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Comment by yardstick | Hacker News Reader

Probably can. Should it though?

Like the Titanic, maybe we just let it rest in peace? Send a sub down to confirm what it is. Then maybe update a few of the monuments to her to indicate her final resting place has been found…

My only concern would be looters. If it is quite feasible to access “easily” then yeah maybe we should recover it just to protect against looters and pillagers.

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It appears that there would be significant questions about ownership and whether maritime salvage laws apply [1]. Remember that Earhart was a faculty member at Purdue University, the aircraft was owned by the university, and it was filled with student experiments. They're going to claim that it still belongs to them. You're going to spend millions to recover it and then immediately get hit with a lawsuit demanding you turn it over to them. By an entity that will have no problem collecting enough donations to fund the best lawyers for as long as it takes.

[1] https://www.perthilj.com/blog/2019/2/19/aircraft-salvage-in-...

Seems like a situation where it would be best to get all parties with any claim that wouldn’t be summarily dismissed to agree on details of what should happen with the salvage before committing to recovering it.

Aside from the practicality of the two, the Earheart wreck seems much more like something our society would want to honor. An explorer and adventurer who's legacy and life pushed equality forward for women across the west vs a failed engineering project which was mostly a status symbol for rich people.

The titanic is massssive, making raising it a much more difficult challenge compared to raising a single aircraft.

There was a rather silly 1976 thriller “Raise the Titanic!” predating it’s actual discovery by about 10 years. They made a movie from it too in 1980. Based on a premise that there was something valuable the government wanted on board)

Then Arthur Clarke wrote "The Ghost from the Grand Banks" in 1990 (after Ballard discovered it was in pieces) with a slightly more plausible approach to raising the bow. The wreck has deteriorated now to the point where raising it would probably destroy more than what would be recovered.

If it were a feasible to raise the Titanic as a small aircraft, it would have been done.

Yes absolutely, there’s no reason for the plane to rest at the bottom of an ocean forever. The bottom of the ocean is the opposite of rest, it’s hell.

To you, there's no reason. To others, there is. That by itself shows the need for discussion (where either side ought to listen to the other).

With respect to the argument of putting the plane rests in a museum: I do not see how that would be better than being able to visit the actual place where the crash occurred, with the plane still somewhere below the waves.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

What are the needs of the many here? And are they really needs, or just nice to haves?

> Should it though?

Yes, it's a plane not a person. We can learn from it, and Earhart won't care.

What could we learn from taking it out of the water vs leaving it in its grave?

There will be no FAA safety notices (or whatever they are called) based on the findings.

Looters are exactly why we should raise it. Protect it from unscrupulous people.

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