Fire on Board MH 370?

Thanks Captain.


I shall be waiting anxiously for your expert opinion

I saw over CNN today that MH 370 flew below 12,000 feet after it stopped sending message. But why?


My feeling is there was possibly some decompression on board the MH 370 to force the pilot to lower the height so that the passengers can breathe, and also not affected by the rarefied air. Below this height there is lesser risk of hypoxia (oxygen insufficiency). 

Maybe there was a fire on board and there was smoke everywhere that forced the pilot to lower altitude so that the doors can be opened to let the smoke out. But the in-rushing air  will fan the fire even more? Don't you think so? But there are oxygen masks on board to allow everyone to breathe if there was smoke without letting air in?

Maybe the pilot and copilot were both overcame by smoke and became unconscious from asphyxia? The plane then flew on its own without directions (even autopilot will be knocked out with electrical supply) till it ran out of fuel?

A short circuit that caused a fire (assuming) may have  affected all the electrical systems in the aircraft, INCLUDING the transponders, radio and communication systems, etc.  


If that is the case, then how could the plane continue to fly because in my ignorant thinking, there must be some kind of fuel pumps worked by electricity to allow fuel to be pumped to the engines? 


How can the fuel just flow into the engines like that to allow the plane to continue to fly? Cannot be the fuel drained by gravity. How idiotic to think like that! Stupid! 

If there was an electrical failure, then there is no way the pilot could communicate by radio with the ground control. It will be radio silent. That may explain the mystery why it lost contact? 


In that case, especially if there was a fire caused by a short circuit, then there may be a blackout in the entire plane with smoke everywhere in the pitch of the night - remember, the flight to Beijing was after midnight.

 

In such a case, without vision, in pitch darkness,  without radio contact anymore, the pilot (if he is conscious) will be flying blindly without knowing where he was heading or going, especially it was in pitch darkness. 

My guess is, he probably tried to fly WEST in an attempt to catch up with the sun to see where he was going? I do not know? These are just some guesses based on logical thinking, whether mine was idiotic logic, intelligent thinking  or wild guesses? I just do not know. 


Until they recover the plane, we can never know. 

kind regards

lim juboo 

(Just as blind)

Missing MH 370 is a needle in a haystack

I saw over China Central Television (CCTV News) two days ago, and also read in the our local newspapers,  over 50 nations are now searching the north and southern corridors in an area of 2.24 square nautical miles for the missing Boeing 777 belonging to Malaysian Airlines flight MH 370 ? Wow! That’s a huge, huge area indeed to search for a tiny plane in comparison.

For those whom mathematics is not their cup of tea, except for those maths wizards and my learned engineer friends, do you know how big that area is?

A simple calculation will tell us that 2.24 million square nautical miles is the same as a square bounded by four sides, each side approximately 2773.6 km long

The area of  a circle given by πr2

Thus if the area of search was a circle, the radius will be:

√ (A / π) = 7692809.6 sq km / π

= 7692809.6 / π = √2448697.3

= 1,564.8 km.

If we take KLIA as the centre, and draw a radius stretching up to where Vietnam and Laos boarder meets at coordinates 15.5033 degrees north, and 107.4614 degrees east, this distance is 1558.620 km from KLIA.

 If we now draw a circle 360 degree all round SE Asia from KLIA, the area of sweep is equivalent to 2.24 million square nautical miles. This is the magnitude we need to search for a plane. This is almost an impossible mission.

How does this compare to the surface area of a Boeing 777?

I have already given that as approximately 900 square metres in my previous blog

The area of search is approximately (2773.6 km x 1000 metres)² = 7.69 x 10¹² (7.67 million, million) square metres

Since the area of a Boeing 777 is just 10^-8 percent or 0.00,000,001 %   compared to the size of the search area.

This is far smaller than searching for a needle in a haystack.

 Let us say a haystack is spread over an area of 10 x 10 metres = 100 000 000 square millimeters.  

