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Lost people could unfold a giant foil with 'SOS' sign (e.g. 50 cm wide glittering letters) on it to notify satellites taking photos of it and automatically OCR (optical character recognizing) the continously made images. A small packed foil to be in every (sea) lifeboat, yacht, desert or mountain climber's
rucksack.
OCR might be more effective if using another sign, e.g. 'XOX', rarer in nature. The foil must be durable and lighter than water to float. Some kind of plastic for background, aluminium for the letters? Reflect in infrared? to be seen better across fog and maybe cloud.
When the satellite quick OCR finds something suspicious, different from yesterday's picture, should make quickly a better resolution picture and send it to Earth.
What is the most efficient sign? Are(/will) there enough (military) satellites continuously monitoring the Earth?
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Annotation:
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This is not such a bad idea... |
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Is this like cooking foil? |
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This is a cool idea, and I believe the answers to most of the
questions posed in the text are in favor of the author's
intent. Big bun. |
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Put a half dozen of them in every commercial airframe,
sealed in pods designed to break open and inflate the
panels on exposure to salt water. |
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//Why would you cook foil? |
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There are no such things as foil bacteria, you fool. |
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Great addition Alterother, thanks. On exposure of the airplane's surface to salt water (or in case of a serious hit (crashlanding), like the car airbag) catapult one of the black boxes, connected to some gas-inflating balls and some floating signs. |
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This concept is excellent. I think that we need a Halfbaker
with engineering
credentials to prototype [jrat]'s brilliant idea and put
it on Kickstarter. I'd do it myself if I had the education to
be taken seriously by the NTSB and the aerospace industry. |
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// catapult one of the black boxes // |
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Jettisoning the entire flight data recorder is unnecessary;
all that needs to go with the ejection payload is an
element-resistant flash memory backup. |
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I am concerned that XOX might convey kisses and hugs to satellite and other viewers. |
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I think a giant scannable-from-orbit QR code should suffice. |
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That last bit wasn't a serious suggestion, btw. I just see the
goddamn things everywhere nowsadays, so why not make
some visible from space? |
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//why not make some visible from space? |
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Because nobody actually scans them. |
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We wouldn't want to foil the original idea by having a QR code at the last mile. The satellite scanning algo would either crash or refuse to scan the code on principle. |
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In a cruel twist of fate, the QR code had survived the
crash, but unbeknown to the survivor it was proudly
broadcasting "$1.99 Walmart.com" to every passing
satellite. |
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As I said, the QR code bit wasn't serious. Fekking ridiculous
things. |
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Maybe this is our best ticket off this rock. Create a
loud enough beacon that is magically understood by
intelligent life as an 'SOS-please-get-us-off-this rock
signal.' |
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