Polish President and wife killed in Tu-154 crash

[Peter Kesternich]

I don't know, maybe a photo that would confirm a position and condition of the plane at any given moment in the last 20 seconds of flight.

Hmmmmm... wasn't there a layer of fog obscuring everything? How could a satellite take a picture of what happened on the ground?

[SYDCBRWOD]

I will make easier for you. The left pic shows a typical condition of windows after the crash, the right one - windows after more than a year of storage.

How does this prove anything? They are different bits of the same airframe. Can you prove that the windows further down the fuselage or on the opposite side were all equally crazed/opaque? Answer - you can't. Therefore this proves nothing. we don't even know for sure the windows have turned opaque due to heat. If it was heat from what source? Alcohol? Fuel? Explosive?

Pfft grasping a non-existent straws.

[SYDCBRWOD]

I don't know, maybe a photo that would confirm a position and condition of the plane at any given moment in the last 20 seconds of flight.

Assuming there was a picture of the last few seconds of flight. What part of "this is a low priority target for intel" do you not understand? There are no nukes stored here or delivery systems. If photo's exist it may be one still frame every couple of hours or days from a very high altitude and wide angle. Are you expecting the US to have had High def video of the entire incident?

As Gabrielle asks how will we see anything with the fog anyway?

So, how will the whack jobs explain this lack of photographic evidence being revealed? Lemme guess - the CIA actually had 93 Ultra high resolution cameras set up all over the base, but a minute before the crash the deep cover agent the russians inserted in the CIA in 1972 pulls the plug at the last moment so there is no evidence... Either that or aliens ('cos they hate Poles too).

[Gabriel]

I don't know, maybe a photo that would confirm a position and condition of the plane at any given moment in the last 20 seconds of flight.

Combine Peter's and SYDCBRWOD comments and you have my opinion:

I don't for a second think that the US will be spending, no wait, wasting, the utilization of a scarce resource worth billions of dollars in investment and operation (and I'm talking about a constellation of intelligence satellites) to take high-tech snapshots (that can see through thick solid fog with a high enough resolution) every 10 seconds or so on an insignificant target like this pathetic air base.

[Gabriel]

As Gabrielle asks how will we see anything with the fog anyway?

It wasn't me, it was SYDCBRWOD who said it first.

And it's not Gabrielle. It's Gabriel, and that's a huge difference (well, a bunch of inches anyway).

[Gabriel]

Btw, since you are free of the confirmation bias, maybe you could explain this one small discrepancy. At point A we hear from the cockpit "And five miles" which is 9.26 km, but the plane is only 8.3 km from the RWY. At point B we hear "Four", which is 7.4 km, but the plane is 6.28 km from the RWY.

That's the difference between you and me and between confirmation bias and an unbiased approach. When I don't know, I say I don't know. I can (and usually do) make a series of hypothesis that could explain it, but I don't go for the hypothesis that I like most (for whatever emotional reason) and try to fit all the evidence to it, and what doesn't fit I twist it until it fits, and if it still doesn't fit then I just ignore it.

In this case, for example: The source can be wrong (what is the source, by the way?). The person saying "Five" or "Four" could be wrong. The instrument that that person used to appreciate the distance could be wrong. The evidence could have been tampered with (something that I don't discard but I don't support either, simply because I don't have any reason to favour this hypothesis over the rest). Or another explanation that I didn't think of.

What I see in this accident is:
a- A whole bunch of evidence aligned with a busted minimums (intentional or not) + CFIT.
b- A good bunch of evidence showing that the investigation was not conducted in the most professional way, something that doesn't surprise me fro a Russian investigation (even if it was an Aeroflot crash).
c- No good set of consistent evidence showing that it was a conspiracy and that the plane was intentionally downed.

Again, I don't discard the point c. I'm just waiting for the evidence. And I'm sorry, but discrepancies in the investigation by themselves only supports point b, not point c.

[Peter Kesternich]

(...)

And it's not Gabrielle. It's Gabriel, and that's a huge difference (well, a bunch of inches anyway).

*lol... I like...

[Northwester]

The source can be wrong (what is the source, by the way?).

The source is the official Polish report.

Again, I don't discard the point c. I'm just waiting for the evidence. And I'm sorry, but discrepancies in the investigation by themselves only supports point b, not point c.

Have you watched Binienda's presentation at Carnegie Mellon?

[Northwester]

How does this prove anything? They are different bits of the same airframe. Can you prove that the windows further down the fuselage or on the opposite side were all equally crazed/opaque? Answer - you can't. Therefore this proves nothing. we don't even know for sure the windows have turned opaque due to heat. If it was heat from what source? Alcohol? Fuel? Explosive?

Pfft grasping a non-existent straws.

You are wrong. Te explosion hypothesis is supported by a number of strong indications. The number and size of fragments is directly related to the strength of the explosion. Thousands of small fragments measuring only few centimeters indicate an explosion that was caused by something else, and stronger, than the fuel vapors (Szuladzinski). The lack of a crater in the ground shows that the plane's fragmentation occured in the air. An 80 ton machine would have left a 1 to 2 meters crater in the ground. Also a lack of a major fire upon impact with 11 tons of fuel still in the tanks can be only explained by fuel dispersion in the air. So what caused the windows to turn opaque was likely not alcohol as you gracefully imply. The return of the wreckage to Poland and a thorough examination of all of it, including windows, would provide some answers. But that one thing the Russians are not that willing to do.

[Taliesin]

Indications of an explosion.

As was already pointed out, those arent indications of an explosion.
"Shrapnel" could be any debris from the airplane or the ground. What you do when you check for explosions is you look for micropitting caused by molten steel or remnants of the explosive compound. Explosives leave patterns that are clearly visible under microscopes or cameras.

