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Articles like this really strike home how huge this world is. I feel ignorant when my first thought is that we should be able to locate a cruise ship in the oc

Articles like this really strike home how huge this world is. I feel ignorant when my first thought is that we should be able to locate a cruise ship in the ocean, but I clearly underestimate how huge this world really is. It's also hits home when entire planes like the Malaysian airline plane can disappear and literally no one knows what happened to it.

ikeboy 11y ago
There's an Israeli company called Windward that tracks ships, you may be interested in it (I read a profile of it recently that was intriguing.) See e.g. http://www.wsj.com/articles/ship-tracking-startup-windward-valued-at-about-100-million-1430215202 http://www.wsj.com/articles/ship-tracking-startup-windward-v... and https://pando.com/2015/04/27/the-last-great-analog-frontier-with-new-growth-round-windward-sets-sail-to-digitize-the-high-seas/ https://pando.com/2015/04/27/the-last-great-analog-frontier-...
grecy 11y ago
I find it difficult to believe that the large governments, in control of many imaging satellites, could not find something like this if they were so inclined. Take an enormous number of photos of the region at the right resolution, and have software eliminate the boring (empty) photos and flag the interesting ones (contain something of the right size) for human review. Heck, I bet it could even exclude known shipping lanes to minimize false positives.
- akira2501 11y ago
  There are 510 trillion square miles of surface area on the planet. Just.. imagine the logistical challenge of taking and storing these pictures, let alone the _process_ of obtaining them. It's almost impossible to achieve anything like a "snapshot" of the surface; because of this, it's almost useless for locating moving objects on the surface. You could, conceivably, completely miss the object in your imaging passes; or the satellite you have tasked for a particular ground track has an error in it's imaging sensor or downlink equipment, meaning you're missing a huge chunk of data for a while. You might also have to move the satellites around occasionally making imaging useless during these periods as well. Also.. there's night and weather. You can't always freely image the surface just because you have a camera pointed in that direction. These are just a small number of reasons that whole-earth real-time imaging is seriously difficult.
  - jlarocco 11y ago
    What? You're off by several orders of magnitude. The surface area of the earth is only 196 million square miles. Still very big, but nowhere near 510 trillion square miles.
    - david-given 11y ago
      The Earth's diameter is ~13000 km. Surface area is therefore 4 * pi * r^2 = 4 * pi * ((13000/2)^2) = 500 million square kilometres (which is, as you say, about 200 million square miles). I suspect the parent is both confusing a million with a trillion and also miles with kilometres.
      - akira2501 11y ago
        Neither. It's just such a habit to type miles. I meant 510 trillion square _meters_, which google and wolfram alpha tell me is correct. In any case.. the reason I chose that is because that's probably close to a reasonable maximum single pixel resolution for tracking imagery. I wanted the scope of the problem to be obvious by choice of units; unfortunately, I screwed that part up. :(
        david-given 11y ago
        Been there, done that, bought the aardvark. I mean T-shirt. (And, of course, it didn't occur to me that 1e6 million square metres is a square kilometre...)
  - grecy 11y ago
    > There are 510 trillion square miles of surface area on the planet. I understand it's a big job, but that's why big governments have billion dollar budgets and toys. Also remember we have no need to take photos of the entire surface, only the Atlantic (and even then, only the North Atlantic right now) >You could, conceivably, completely miss the object in your imaging passes I feel quite confident when images are taken their exact co-ordinates are known, so it can be quickly determined if you've "missed" a patch or if you have them all. >* or the satellite you have tasked for a particular ground track has an error in it's imaging sensor or downlink equipment* I feel quite certain they've tested these things extensively, and they're not going find some previously unknown bug while looking for a ship in the ocean. They work properly. > * You might also have to move the satellites around occasionally making imaging useless during these periods as well.* I thought most satellites were in orbits that make it possible to image almost the entire surface without moving them. > Also.. there's night and weather I didn't say it was going to be easy. > whole-earth real-time imaging is seriously difficult I'm not for one second proposing whole-earth real-time imaging.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- flurdy 11y ago
  Or use crowdsourced anomaly classification like http://www.tomnod.com/ http://www.tomnod.com/ Though you get more interest in relief, search and rescue cases, not abandoned ships.
skbohra123 11y ago
Btw, debris of MH370 was recently located https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370

