whether or not these debris on top of the water are part of the aircraft, then we know where to start. but, you know, we ve talked about a needle in a haystack. right now we re looking at a needle in nebraska. we may find a needle in a hayfield, but once we find the haystack, then i m quite confident, if we do it in the next few weeks when the pingers are operational, we ll be able to find it, particularly if the u.s. navy sends a fleet of their p-3 o ryans to that area. we have 150 of those aircraft in the inventory. we could get dozens of those to that area, a couple dozen, anyway, quickly. you know, shawn, we ve been told we have 29 vessels out there searching and that 25 of them are pursuing this southern arc, four of them are pursuing the northern arc. it certainly seems those who are in the know much more so than we all are believe this plane went south and may, indeed, be in the south indian ocean. i think you re exactly right. i think this is where the search
search for two hours. and then they have to fly back. nevertheless, as difficult as it is, they are very much committed to doing this. and they have some pretty sophisticated planes with which to do this. not only the o ryans, but a poseidon. those are the kinds of equipment they re going to use in the area to try to find this debris. it s also important to note that they have some degree of confidence or at least interest in this. it was quite striking how the announcement came out. you know, there are these regular briefings that are held by the regular safety authority that does these kinds of searches. and that wasn t how we learned. we learned from the prime minister in parliament speaking out about this. and that says to me that they really do think they might have something. and that s why they re giving it a full court press, trying to
eventually take astronauts to the moon, perhaps mars. its first deep-space mission could be to an asteroid called 2008 ea9. in 2019 we could be sending two o ryans docked together with two crew members onboard out to do a space walk and scoop up that asteroid and bring it home. reporter: one-time space shuttle commander pam melroy says two astronauts would be comfortable inside and no problem at all for four astronauts going to the moon. in zero gravity when you can float this lots of room for four people. reporter: yeah, easy for her to say. o ryan is supposed tos safer th. in its first real test, three rocket motors produced half a million pounds of thrust pulling the module away from the pad in a matter of seconds. takes you from zero to 600