Vanished: The disapearance of the Star Dust

In the opening few minutes, quote ' pieces of the plane mysteriously reappeared on a high glacier' - and thats where I turned it off. The wreck was covered by snow and ice, and as the glacier moved down, so parts of the aircraft were revealed, simple as that. Nothing mysterious about it whatsoever. More dumbed down sensationalist crap-speak from the BBC. Sorry, but this sort of thing irritates me.
 
Wow if BBC Horizon is dumbed down crap you must have insurmountable standards when it comes to Documentary TV. I yearn for shows of such quality this side of the Atlantic but fat chance of that ever happening.
 
Well...To me I thought it was good.....
The first time I heard of the disappearance of the Star Dust, was when I was a kid......I heard the same story years later, when 2 pilots were talking about what they would do if they ever came across the Star Dust....
The last coded message from stardust......S.T.E.N.D.E.C . Is still a mystery today, as to what it meant.
 
Actually the science is fairly good behind that documentary... glacial ice does move in.,. cycles, and material that starts lower down, can end up higher after years within the ice, imagine it flowing down hill not like a train on tracks, but like a caterpillar track... one piece stays stationary while the rest moves over it and is pulled up behind. Seemed only logical when you look at it in hindsight.
 
Naismith said:
Wow if BBC Horizon is dumbed down crap you must have insurmountable standards when it comes to Documentary TV
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No, I agree about Horizon. I rarely watch it now, it's all hype and graphics with little substance or real information. I enjoyed it as a teenager, which may have been because I was a teenager rather than that it was better back then. We used to have so much more intelligent science and technology programming with Equinoxe, QED, James Burke and the like. It's surely a lowest common denominator thing.
 
Frankly, pieces of a long lost aircraft reappearing on a glacier is a little mysterious... but then they go on to explain how it happened, and the mystery is solved. if you want Pure science, read a report, tv documentaries are supposed to polish things a little to make it palatable to all viewers, I didn't see much wrong with the glaciology in the docu...
 
MarkH said:
No, I agree about Horizon. I rarely watch it now, it's all hype and graphics with little substance or real information. I enjoyed it as a teenager...
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As did I. The programmes treated the viewer as an intelligent adult, able to recall some facts presented ten minutes earlier while following the development of an argument. Now we must cater for the channel surfers and the gnat's heartbeat attention span, so the subject of the broadcast is restated every three minutes, sometimes less. It's not as if the programme is interrupted by adverts, duh: we're talking BBC 2 after all.

Haven't deliberately watched it in years, but I watched the Star Dust video which dates back to 1999: Horizon more like I remember it. Thanks!
 
O/T

If you can ever get hold of the Horizon documentary on the subject of infinity, I commend it to you.

Mind expanding stuff.

best

nio
 
Watched the Horizon episode spellbound, not least because I modelled a FS9 Lancastrian once and couldn't help thinking they could have used that model rather than the paper flier they did use. Never mind. Did you see the comment by one YouTube viewer, who suggested that

STENDEC is a world war two acronym used in morse code. The translation is as follows:
Severe Turbulance Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash-landing.
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Sounded very plausible to me ... even though one of the experts suggested they just flew into the glacier and were all killed instantly.
 
mjahn said:
Watched the Horizon episode spellbound, not least because I modelled a FS9 Lancastrian once and couldn't help thinking they could have used that model rather than the paper flier they did use. Never mind. Did you see the comment by one YouTube viewer, who suggested that

STENDEC is a world war two acronym used in morse code. The translation is as follows:
Severe Turbulance Encountered Now Descending Emergency Crash-landing.


Sounded very plausible to me ... even though one of the experts suggested they just flew into the glacier and were all killed instantly.
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I very much doubt there was a set of approved single acronyms covering every eventuality, and combination of eventualities, that could occur in flight. Can you imagine the radio operator looking through a list to see which acronym applied to whatever set of circumstances that were applicable at that given moment? Hang on, can't use that one - there is no icing...I'd use this one, but the visibility is okay...we've got an engine out, turbulence, descending - would that be EOTURD ?

The actual message received at Santiago was 'ETA Santiago 17.45 Hrs. STENDEC' the first portion of which indicates there were no problems on board the aircraft and that they fully intended to land normally at their intended destination. STENDEC wasn't recognised by the Chilean radio operator on the ground and he asked for clarification. The message STENDEC was repeated twice, after which all fell silent and the aircraft was lost.