You dont check for explosive damage by looking at pictures from the outside. Conspiracy theorists would do that. Experts would not. Not that you can tell the difference, but anyway..

[3WE]

What I see in this accident is:
a- A whole bunch of evidence aligned with a busted minimums (intentional or not) + CFIT.
b- A good bunch of evidence showing that the investigation was not conducted in the most professional way, something that doesn't surprise me fro a Russian investigation (even if it was an Aeroflot crash).
c- No good set of consistent evidence showing that it was a conspiracy and that the plane was intentionally downed.

Again, I don't discard the point c. I'm just waiting for the evidence. And I'm sorry, but discrepancies in the investigation by themselves only supports point b, not point c.

What does sound logic have to do with anything?

[Gabriel]

Have you watched Binienda's presentation at Carnegie Mellon?

Which one? This one?

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/event_detail.html?event_id=720&&menu_id=242&event_type=seminars

I haven't. Any transcript available?

[Northwester]

Which one? This one?

http://www.ri.cmu.edu/event_detail.html?event_id=720&&menu_id=242&event_type=seminars

I haven't. Any transcript available?

Here's the actual seminar recording on Carnegie Mellon youtube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u816y0jUUmE&list=UUW2eNKQeNIvl6MgFNKwLgBQ&index=7

[Gabriel]

Here's the actual seminar recording on Carnegie Mellon youtube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u816y...KwLgBQ&index=7

Now I have seen it. What can I say? His presentation is a fruit salad. He mixes scientific investigation with comments like that the Russians discarded the TWAS data because it was an American piece of equipment and hence bad (he has no evidence of that), that the Russians intentionally invented a climb after the crash with the birch to make room for the broken wing to go under the plane during the roll (again with no evidence), he used very dissimilar accidents to explain what the result of the crash (as presented in the Russian investigation) would have been. He uses for example an airplane that rolled inverted immediately after take-off, a crash-landing of a Tupolev, and the 727 controlled experiment in the Mexican dessert. He uses all that to say that passengers in the middle and aft sections of the fuselage would have survived. But none of these accidents was a nose-first inverted dive with a high vertical speed. He says that, by barometric info from TAWS data, the airplane should have missed the birch by a few feet, but he ignores that there is a significant error when converting pressure information into altitude above ground, in part because of the precision of the instrument itself (that can be some 10ft), but mainly because of the uncertainty of the real atmospheric pressure at the point and time of the crash, and the setting of the QNH data by the pilots. He also says that, except for the birch, the rest of the vegetation was intact and should have been shaved by the airplane, but there are photos of dozens of trees that were clipped in a way resembling an airplane flying through them, then climbing, rolling inverted and falling.

Where is that web page that was cited in the early days of this thread, where a person took lots of photos and made measurements and used terrain data to draw conclusions? I can't find it anymore. Do you have a link by chance?

All in all, I can't technically judge his simulation of the wing vs. tree impact. I can only trust him or not, or simply not make a decision. But, in all honesty, I have no reason to say that he is wrong on that (other than now we have to explain the broken birch).

The rest of his presentation is, in my opinion, a bunch of speculation, sometimes weekly supported by evidence, sometimes biased, and sometimes plain wrong.

[Northwester]

Now I have seen it. What can I say? His presentation is a fruit salad. He mixes scientific investigation with comments like that the Russians discarded the TWAS data because it was an American piece of equipment and hence bad (he has no evidence of that), that the Russians intentionally invented a climb after the crash with the birch to make room for the broken wing to go under the plane during the roll (again with no evidence), he used very dissimilar accidents to explain what the result of the crash (as presented in the Russian investigation) would have been. He uses for example an airplane that rolled inverted immediately after take-off, a crash-landing of a Tupolev, and the 727 controlled experiment in the Mexican dessert. He uses all that to say that passengers in the middle and aft sections of the fuselage would have survived. But none of these accidents was a nose-first inverted dive with a high vertical speed. He says that, by barometric info from TAWS data, the airplane should have missed the birch by a few feet, but he ignores that there is a significant error when converting pressure information into altitude above ground, in part because of the precision of the instrument itself (that can be some 10ft), but mainly because of the uncertainty of the real atmospheric pressure at the point and time of the crash, and the setting of the QNH data by the pilots. He also says that, except for the birch, the rest of the vegetation was intact and should have been shaved by the airplane, but there are photos of dozens of trees that were clipped in a way resembling an airplane flying through them, then climbing, rolling inverted and falling.

Where is that web page that was cited in the early days of this thread, where a person took lots of photos and made measurements and used terrain data to draw conclusions? I can't find it anymore. Do you have a link by chance?

All in all, I can't technically judge his simulation of the wing vs. tree impact. I can only trust him or not, or simply not make a decision. But, in all honesty, I have no reason to say that he is wrong on that (other than now we have to explain the broken birch).

The rest of his presentation is, in my opinion, a bunch of speculation, sometimes weekly supported by evidence, sometimes biased, and sometimes plain wrong.

The strong parts of his presentation are in the areas where his expertise and experience come from. The collision with the birch and the plane impact with the ground. These were strong simulations based on solid scientific principles. He has done such simulations before and the results were frequently confirmed by actual physical experiments.

The photographs you are talking about came from Sergey Amelin, an "aviation and photography enthusiast" as some call him. He took a series of photographs on April 13th showing damaged trees, and recreated the path and roll of the plane based on these photographs. Some of his photographs were subsequently used in the official reports.
A word of caution: in his portfolio he also has photographs taken during a training of Russian special forces inside a restricted military area.
I will try to find that link and post it here.