An object 0.00,000,001 %   of this dimension is:

= 0.01 square millimeter in size, or just a speck 0.1 mm across. How are they going to look for a speck in this vast ocean?

Maybe this is possible, but only by using a satellite images to zoom in at very high magnifications over some floating objects. This cannot be done using planes or ships. But still you need ships to go there to confirm a satellite image.

Searching for my plane:

I remember when I was a young boy the only toy I have was a yellow plane hardly one inch long. It was so precious to me. We have no computers, i-pad, i-phones, and tablets to play with those days.

I would pinched my yellow toy plane with my thumb and forefingers and moved it along a  table or some flat surface as if it was a runway making some humming noises as I moved the plane  as if it was taking off, and then lifted it up into the air and ‘flew’ it over my head as I ran.

One day, I played it in Batu Pahat High School field at a corner where there was a sand pit for shot put and high jump. I remember bringing my plane there to play as if it was taking off from a desert. Remember I always wanted to be a pilot that never was.  That was the best I could offer myself.

Lost in the ‘desert’:

After playing in sand pit, I lost that yellow plane in the sand. I frantically searched for my plane for days, weeks and month, and the more I dug into the sand, the deeper I buried it. I never managed to find that plane till this day. Each time I passed through the school field even today, I looked at that corner where the sand pit was, wondering if my pet plane is still there.

The submarine that never surfaced:

This is the same thing when I played with my toy submarine in the flooded streets outside my shop in Batu Pahat those days in the 1950’s. That submarine was supposed to surface after each dive into the flood water and monsoon drain in front of my father’s cold storage shop. But one day, it never did.

I then searched and searched for it in the drain and adjacent drain and in also in the street after the flood subsided, but it never saw the daylight.

Till this day when I go back to Batu Pahat and walked along my former shop through memory lane, I would look at that monsoon drain hoping for a 1:100, 00, 000 chance to see that submarine even though it may have long crumbled into rust from the salty sea water that flowed into the streets through Batu Pahat river in twice a day during each new and full moon from sea tides. 

But both my plane and submarine was captured by Mother Nature, never to be found till this day.    

Pray-fully,  and hopefully we can find MH 370. I am worried for those lives. I feel for them with each passing day. I trust God in His mercy will keep them safe, and for their loved ones, hopefully they will huddle together to keep each other psychologically warm and comfortable as they share their untold sorrows. 

This  is psychologically therapeutic if they share their common grief together to know the are not alone.

I trust others too like myself  will  pray and share the families grief together.

We trust in God, and we leave this Mercy in Him. 

Amen! 

lim ju boo

 Lim ju boo

Mystery of Missing Planes like MH 370 - A Probability of Meteorite Strike

Can a plane be brought down by a meteorite – just an academic thought!  

Reading all the conflicting reports of the missing Malaysian Airlines jetliner MH 370 on how it could escape the network of radar surveillance of Malaysia and neighboring countries, I couldn’t help thinking of other possibilities. One is a plane could be hit by a meteorite from space.

Normally, we would look at some of the most commonly thought of possibilities of a missing plane first. Such as mechanical failure, pilot’s error, hijacking, terrorism and explosions on board, bad weather and thunderstorms, psychological factors among the crew and / or with passengers are among the most possible causes. These causes should be the first step as they are the most common and simplest.

But if we are unable to find these causes to explain the mystery of a missing plane in flight, we need to look at other avenues of possibilities.

We will then need to adopt the ‘blue ocean strategy’ to look at a wider picture.  Our thoughts need to widen and we need to start thinking out of the box.

One possibility I am thinking is that a plane could be brought down by a meteorite in space.

Straight away from this beginning I am not implying the Malaysian Airline MH 370 was hit by a meteorite. No, not at all! I am talking about a possibility for any plane that takes to the sky. The risk, albeit very rare as I shall explain, can still happen if we cannot account for its mysterious disappearance from the sky.

