A Ghost Ship Drifting Through International Waters

I understand it's a big job, but that's why big governments have billion dollar budgets and toys. Also remember we have no need to take photos of the entire surface, only the Atlantic (and even then, only the North Atlantic right now)

>You could, conceivably, completely miss the object in your imaging passes

I feel quite confident when images are taken their exact co-ordinates are known, so it can be quickly determined if you've "missed" a patch or if you have them all.

>* or the satellite you have tasked for a particular ground track has an error in it's imaging sensor or downlink equipment*

I feel quite certain they've tested these things extensively, and they're not going find some previously unknown bug while looking for a ship in the ocean. They work properly.

> * You might also have to move the satellites around occasionally making imaging useless during these periods as well.*

I thought most satellites were in orbits that make it possible to image almost the entire surface without moving them.

> Also.. there's night and weather

I didn't say it was going to be easy.

> whole-earth real-time imaging is seriously difficult

I'm not for one second proposing whole-earth real-time imaging.

Unfortunately they generally cost hundreds of millions of dollars and there's only a handful of them in operation.

If a western government actually wanted to look for this ship (while it was still floating, anyway), they'd almost certainly find it. There's whole divisions of the air force and navy trained to do exactly that. The cost of the search would be pretty much unjustifiable though.

Obviously, you'd need quite some budget to pay an analytics team to find a plane out in the ocean. You can't just conjure the money out of thin air.

And if you go to your superiors and ask them for the money and have to admit it will disclose a lot of your capabilities to foreign powers, you'll likely simply get a resounding "NO". After all, it was never the question of rescuing living people with MH370.

Did you notice how the US kept sat images and phone recordings extremely close to their chest in the case of MH17? I am pretty sure they have a lot more intelligence on that thing than they are willing to admit - they not having constant surveillance over a battle field in Europe would be extremely negligent.

So 2 & 3? They probably used some satellite imagery to look for large chunks but the effort to do the small survey was beyond what they were willing to expend without a better idea of where to search.

The problems with MH370 were twofold. One - initially nobody actually knew where it was. The search area was HUGE, and for the first few days there was much less information about the aircraft location. The eventual search area was selected based on quite detailed analysis of the satellite pings the aircraft sent. This took time. It took 9 days for the search to even start in the southern Indian Ocean. Even once they'd figured out roughly where it had gone down, the search area was still astronomically big. Two - aircraft wreckage isn't nearly as reflective to radar as a ship. An aluminium panel floating flat in the ocean will have a very similar reflection profile to the surrounding water.

I think you need a fourth option. Large countries definitely have a technical advantage, but the military still has to obey the laws of physics. Large budgets and no legal restrictions probably put military technology a generation or two ahead of comparable civilian technology - it's better, but it's not magic.