STENDEC

On 2 August 1947 a Lancastrian airliner crashed in the Andes. No traces of the aircraft were found in contemporary searches, but 50 years later the mystery was largely solved when bits of Lancastrian, and the remains of most of the passengers and crew were spat out by the Tupungato glacier. All on board had been killed in what (for those days) was a very common type of accident - flying into a hill in cloud.

A mystery remains however: the official record suggests that the last radio transmission from the aircraft (in morse code) was ETA [estimated time of arrival] Santiago 17.45 hrs STENDEC.

This message was clearly odd, because to this day no-one can begin to understand what STENDEC might have meant. It was repeated three times, very fast but apparently clearly. There is however another oddity. The message was received at 17.41, which means that the crew apparently believed themselves to be four minutes from touchdown.

This is however impossible if the crew had the slightest idea of their altitude. Current estimates are that the aircraft hit the ground at about 15,000 feet above sea level. Santiago is around 1,500 feet above sea level. In an unpressurised aircraft, 500 ft a minute is a comfortable rate of descent with passengers on board. Even if they pushed it to 1000 feet a minute the descent alone, quite apart from manoeuvring for landing, would take 15 minutes or so. Either the altimeter readings were way off or the last radio message was transcribed wrongly.

We know from accounts of WWII bomber operations that icing was a serious and sometimes fatal hazard. From contemporary photos, the Lancastrian did not appear to have any de-icing equipment, which would have made airframe icing a grave danger. If severe icing was encountered, the only way out was down - a problem if you are over high terrain in cloud.

If part of the message (the ETA) was wrong, the STENDEC bit could be wrong too. If you look at the morse for STENDEC and the morse for the word ICING with the letter separators changed, there is a lot of similarity:

... - . -. -.. . -.-. (Stendec)
.. - . -. .. -. - -. (Icing)

Futhermore, Icing is the only word that I can think of which could stand on it's own and not need to be part of a longer sentence or phrase like fuel low or engine losing power. If it had happened the radio operator would have understood the peril, which would explain the rapid repetition. It all fits, although we shall never know for sure.

Bali Climate Change Conference

In 1999, the UN estimated the cost of bringing safe water and sanitation to everyone on the globe who needed it at around US$25bn annually over 8 - 10 years (that is about 7 times the UK-only expenditure on pet food). The UN went on to suggest that contaminated water is responsible for 80% of disease in the developing world and kills a child every 8 seconds. It is a tragedy and a scandal which totally dwarfs the worst possible effects of global warming.

The recent conference in Bali on climate change was reportedly attended by 15,000 people. If we estimate the cost of travel, accommodation, payroll-related costs and incidental expenses for the 12 day conference at US$5,000 per person, then the cost of just these items (quite apart from the cost of the venue) for just this one event was $US75 million or about 3% of the annual expenditure on water that the UN is looking for.

An African housewife carrying 20 kg of water several km a day might be forgiven for thinking that all this global warming stuff is an excuse for Western junketing. Oh, and why Bali? I am told that it is a nice place for a holiday; but camping in an remote part of Africa would have concentrated the minds better, especially if delegates had to dodge the crocodiles to fetch their own water from the river.

Road Deaths

When I was working in what was then called "Accident Research" in the early 1970s, there were around 8000 deaths a year on British roads. In 2005 the figure was about 3200. Even 1 is too many, but I take some satisfaction that our work was not altogether a waste of time.

Libraries

The cost per loan of a number of London Lending libraries exceed £10. It would be cheaper to hand out Amazon tokens and let people keep the books.

The paper book is unlikely to die any time soon, but the public lending library as a holder of physical stocks of books and journals probably will

Climate Change - 39000 gigatonnes

We are currently releasing about 8 gigatonnes of carbon into the atmosphere annually as a result of fossil fuel burn. The oceans store about 39000 gigatonnes of carbon. In other words current work on anthropegenic climate change is like trying to detect the footsteps of an ant whilst an elephant is charging around the place.

For my first post, a word of explanation. Vifaa is a Swahili word meaning useful things or maybe appropriate stuff