9/11 (and other) mysteries

[knight66]

Is there a sport of banging your head off a wall, or is that merely a demented pastime?

Mike

[PSmith08]

Is there a sport of banging your head off a wall, or is that merely a demented pastime?

Mike

It's kind of like badminton. There are better things to do, but it's still fun on its own terms.

[Que]

It's kind of like badminton. There are better things to do, but it's still fun on its own terms.

Oh well, there's is always the Elgar thread for people who are into this kind of "badminton" ...

Q

[MishaK]

For those who are interested, a few helpful links:

On the Pentagon crash:

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0274.shtml

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0265.shtml

http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0290.shtml

Detailed computer simulations on the building collapses and the damage inflicted by the aircraft impact:

http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/cmh/simulation/index.html

[m_gigena]

And what about the two vaporised planes?

Isn't it a bit late to talk about the event?

Not at all. Middle East was invaded with event as flag. Don't you think is important to know if the thousands of deaths at WTC were caused by your own government? elected to represent you?

(leaving aside the lies, and additional deaths caused by the war machinery activated after this).

[Scriptavolant]

Noam Chomsky's view on the matter:

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzGd0t8v-d4
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoDqDvbgeXM

[head-case]

And what about the two vaporised planes?


Not at all. Middle East was invaded with event as flag. Don't you think is important to know if the thousands of deaths at WTC were caused by your own government? elected to represent you?

(leaving aside the lies, and additional deaths caused by the war machinery activated after this).

What vaporized planes?  There is no more credible evidence that "our government" was involved than that Martians did it.

[PSmith08]

Again, September 11th theories are great fun, but ultimately lack the one thing that makes a theory a fact - proof. A plane, traveling very fast and laden with explosive fuel, "vaporizes?"

Hardly. It hit a building and the ground. It exploded, either from the force of impact with the ground or from the fuel it was carrying.

Conspiracy theories make people feel better about the world, but should not be given any more weight than that.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Again, September 11th theories are great fun, but ultimately lack the one thing that makes a theory a fact - proof. A plane, traveling very fast and laden with explosive fuel, "vaporizes?"

Hardly. It hit a building and the ground. It exploded, either from the force of impact with the ground or from the fuel it was carrying.
Conspiracy theories make people feel better about the world, but should not be given any more weight than that.

Don't you expect some sort of wreckage though? When was the last time you see a plane crash into something and there is NOTHING left???

[MishaK]

Don't you expect some sort of wreckage though? When was the last time you see a plane crash into something and there is NOTHING left???

Which vaporized planes left no wreckage? Are you talking about the Pentagon and Shanksville? On the links I provided above, you will see detailed photographs of the Pentagon crash site with analysis by aviation experts matching up wreckage parts to parts of the 757 that crashed.

As to Shanksville, this silly claim that there should be more wreckage is really some pathetic amateur armchair sleuthing. Most airline crashes that you see in the news happen wt low speed during takeoff or landing, when the aircraft is travelling 120-180mph. The Shanksville crash happened at some 500mph. Compare, e.g., to the 1974 Turkish Airlines DC-10 crash outside of Paris which was also a high speed impact and left no debris larger than a soda can - and that's a plane twice as large and heavy as a 757! Consider also that aircraft are made of aluminum and composite materials. If you let that burn for a long time, you'll be left with nothing resembling an aircraft.

[PSmith08]

Don't you expect some sort of wreckage though? When was the last time you see a plane crash into something and there is NOTHING left???

There was wreckage from United Flights 93 and 175, so some planes did leave wreckage.

Most plane crashes, however, don't involve impacts with the planes traveling as fast as possible. I was going to except controlled flights into terrain, but I couldn't think of more than a handful that weren't takeoff/landing incidents. Look at the KLM plane from Tenerife, though that wasn't a controlled flight into terrain, but pilot error: there wasn't much left of that fully-laden plane after clipping the TWA plane with its gear and undercarriage, and it was only going ~170 mph. Boost the speed and put it head-on into a building, then drop the building on it: how much do you think would be left?

Look at the Tenerife photos. They're pretty instructive as to what really happens to airplanes in serious incidents.

[MishaK]

There was wreckage from United Flights 93 and 175, so some planes did leave wreckage.

Most plane crashes, however, don't involve impacts with the planes traveling as fast as possible. I was going to except controlled flights into terrain, but I couldn't think of more than a handful that weren't takeoff/landing incidents. Look at the KLM plane from Tenerife, though that wasn't a controlled flight into terrain, but pilot error: there wasn't much left of that fully-laden plane after clipping the TWA plane with its gear and undercarriage, and it was only going ~170 mph. Boost the speed and put it head-on into a building, then drop the building on it: how much do you think would be left?

Look at the Tenerife photos. They're pretty instructive as to what really happens to airplanes in serious incidents.

Pan Am, not TWA.

Indeed, controlled flight into terrain is the only circumstance where you would have higher speed impacts. But even so, most of those accidents occur as the aircraft is vectoring for approach, in which case it will be below 10,000ft where the speed limit is 250kts (or about 270mph), still not the 500mph the 9-11 aircraft were doing. Really, the best comparison is the Turkish 1974 crash where a DC-10 lost all elevator control due to an exploding engine tering out the badly designed hydraulics systems, and the aircraft nosedived from 23,000 into the ground, leaving only charred earth, broken trees and some very small pieces of metal, cloth and human tissue. Otherwise, look at high speed crashes of fighter jets, which typically are just a charred hole in the ground.

