On Jun 28, 2006, at 6:06 PM, Dave Land wrote:
On Jun 28, 2006, at 11:18 AM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
I'm with Dan on this one (!). That a fully-loaded 737 can cause,
after impact, buildings to fall down is not even remotely shocking.
Of course, the buildings were scarcely damaged by the planes' impact.
Big chunks of the planes went clear through the building and landed on
the other side. Some didn't even strike the core of the building.
Didn't have to. The damage wasn't solely because of the kinetic force
of the planes, which of course are designed to be as light as possible
given their workload. Just down the street from my house there's a
steam engine in a park. It's about 50 feet long and made of cast iron
(this was once a working railroad engine), and it weighs about the same
as an empty 747.
Of course, tornadoes have been known to drive blades of straw into tree
trunks, and a small 9mm slug is capable of destroying a human life.
Sometimes mass isn't necessary to wreak unrecoverable damage.
This is an aircraft that carries enough jet fuel to cover a football
field to the depth of one foot with highly combustible fluid (do the
math; check me -- this is what I recall from working out the figs
myself about four years ago). What's amazing, in this light, is that
the buildings didn't fall before they did.
Fuel that, when burning, generates less than 800 degrees C, about a
third of the temperature needed to melt the steel used in the WTC.
See my exchange with Nick regarding slow fires. The girders didn't have
to melt; they didn't even have to buckle. All that was needed was for
their rivets to shear, for the flooring to come loose from the central
tower — and blam. Any architect will tell you that ALL modern
skyscrapers can suffer a similar fate under similar circumstances.
Buildings under construction have collapsed like pancakes because their
upper floors were de-reinforced before the concrete shrouding their
girders was cured. Just a few sheets of plywood held them up. And
you're suggesting, seriously, that a fire burning for 90 or so minutes
wouldn't do appreciable damage to a building's structural integrity?
And, of course, it doesn't matter how much fuel there was. They could
have FILLED every floor of building with a couple of feet of Jet A and
replaced the air with pure oxygen, and it still couldn't possibly burn
hot enough to bring the buildings down.
Prove it. Show your stats to support your assertion that the WTC towers
could have stood up under fires burning on every floor. We already know
that fires on thee floors were enough to bring them down, so I think
you'll be hard-pressed here.
Come on, Dave -- this is really disappointing from you.
We don't know what the hell happened on 9/11.
Yes, actually, we do. Islamic fundamentalists took just enough flight
instruction to know how to guide a plane, then hijacked some planes,
and flew them as missiles into designated targets. Two of the targets
collapsed after several hours of burning and progressive structural
weakening. One of the targets, built in a much earlier era to survive,
as much as possible, a direct nuke attack, managed to fare well. The
fourth target wasn't reached, but cockpit voice recordings seem to
indicate that the hijackers of the Pennsylvania plane were, at best,
unprepared to face resistance from passengers.
Where, please tell me, do you think the mystery lies here?
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
<http://books.nightwares.com/>
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
<http://books.nightwares.com/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf>
<http://books.nightwares.com/ockrassa/Storms_on_a_Flat_Placid_Sea.pdf>
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