncle Sam stalking Merkel, etc etc etc. Why can’t the same mechanisms
be used to get this plane? Or were all passengers and crew on a deal to
plane-jack it! I wonder.
THE
MEDIA: Perishable News
I will not sign out without bashing the media. Including
yours truly.
About 6 hours after the plane blinked off radar,
Saturday morning all media was abuzz with major and little known media outlets,
bloggers-if twitter and facebook are news media, competing for relevance in the
unknown. At about 0300 hours GMT 100% of feeds from CNN, ABC, Aljazeera, etc
were about the How, Where, What of the ‘#MissingCraft.’ The trend held up to
around 1800 hours GMT. The following day Sunday, feeds from the media dropped
to about 20%. Mostly reporting on an ‘oil slick spotted’ in the sea, Uncle Sam
sending warships and genius detectives to the sea for search, et al. Don’t get
confused. No one had declared maritime war to warrant MV Destroyer in the deep sea. It was just a search.
Come Monday, everything about MH370 had been forgotten, pushed into history
archives, being quoted alongside the Bermuda Triangle occurrences. Events that
happened in the 1940s, well before Osama bin Laden (RI*) invented terrorism.
Even before GPS could be defined and used to track cheating spouses and
terrorists. Blackberry, Apple, Orange then were fruits. They are gadgets
nowadays. Lion wasn’t an OS. It was an adorable game-animal tourists flew all
the way from Beijing, KualaLumpur, New York to come and see in Nairobi. They
said and believed lions and people lived happily together in KICC and dined in
the rotating restaurant together, sharing a nyama-choma and Tusker-the beer.
Back to media feeds. On Monday I said reports
about the missing jet had dropped to Zero. I reckon a Kenyan journalist equip, ‘The
business of selling News is highly perishable. Let’s go back to Crimea.’