[PSmith08]

Pan Am, not TWA.

That's right. My mistake. Still, the KLM 747 was pretty much unrecognizable, and that impact wasn't that fast or that square, IIRC.

Indeed, controlled flight into terrain is the only circumstance where you would have higher speed impacts. But even so, most of those accidents occur as the aircraft is vectoring for approach, in which case it will be below 10,000ft where the speed limit is 250kts (or about 270mph), still not the 500mph the 9-11 aircraft were doing. Really, the best comparison is the Turkish 1973 crash where a DC-10 lost all elevator control due to an exploding engine tearing out the badly designed hydraulics systems, and the aircraft nosedived from 23,000 into the ground, leaving only charred earth, broken trees and some very small pieces of metal, cloth and human tissue. Otherwise, look at high speed crashes of fighter jets, which typically are just a charred hole in the ground.

That's probably the best example. One doesn't get much major debris from fighter crashes, but no one blames the respective governments and says, "It vanished!"

[MishaK]

That's right. My mistake. Still, the KLM 747 was pretty much unrecognizable, and that impact wasn't that fast or that square, IIRC.

Yes, but recognizable pieces of tail and wings survived.



This, by contrast, is the only picture I could find of the 1974 Turkish Airlines crash:



Apart from the trees, looks very much like Shanksville, doesn't it?

Or compare the Pentagon to the 1992 crash of an El Al Cargo 747 in Amsterdam:



Was the plane "vaporized"? We are talking 747 here, three times as large as a 757. Any conspiracy theorist or armchair expert want to argue that the impact area on the building isn't as wide as the wings of a 747? Was this a missile as well?

Or try this: a 2003 crash of a Fokker 28 jet into a mountainside in Peru at 7,500ft:



Only shards left there, too.

[PSmith08]

Well, I think O Mensch has shown - pretty conclusively - one of the major tenets of the Faith to be quite specious. Planes can be devastated, though with bits still surviving, by impacts at lower speeds than those reached in the 9/11 events (e.g., Tenerife). In higher-velocity impacts, the damage is devastating. Drop tons (in some cases, many thousands of tons) of concrete and steel on it. What happens?

They are vaporized (pulverized is a better word, but my rhetoric requires me to use vaporized), but in a conventional, traditional way.

Pretty much every tenet of the 9/11 Faith can be exploded by experts, or even laymen willing to look critically at these things, in various fields. I think O Mensch has some fairly extensive aviation experience. Who am I going to trust? A conspiracy theorist who sees a lack of debris, without any historical context for similar situations, and calls it some sort of government intervention, or the pilot? I'll go with the pilot. Why? Because the pilot talks about stuff I can see with my eyes and verify.

[MishaK]

Pretty much every tenet of the 9/11 Faith can be exploded by experts, or even laymen willing to look critically at these things, in various fields. I think O Mensch has some fairly extensive aviation experience. Who am I going to trust? A conspiracy theorist who sees a lack of debris, without any historical context for similar situations, and calls it some sort of government intervention, or the pilot? I'll go with the pilot. Why? Because the pilot talks about stuff I can see with my eyes and verify.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. But for the record: I am not a pilot. I am involved with the financing of airliners and know the industry and the technological side as well, but do not have any pilot certification.

[PSmith08]

Thanks for the vote of confidence. But for the record: I am not a pilot. I am involved with the financing of airliners and know the industry and the technological side as well, but do not have any pilot certification.

Fair enough. I'll still go with the guy whose job involves understanding these things.

[маразм1]

On a more positive note:



I think the new towers are very beautiful, even if it may initially seem a little ridiculous to rebuild things that have been attacked in the past...

They look like somebody who doesn't know how to use an axe properly tried to chop out an empire state building out of wood

[Bunny]

One of the best analyses of the WTC collapse was broadcast on Nova.  It's still available online here: Building on Ground Zero.  This documentary corrects errors in a previous documentary "Why the Towers Fell,"  and reflects the latest research on the catastrophe.

This site is regularly updated with any new information that comes out.  I think it should be required reading for anyone who thinks the towers weren't destroyed by airliners crashing into them at high speed with the tanks almost at 100% capacity. 

All of you conspiracy buffs should check out the link for 9/11 conspiracy theories.  It also deals with the fall of WTC 7, whose collapse is still being investigated and modeled now.  The report on that should be available in Spring of 2008.  There's also an animated slide show of what happened from impact to collapse of the larger towers. 

[m_gigena]

Apart from the trees, looks very much like Shanksville, doesn't it?

Apart from the pieces of a plane you see there. Yes.

Consider also that aircraft are made of aluminum and composite materials. If you let that burn for a long time, you'll be left with nothing resembling an aircraft.

Not at all, the titanium did evaporate (a deserved LOL! sign here). However, didn't they find terrorists documents in the area? I suppose you need more heat to burn paper than a titanium engine.