Can Google Do What Amazon Couldn’t? The Search For Steve Fossett In The Nevada Desert

“Do no evil.” — well played.

Best of luck!

If there’s any similar effort, I know I’d be happy to participate. Good luck to all looking for him.

I’m in.

I would totally get involved w/ this. I did what I could with Jim Gray. Get enough people behind something like this then they should be able to be found. That is if he wants to be found

I was heavily involved in the search for Jim Gray using Mechanical Turk. I’m ready and willing to help in this effort, but I need raw images. Anyone with access to imagery data, please reach out to meI can be contacted at james dot blair at gmail.

Good luck. I don’t know how I can help, but I willing to do it.

I’m in

“Still, if Branson and/or Google call for volunteers to help with the search”

Can’t they just use previous images then do
diff -Nuar old_satellite_pics new_satellite_pics ?

All this image pixel comparison technology and this is the best we can do with it:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007...../#comments

At any rate, I hope they find him. Being lost and possibly injured can’t be fun.

I bet the military has map comparison tech for satellite images with different time codes. It would only seem logical.

Use the diff of the satellite images, then have some smart Google engineer come up with a MapReduce based image recognition tool that is trained to detect anything that looks like an airplane. Come on Google guys — shouldn’t be that hard for you :p

If they open up the search to volunteers, I’m ready to help. Steve is a pioneer and we should use our vast technology resources to help find him. Good job, Google.

Mike:

Steve or whoever is with him needs tobe talking to some of the people who were involved in the search for Jim Gray (http://www.openphi.net/tenacious/).
One of the things that is important to remember is that doing a search over the ocean is very different things than looking for a downed plane, the issue is much more difficult:
http://www.n2700q.com/

I wrote a little bit about some of the current capabilities of hyperspectral imagers for this type of search and it is none trivial:

http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.c.....ities.html

If I had the means and be on location, I would most likely try something along of what we did a year ago and recently, fly a high altitude balloon and take photos with a normal camera and patch them together to create a large map where I would look for something interesting. It is important to remember that analyzing the data should be done after flying not while flying.

http://sei.tamu.edu/geocam/Pan.....-50pct.htm

all the pictures were put here :

http://sei.tamu.edu/geocam/Fin.....index.html

Igor.

I think this combination of community help and satellite images is a really a good idea, and not only for this area

Google’s source satellite maps are not in real time: they are dated. You merely have to see your own coordinates to see that Google maps are old. On the east coast, Google maps shows winter landscape with defoliated trees during summer, when foliage os so thick that houses cannot be seen easily.

@jomamma, the US govt will not let Google use satellite images that are newer than 2 days. Supposedly for security purposes.

It’s inspiring to see how resourceful this industry can be, regardless of company lines, when someone is truly in need. Good luck, and let us know how we can help out.

Right, people, Google does not have cameras in space. They BUY the aerials.

im in

That is a great idea. The power of the people.

Such incidents prove that technology could be of some real use rather than some 2.0 crap Hope they find this guy !!

imagine if Google emailed every gmail user everyday for the next couple of weeks a small focused section of the entire area that needs to be searched and that is search able with a glance. If the user searched the segment they indicate searched. As well if they would like to search additional segments they click next, showing the user another magnified section. This approach has more pros than cons. More Importantly it makes it easy to help and because every section that has been searched is indicated the process is efficient. http://jesusinabusinesssuit.wordpress.com/

We must stop John Galt!

NOW SHIFT PARADIGM

USA Intel could use the same methods to search areas for terrorists, guns, trucks with guns, ppl planting IED’s, burring bodies, attacks, groups waiting in ambush, search areas troops have not swept yet, watch ingress and egress points, military formations, filling tankers with explosives, rockets
and so on.

Their are thousands of volunteers waiting, you could even do double or triple coverage.
Un-used resources…
NSA and CIA note.

I hope they are successful, let’s lokk and pray for him.