First, let us look at some approximate data  to work on from there.

Area of a Boeing 777:

I do not know the exact surface areas of a Boeing 777 or the Boeing 777-200 version.  The best I could get was some data from the Internet, and sort it out from there.  So it is only an approximate for the sake of calculations.

The wingspan of a Boeing 777 was expected to increase from the current 64.8 metres to 71.3 metres for a Boeing 777-200.  Let us say it is about 68 metres, with a fuselage length of about 69.5 metres for convenience. That means if the aircraft was somewhat a square or rectangular, its area would be:

64.8 x 69.5 = 4503.6 sq. metres

Of course this is not. An aircraft is not a square. It is tube-like with wings. Its shape has to be as slim as possible in order for it to be streamline and aerodynamic in action. Assuming for the sake of calculation, the total surface area was just 20 % of this.

Hence as an assumption, the total surface area of Boeing 777 would be 900.7 sq. metres. It could be more, it could be less. I have no figure on this.

Let us now assume the Boeing 777 was cruising at about 900 kph or 250 metres per second.

If a plane like Boeing 777 was cruising at 900 kph (250 metres per second), it would then sweep over its own wing and fuselage area equivalent to 900.7 sq. m x 250 m /sec = 225,175 square metres  per second.

The Area Swept:

This sweep exposes it to a greater chance of being strike by a meteoroid. This of course is a virtual area as it was flying, and not at rest on the ground.

It would virtually increases its chance by 250 times each second of being strike by an oncoming meteorite as if it was rushing “to catch a falling star”

Suppose there were 1000 planes flying up there all over the world at any one time. The virtual coverage would be 225,175,000 square metres per second.  This area is 4.4 x 10^-5 or 0.000044 percent of the entire Earth’s surface. What then is the Earth’s surface? Let’s check this out.

The equatorial radius of Earth is about 6,371 kilometers or 6,371,000 metres. Its surface area would then be 4 pi r ² = 5.1 X 10 ¹⁴ square metres.

Out of this, only ½ or one half of the Earth’s sphere will be exposed to a direct head-on collision with any meteorite and meteoroid as it revolves around the Sun. The rest trails or are left behind as the Earth moves in its rotation about its axis and revolves around the Sun in space. It is during this forward motion that the Earth is more likely to collect and collide with space debris.

Since Earth also rotates around its axis, it will encounter more meteorites after midnight until dawn because it is during this period of the Earth’s forward motion that gives it a greater chance of a head-on encounter.

The meteorites trailing and left behind on the other half of the Earth surface will have to chase after Earth from the back. The speed of a tail on collision from behind will be greatly reduced. 

In short, it is always the forward movement, be it rotation, or rotation of the Earth that enhances a greater risk of a head-on collision, not a tail-on collision from the behind.

Forward half of Earth:

Hence we shall consider only one-half of Earth where the chances of collisions after midnight will be most likely. This means only 2.55 x 10¹⁴ sq. metres of the Earth are more likely to encounter a meteoroid or a meteorite fall.

A meteor is what we see as a streak of light in the night sky when a small piece of interplanetary debris burns up as it enters through our atmosphere. In other words, it is a “shooting star”

A meteoroid is a large piece of interplanetary matter that is smaller than a kilometer, frequently only millimeters in size. Most meteoroids as they enter the Earth's atmosphere are so small they vaporize completely and never reach the Earth’s surface.

But if a meteoroid survives being burnt up through the atmosphere and lands on Earth, it is called a meteorite

Space debris and Chances:

Having said that, let us now go back to what astronomers tell us. They tell us that about 10 -100 millions meteors peppers the Earth every day, most of them as dust. 