The most plausible explanation I've read for the loss of the Star Dust was that it had encountered high altitude winds ( the jet stream ) that were little understood at that time, and the navigator hadn't factored them into his calculations. The aircraft had been slowed down and wasn't as far along its intended track as the navigator assumed. Therefore when it started its descent into Santiago, it was still above the Andes, rather than west of them.

This would also add weight to the another speculation;- that STENDEC was an abbreviation of Standard Enroute Descent. So..ETA Santiago 17:45. Standard Enroute Descent.

That said, its odd that the definition of STENDEC wasn't clarified at the time. Surely if it was in common use with BSAA, someone from the airline would have said so at the time of the accident investigation.
 
At times like this its best to look at the history of the radio op... was he ex raf? it might have a source there... Some things are hard to shake remember.
 
mjahn said:
Gotta admit these are all good points. Were these voice messages or was it Morse code?
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I believe they were using morse as, several theories around the meaning of STENDEC have revolved around that it could have been miss heard by the receiver. Apparently STENDEC is similar in morse to VALP, the code of a near by (Near to Santiago, about 110KM - Valparaiso airport) airport. So one theory is that the crew of Star Dust thought they were over Valparaiso, due to not knowing about the jet stream were actually not where they thought they were, began their descent, and crashed into the Andes. STENDEC is also an anagram of DESCENT.. It was also noted Star Dust was transmitting very quickly, (Many words per minute) so it is entirely possible the operator mis heard.

Craig.
 
If reception was dubious & the morse operator not so good as the sender & copying it down with bad separation of the dots & dashes it could have read STARDUST!
Keith
 
Naismith said:
Wow if BBC Horizon is dumbed down crap you must have insurmountable standards when it comes to Documentary TV. I yearn for shows of such quality this side of the Atlantic but fat chance of that ever happening.
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No they are not insurmountable at all. Watch such productions as the BBC's 'The Great War', Thames Television's 'The World at War' ( they actually interviewed Hasso Von Manteuffel ! ) or any of David Attenborough's natural history documentaries, and you'll appreciate how precipitous Horizon's fall has been. Its not just Horizon however.

I once watched a 50 minute documentary on Channel 5 about a ship wreck found lying on the bottom of the Mediterranean. As usual, it was all spurious mystery and enigma... 'What was this ship...what was it carrying...AND WHAT WAS IT DOING HERE ?? !!! After all that was established we progressed to ' What caused her loss...was it bad weather, a mine perhaps... or ( cue dark lowering of the voice ) WAS IT SOMETHING ELSE ????

All it turned out to be was a an unremarkable cargo ship carrying bog-standard war materials, flying the British flag and so was torpedoed by a German U-boat, just like all the others that litter the sea bed from two world wars. They could have said all that in the five minutes, but no, it had to be stretched out into an underwater detective story, a riddle of the deep !!

Sorry, but its all such crap. The fool's lantern has put us to sleep.
 
This you say are very true, it could have all been said in 5 minutes or less....their are some out here who have never heard of this plane, because it was lost in history and forgotten about......Some out here are younger generations, from when the plane went down, some are still in school....The point is their are some here who may not have known about the way ice moves and carry something with it......You look at the younger crowed today, and they know very little about the systems that were on aircraft of that time. Most think aircraft back then had GPS systems in them....Unless you are raised in areas around aircraft, your knowledge is more then limited....The same goes for ships.....OK it was in a particular part of the ocean....Question you will always hear about these things is "WHY WAS IT THEIR" "WHEN DID IT GO DOWN" "WHAT CAUSED IT TO SINK".....Each and every one of these ship and planes that litter the planet all have a story behind them to tell......
Myself I knew about the Plane in question years before this was aired on TV, or was posted here.....It a very simple thing called HISTORY....And their are some who are interested in it....No matter where in the world it is, or what country it came from....
How many out here knew about this plane before this show first aired, or even posted on this site....? How many still don't know about this plane...?
When I posted this video to the site, I was thinking of the people here that may not have heard of this wreck.....For many years no body even knew what happened to the plane....Yeah it went down, but no one knew for sure where it went down, or even why.....
A news report lasts about 30 seconds to 3,4 or more minutes......A documentary delves into the history and life of the subject matter....whether it be a person, ship, plane, or country, etc....
 
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