On an related thread, this posted

"This is where the world could help. They are taking photos of all this area as there flying over at 5000 ft . Release these photos to Google Earth and let the world help find the plane. Instead of 50 eyes looking you have 100,000 eyes looking.
If people can spot a submarine in the middle of the ocean we can find a plane in Nevada.

The civil air patrols comment was clueless on "well have you ever tried to zoom in with Google." guess she didn’t see the Katrina photos. The resolution does have a factor but you those were taken i belive above 10k feet. "

As a Civil Air Patrol member, and someone working in the satellite industry, I need to clarify a few things about this post

1. It may be a few days before DG or GeoEye satellites fly over, during the day, with good weather, so they can even photograph the area in question. Not to mention the time it takes to post process the imagery. Google earth is not close to live imagery. Lots of that imagery you see on GEearth is a few years old.

2. The resolution from satellite is not that good as you might think. When you look at the US, you are probably looking at imagery taken from aircraft, flying over a period of weeks. If you want to see true satellite imagery, in Google Earth, go to some remote part of Africa, that is where you will get the true satellite imagery, not something that what was flown by air. Commercial satellites with the ability to resolve something a meter in size will not be launched until later this year.

3. The CAP aircraft flying at 5000ft do not the capability to care the types of camera needed to produce imagery that could be placed on Google earth, in any systematic way. Most aircraft are Cessna’s 172 and 182, they are already near the weight limit with crew and fuel. Adding a camera with the necessary position gear would (1) be a hard fit (2) limits the fuel which limits flight time making the range very limited.

4.The camera to do make useful photos costs 10ks of dollars each, CAP does not have a budget to buy stuff like that.

5. CAP does have a few aircraft, large enough, and carrying ARCHER system, which is similar to a photographic camera system, but there are less then 50 across the country and to get them and trained crew, all to Nevada is not really practical, since CAP crews are volunteers, who have to ask off from work to go off and fly these missions. Pulling trained crews from around the country is not easy.

6. Even if the photos were collected, they still need to be tied to ground, so you know where that pixel actually sits on the ground. This is not a quick or cheap operation, it would add days to the preparation of the imagery for Google Earth.

7. Given that all the imagery was available, then if the air plane landed in one piece, a user of Google earth could spot it, but since airplanes tend to impact the ground at high speeds, and leave a burn mark and many small pieces scattered over an impact area, with many of the pieces small enough to be hidden under brush. Could a casual user see it?

You could argue that you could spot a wing, but (a) is the wing sitting at angle that makes it look like a wing when viewed from above? (b) Can you recognize a wing when its not part of an air frame? (c) Is the wing a simple white color, or as I think it is has been painted with design, making it less wing looking from a distance?

I think it is a great that people want to help in the search, but people need to understand what limitations of the system are. The CAP Major who did not answer the Google Earth question was not clueless; she just knows the limitations of the real world, and knows how inane of question that was.

My rant is over,
Thank you for your time.