But let us be conservative. Let us begin by assuming only 10 million meteoroids rain down on the Earth every day. Let us assume that out of the 10 million, only 100 of them are the size of a brick each weighing 10 kg. That is, there is only a 100/10 million, or 10^-5 (0.00001) chance for a meteoroid of such size surviving our atmosphere each 24 hours-day.

The chance per second is even less. It would be 10^-5 / 24 hrs-day x 60 min x 60 sec

= 1: 10, 000, 000,000

Most are micro meteorites or dust particles. Most sizable meteorite will fall over the oceans since ¾ of the Earth’s coverage is over the oceans. So we never get to see or detect them.

So do planes. If a plane flies all over the Earth’s surface all the time, including the oceans, the chances one of them being hit by a meteorite is even more remote.

Furthermore, there will be a 75 % chance it would fall into the oceans or seas. We can never hope to see or find them again. It just vanishes from the radar.

Probability:

However with tens of hundreds of planes spreading their wings up in the air all over the world - over the oceans, land, across mountains in its 115 years of aviation history since 1909, the chances of at least one of them being hit by a meteoroid one day at any moment albeit slim, is a possibility. It is a matter of the law of chance or probability that – that day shall surely come. 

But what are the chances of a plane being hit by a meteorite compared with the wide surface of the Earth?  Let us check this out.

If half the Earth’s surface is 2.55 x 10¹⁴ sq. metres, and if there is only a 10^-10 chance of a 10 kg meteorite falling over Earth at any single second, then we can expect an even lesser chance of an airplane similar to Boeing 777 being hit by one.

Let’s check this out:

Chance x surface areas of planes / half the surface area of Earth:

10^-10 x (225,175,000 square metres ÷ 2.55 x 10¹⁴) = 10^-10 x 9 x 10^-7 = 9 x 10^-17    

(Where, 225,175,000 square metres is the total virtual wing spread of 1000 planes the size of Boeing 777 flying all over the world each second).

This is the calculated chance of a “cosmic brick” hitting one of these 1000 flying planes at any moment in time.

But so far we are talking about the chance per second. This chance naturally increases with each passing second.

For instance in a 24-hour day (86400 seconds) the chances increases to 8 x 10^-12,  in a Solar Year (86400 x 365.25) the chance increases to nearly 3 in a billion, and in 115 years of aviation history, the chance of an occurrence increases to 3 in 10 million

This is very rare indeed, so rare that perhaps it has never occurred in the entire history of flying.

Yet…!

Yet in statistics, the law of chance or probability is always there, and is it is real. The probability is only zero when there is totally no plane around and totally and no meteorite at all slamming down on Earth. This of course is not true. We all know that 10 – 100 million cosmic dusts and pebbles rain down on Earth every day.

Kinetic Energy of Collision:

What if it does? How powerful will be the collision? Let us check this out.

Let us assume that of this, 10 million cosmic particles the size of a pebble, only 100 of them are the size of a brick each with a mass of 10 kg.

This means there is only a 10 ^-5 (0.00001) chance of a “cosmic brick” 10 kg in mass raining down on us.

The figure may be much higher, but let us be conservative in our thoughts.

Such a “brick” traveling at around 30 km/s would develop a whooping kinetic energy of:  

½ mv²   = ½ x 10 kg x (30,000 metres / sec)²  = 4,500,000,000 Joules of energy

(where, m = mass, v = the velocity).

The power of a Boeing 777 in flight:

That not all. Consider the jet plane also travelling at 900 kph to meet this collision. Let us calculate how much would be the total energy of collision.

Its gross weight of a Boeing 777 I understand is about 352,000 kg (775,000 lb). I really do not know if this includes the fuel as I am not an aviation engineer. My area of expertise is in nutrition, food science, medicine and in medical research which are all so very remotely distant from aviation physics. But just for the fun of it, let us try to work this out.

But let us assume the plane gross weight includes the fuel. Let us just take an example of the missing Malaysian Airlines MH 370 with its passenger abroad.