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Who is John Galt?

Best of luck. I really hope this turns out well. Steve Fossett is living a childhood dream of mine … as an adventurer. Hope he is found safe.

“Google may have taken new satellite photos over the last few days which may have information that can help find him.”

Google has lots of tech, but no satellites. It licenses data from DigitalGlobe (which has a satellite) and some aerial companies (who have planes with cameras). It did just buy a company that makes such cameras, Image America. If the company can help pull together recent data for comparison, that would help. But, Google itself likely can’t provide recent data.

I don’t know how old the google earth images are but if they were recent we could surely help. I have found the Flying M Runway and a couple of hot air balloons just over a mile north of it. There is an interesting shape at
N 38deg 39′ 42.47″, W 119deg 00′ 13.45″ its north of the ranch, not south but could be an old crash or just nothing. If you look over in Arizona there are several aircraft in the images that are in flight. Look north of Phoenix they are marked. So I know it is possible to see a plane in Google Earth. I would be glad to spend several hours searching known new images.

Folks,

I have updated my thoughts on using a high altitude balloon for search and rescue here:
http://nuit-blanche.blogspot.c.....ities.html

Igor.

A Mechanical Turk project has now been set up, presumably with updated imagery (DigitalGlobe was scheduled to acquire new imagery of the area on Saturday). Go here to help: http://www.mturk.com/mturk/pre.....w=HomePage

Jen

So I was just playing with Google Earth and found what I think could be a plane. Is there anyway to get someone to look who may know what the heck they are looking for?

Here is the KLM:

KmlFile

normal
#sn_ylw-pushpin

highlight
#sh_ylw-pushpin

1.1

http://maps.google.com/mapfile.....ushpin.png

1.3

http://maps.google.com/mapfile.....ushpin.png

The Missing Steve Fossett?

-119.4207420607141
38.14990219322301
0
380.6492971364697
2.738064436183681e-011
-0.05330273643240061

#msn_ylw-pushpin

-119.4207420607141,38.14990219322301,0

Thank you Jen.

I was browsing through some of the satellite imagery in the provided KMZ file for 10 minutes and then found a downed plane which has the dimensions of Fossett’s plane. Now who do I send these coordinates to? I can’t find any contact info address on the Mechanical Turk page.

Couldnt he have crashed in an pool of water or a lake???

It apears to be a dessert but there is much water there…..

Its just a thought…..

Since he is most likely dead from a plane crash the searchers should use radar and other tools to look for hovering scavenger birds like turkey vultures and ravens.

Apparently the info on how to report a find is on the page which downloads from this information

http://www.mturk.com/mturk/pre.....p;kw=Flash

Let’s hope GOOGLE EARTH can help to find him. This is the time that Earth can be used to great cause.

-Stella Roy
http://www.google.co.in/search.....&meta=

Jim Gray story gives an occasion to reflexions

Found a couple of planes and either the ground or the image had blue markings nearby as if someone wanted that area to be dedicated as “old news’.

In google earth, how do you know if you are seeing new images?

Amazon and Google have gone to considerable expense to get this system where everyone can help with the search. Yet if you do find information it doesn’t seem to get in the right hands to be acted on soon enough. I believe it would be very helpful to have a central website setup to allow people with sightings of interest to post lat/long coordinates so others could review and comment. I have quickly created such a website here at fossettsightings.blogspot.com
I invite anyone using Amazon Turkelse to post “hot” lat/long coordinates for review there.

Gosh - it’s like a live version of “Where’s Wally”.

what is the reward for the discovery of steve fossett and his aircraft?

EXACT BIRTH TIME ON BIRTH CERT
FOR STEVE FOSSETT…WANTED!!!!!!!

CAN AND WILL SOME ONE PLEASE PASS ON …..THANKS……

HEY….STEVE I’M…… STILL LOOKING!!!!!!….
LOVE, LUCY