ikeboy 11y ago

There's an Israeli company called Windward that tracks ships, you may be interested in it (I read a profile of it recently that was intriguing.) See e.g. http://www.wsj.com/articles/ship-tracking-startup-windward-valued-at-about-100-million-1430215202 http://www.wsj.com/articles/ship-tracking-startup-windward-v... and https://pando.com/2015/04/27/the-last-great-analog-frontier-with-new-growth-round-windward-sets-sail-to-digitize-the-high-seas/ https://pando.com/2015/04/27/the-last-great-analog-frontier-...

grecy 11y ago

I find it difficult to believe that the large governments, in control of many imaging satellites, could not find something like this if they were so inclined. Take an enormous number of photos of the region at the right resolution, and have software eliminate the boring (empty) photos and flag the interesting ones (contain something of the right size) for human review. Heck, I bet it could even exclude known shipping lanes to minimize false positives.

akira2501 11y ago
There are 510 trillion square miles of surface area on the planet. Just.. imagine the logistical challenge of taking and storing these pictures, let alone the _process_ of obtaining them. It's almost impossible to achieve anything like a "snapshot" of the surface; because of this, it's almost useless for locating moving objects on the surface. You could, conceivably, completely miss the object in your imaging passes; or the satellite you have tasked for a particular ground track has an error in it's imaging sensor or downlink equipment, meaning you're missing a huge chunk of data for a while. You might also have to move the satellites around occasionally making imaging useless during these periods as well. Also.. there's night and weather. You can't always freely image the surface just because you have a camera pointed in that direction. These are just a small number of reasons that whole-earth real-time imaging is seriously difficult.
- jlarocco 11y ago
  What? You're off by several orders of magnitude. The surface area of the earth is only 196 million square miles. Still very big, but nowhere near 510 trillion square miles.
  - david-given 11y ago
    The Earth's diameter is ~13000 km. Surface area is therefore 4 * pi * r^2 = 4 * pi * ((13000/2)^2) = 500 million square kilometres (which is, as you say, about 200 million square miles). I suspect the parent is both confusing a million with a trillion and also miles with kilometres.
    - akira2501 11y ago
      Neither. It's just such a habit to type miles. I meant 510 trillion square _meters_, which google and wolfram alpha tell me is correct. In any case.. the reason I chose that is because that's probably close to a reasonable maximum single pixel resolution for tracking imagery. I wanted the scope of the problem to be obvious by choice of units; unfortunately, I screwed that part up. :(
      - david-given 11y ago
        Been there, done that, bought the aardvark. I mean T-shirt. (And, of course, it didn't occur to me that 1e6 million square metres is a square kilometre...)
- grecy 11y ago
  > There are 510 trillion square miles of surface area on the planet. I understand it's a big job, but that's why big governments have billion dollar budgets and toys. Also remember we have no need to take photos of the entire surface, only the Atlantic (and even then, only the North Atlantic right now) >You could, conceivably, completely miss the object in your imaging passes I feel quite confident when images are taken their exact co-ordinates are known, so it can be quickly determined if you've "missed" a patch or if you have them all. >* or the satellite you have tasked for a particular ground track has an error in it's imaging sensor or downlink equipment* I feel quite certain they've tested these things extensively, and they're not going find some previously unknown bug while looking for a ship in the ocean. They work properly. > * You might also have to move the satellites around occasionally making imaging useless during these periods as well.* I thought most satellites were in orbits that make it possible to image almost the entire surface without moving them. > Also.. there's night and weather I didn't say it was going to be easy. > whole-earth real-time imaging is seriously difficult I'm not for one second proposing whole-earth real-time imaging.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
flurdy 11y ago
Or use crowdsourced anomaly classification like http://www.tomnod.com/ http://www.tomnod.com/ Though you get more interest in relief, search and rescue cases, not abandoned ships.

skbohra123 11y ago

Btw, debris of MH370 was recently located https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370