The missing MH 370 Boeing 777-200 has 239 passengers + 12 crew + 2 infants on board.

Let us assume the passengers + 12 crew members each weighs 65 kg, plus the 2 infants who were 20 kg each. Their total body mass would be 16355 kg.

Add on to the luggage of a max of 20 kg each for the 251 adults on board. That would be 5020 kg in total (ignore ‘luggage’ of the two infants)

The total mass would have been:

(352,000 + 16,355 + 5020) = 373,335 kg

Hence the kinetic energy of the aircraft flying at 900 kph (250 metres / sec) =

½ x 373,335 kg x (250) ² = 1.17 x 10¹⁰ Joules

Imagine the power of this collision when a falling meteorite meets it?

How powerful will that be?

Consider when a meteoroid strikes, it is never a head-on horizontal collision. A meteorite must come from above in space at an angle. Let us assume a midway angle between 0 and 90 degree, namely at 45 degree.

The energy of impact would then be the cosine of this angle of attack.

Hence it is:

= cosine 45 degrees x energy of the meteorite + the kinetic energy of the plane.

This works out to be:

0.707 x 4,500,000,000 + 1.17 x 10¹⁰ = 1.49 x 10¹⁰ Joules   (where cosine 45 deg = 0.707)

Imagine this power of collision!

A 10 kg meteorite collision coming from an angle of 45 degrees to meet a Boeing 777 travelling at 900 kph with a load of 239 passengers + 12 crew + 2 infants and their luggage inside will deliver an energy of impact equivalent to 3.56 tons of TNT

(A ton of TNT delivers a punch of 4.184 x 10⁹ Joules of energy)

What need to say about a plane under such catastrophe?  It will completely be disintegrated into smithereens. There will be nothing left.

It will just disappear in the sky and from radar and perhaps scattered into the oceans never to be seen again. The radar will not even to detect the meteorite coming as it is far too small – just the size of a brick, but with that power

Fortunately such an event occurring is so rare that we need to look at other much more common possibilities.

Once again I am not implying MH 370 was struck by a meteorite from space.  I am merely thinking of astronomical and statistical possibilities for any plane that mysteriously disappeared from the sky that we cannot account for.  It is just my academic thought to pen an article for my blog

Don’t take me seriously that the plane was hit by a cosmic rock from space.

The search goes on!

lim juboo

The Mystery of MH 370 Flight

I cannot quite understand how such a big plane like Boeing 777-200 just vanished like that without a trace?

With such modern communication systems in place – radio, radar, satellites, GPS and their frequent contacts with control towers they are unable to explain or determine the location of the aircraft? 

Even if these communication and navigational technologies failed during flight, search planes, helicopters, ships, boats, sonar, and perhaps even submarines during the post disaster event cannot locate the missing plane?

Even if all technologies failed, why don’t they use good old manual calculations to approximate the location?

If we know the time the aircraft left, its flight path (I suppose this is normally fixed and allocated), the initial acceleration and speed, the final velocity, and the time it disappeared, it is very easily to manually calculate out the location. Why don’t they do just this?

If the Vietnamese authorities found oil stretches in their waters, why don’t they take samples for chemical analysis to confirm aviation fuel?

Something very mysterious is happening out there in the sky. Was the plane abducted by an alien ship in the dark depths of the night for study by aliens about our “flying cigar”?

If it was, I would not be surprised MH 370 will mysterious and suddenly appear again as mysteriously as it went missing to radio for permission to land in Beijing International Airport or at KLIA after their release. 

Unlikely though, at least they are all safe to tell us the twilight zone they were wrapped in. 

I admit this is very unconventional thinking, but if we are unable to explain in conventional terms, then I think it is time we use the blue ocean strategy to think out of the box. 

I feel so sad for those on board MH 370 and for their loved ones waiting for their return.

Let us pray God will grant them safety.

Please bring back those lives. We trust in Thee

Thank you Dear God.

Jb lim