Aviation pioneer Amelia Earheart – who flew solo across the Atlantic ocean at a time when it you were as likely to find a woman to get behind the stick of an aeroplane as you were to find an iPhone charger in your starched spats – famously disappeared during an attempt to become the first female pilot to circumnavigate the globe.
The disappearance of the plane that carried Earheart and her navigator Captain Fred Noonan 77 years ago remains a mystery that many have given up on ever solving. Not Dana Timmer, however: he hasn’t given up hope of finding the plane’s remains, and has turned to Kickstarter to help him in his search.
Timmer is the man behind the Expedition Amelia project, a Kickstarter-driven initiative that aims to locate and retrieve the remains of Earheart’s plane from the ocean depths with the help of backer money.
This isn’t the first time he has embarked on such a project: back in 1999, Timmer led the first-ever deep-water sonar search for Amelia Eartheart’s Lockheed Electra plane. He has been studying data he and previous searchers have collected over the years to locate the plane’s remains and piece together the story of events leading up to the fatal crash.
“I’m here with you now, confident that we know where the aeroplane is at the bottom of the Pacific, and with a plan to go and document it,” Timmer says on the Expedition Amelia website.
Timmer has assembled a ship and crew members and has partnered with the Williamson and Associates geophysical consulting firm to go over 5 000 metres beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean in search of the plane.
“This time though we’re inviting as many people as we can to join the hunt with us, and we’re making it possible through Kickstarter” Timmer wrote on the project’s Kickstarter page. “For less than $20, backers will be invited to invest in, and be a part of a special living documentary experience.”
Backer money will go towards the costs of documenting the expedition, and in return backers will get to see live feeds from the ship and eventually own the documentary that will be created from all of the video footage shot along the way.
$15 gets you access to the live feeds, and higher donation levels promise access to the documentary’s various premieres happening around the US once the movie is finished. The highest level, the $5 000 tier, will also get you one of the cameras used to film the expedition that’s certified to work up to depths of 17 000 feet (5 181.6m).
In addition to containing footage of the expedition itself, the documentary will cover Earheart’s life and the circumstances surrounding her famous disappearance in 1937. That will bring her story full circle should the expedition succeed in locating and recovering her plane’s remains.
Timmer and company still have a long way to go, however: the Expedition Amelia project has raised $26 468 of its $1.96 million goal so far, with 30 days to raise the rest.
[Source – The Verge, Image – Kickstarter]
