LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - A TGU reader Robert Poli has commented on the Steve Fossett search post to say he’s found something in Google Earth.

Look at coordinates:
N38* 50′ 04″
W118*52′45.37″
small, white, right angle image on mountainside.

A quick check of the coordinates ourselves and we’ve uploaded the screenshot above. Yes it does look like something, but it appears me that it lies outside of the updated images given by Amazon Mechanical Turk. This in my mind means it’s on an old image, and probably taken before last week.

Robert, to play safe, have you relayed these coordinates to the authorities? Can our readers shed any more light on this object?

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - Call in the crowd! Artificial intelligence is now being used in the form of Amazon Mechanical Turk to track Steve’s position. The idea is to complete simple tasks that people do better than computers by splitting up the images into tiny squares and getting 1000s of humans to remotely check them. Typically these tasks are extraordinarily difficult for computers, but simple for humans to answer.

You will be shown a single satellite image. The task is to flag any satellite images which contain foreign objects that may resemble Steve’s airplane or parts of a plane. Steve’s plane will show up as a regular object with sharp edges, white or nearly white, about 21 pixels long and 30 pixels in wingspan.

-Robin-

LONDON, UK (Team Geared Up) - This post is playing out all over the interenet, so I thought I’d try and add value to it rather than regurgitate.

At 9:00 am, on Monday, September 3, 2007, Fossett took off in a single-engine plane from a private air strip known as Flying M Ranch ( 38°36′39″N, 118°59′56″W), near Smith Valley, 30 miles south of Yerington, Nevada, near Carson City and the California border. He was allegedly performing a “ground recon” of dry lake beds for a land-speed in a car project he was involved with.

• Branson interviewed on BBC24 has said he gave him a present of a Breitling Watch which he never removes. This watch has a locator beacon in it and is easy to set off from a push of a button.
• The plane has an emergency locator beacon in it. This will activate if the plane crashes unless damaged in the crash (e.g. explosion). If landed safely Steve could set it off manually.
• The plane has full radio capability if it was landed safely with power remaining in batteries.
• Steve did not land at any other airfields and had a 4-5hr fuel range.
• Steve is highly experienced in piloting. “No better man” was the quote from SAR team leader.
• “Steve always pushes the envelope” said Branson.
• Steve was 63.

So it looks like - Steve may have had a heart attack mid-flight, or something similar. A bad explosion would wipe out the locator beacon. If this is not the case then he may have brought the plane down somewhere to check out the ground firmness for his speed record and be unable to relaunch - why he would have then lost the locator beacon (broken?) and the radio power is unknown.

CAP rescue currently have 13 planes in the air searching a grid formation for his plane or debris. They are currently treating this as a rescue operation rather than recovery. There is still hope.

TGU will post any updates we get.

-Robin-