Missile Defense for Passenger Aircraft

It takes less (time) than a light bolt to change from good to bad guy. In westerns (movies). they are mostly distinguished by wearing a white, resp. a black hat. Former allies became adversaries, and who steps on the land mine? Most of the bad guys have been created by bad politics from "good guys", especially during the time span, you are referring to. This is just my personal opinion. But who am I? No offense meant. D.

We should take the gloves off and go after the bad guys with EXTREME PREJUDICE. No more Mr. nice guy. Fight fire with fire. We are now in a period in our history since our Revolutionary war where the very survival of our way of life is at stake. Diplomacy won't solve our problems; only brute force. We need to show the world that we are not someone to take matters lightly.

I expect that the captain went from commanding that ship to a rowboat in the Bering Straits or something similar. The fact that he was apparently a loose cannon is surprising - the Navy usually weeds out that type before the rank of captain.

He is directly responsible for the training of his crew to take correct actions in an emergency - not to create one.

That was unfortunate, but probably unintentional. It wasn't a deliberate hostile action. As I emphasized earlier, it is a question of SURVIVAL. They are strong and getting stronger each day. Their goal is to convert the entire world to Islam, by force if necessary. Like our Revolutionary war, people would not kneel down to oppression then and we will not kneel down to Islam today.

First find and identify the bad guys, remembering that every mistaken kill creates more "bad guys".

We have never been Mr. Nice Guy in the sense you are using

We no longer have the power to apply brute force. Once, the threat was good, we looked invincible, but fighting and paying for two protracted wars, on borrowed money, has shown that we are vulnerable.

Nearly everybody interpreted the Al Qaeda desire as killing Americans, they were wrong, the killing is an incidental, a necessary step along the way, Al Qaeda said they wanted to bring America down. Our incautious response to 9/11, including the invasion of Iraq, has damaged our economy to a point that must have exceeded Bin Laden's expectations. There is more than one way to bring a country down.

It is an oddity of human reaction, that we are, in general, more apprehensive at flying than we are of driving even though the statistics say that driving is much more dangerous. Better the devil we know, we understand the risk of driving, we do it every day. This propensity was exploited by the media and the politicians, the media because we pay more attention when we are frightened and they sell more advertising, the politicians because the were prodded by their paymasters in the defense industry to buy costly but barely useful protections. I suspect that the defense industry think tanks and lobbyists are pushing this new thing as hard as they can.

It seems odd, but my position is that if we suffered more terrorist attacks, our fear would diminish as our knowledge increased. Gradually it would become clear that a very small proportion of people are hurt with each attack. This is true up to a point, a saturation of these events would increase fear. If this sounds odd, I base it on my experience as a child, in London, through WW2, at first we rushed to the shelters, but that changed quite swiftly until we didn't bother. I live in a retirement community now and one of my fellow residents was an 18 year old paratrooper when he arrived in London in 1943, he told me that he and his fellow soldiers ran for the shelter when they heard their first siren, but noticed that the locals just carried on with what they were doing. Familiarity had bred contempt. If he had arrived during the blitz it would have been a different story, one part of London was pretty much under saturation bombing, night after night, and there was no reason to think that they could not maintain that level of attack or if they would extend it to our area.

Did you forget about 911? What about the terrorist attacks all around the world? France, Germany, Holland, England, Philippines, India have all come under attack by Islam terrorists. The U.S.A. may not be perfect and the government may not be fair sometimes, but why do people from all over the world scramble to come here? Because they have the chance for a life that they can't get anywhere else. I don't know where you are from, but if you think America is so bad, leave. GOD BLESS AMERICA.

Dear Ron,

911 was orchestrated by the Bush gang. It is totally impossible that the fuel from the airliner that burned in a red fire ball on impact can cause 40 Minutes or so later and some floors lower, the collapse of the steel columns. Where did the sudden heat come from? The fuel was essentially all burned long before.

It would mean that some rest of the fuel (how could some remain) would have to seep down to the lower floors and then burn not red anymore as before, but burn very sudden and cause now black smoke. Kerosene does not burn like that, and how much would have been left?

The sudden heat to melt the columns can only be caused by the ignition of explosives. The black smoke and the extreme heat is the evidence. Note also the far distance away from the tower some of the horizontal beams landed. The horizontal force is caused by an explosion nearby, also visible in some of the videos. Why did the upper columns where the plane impacted and where the Kerosene burned not get melted away or thrown out? because Kerosene does not have that much heat energy to accomplish that. In other instances of fire even with Kerosene a steel structure could not be made to collapse.

Consider also the supposedly brake-down of the US security apparatus and military might of jets and the like that all have failed that day, that really would be impossible if not directed in that way.

As to "God Bless America" I fully agree. It should be blessed and live well among all nations. America is good to his citizens; life in general is very good here. If I am here I am safe, if I leave there is a chance I will be labeled a terrorist. So, it's good being here. I do not want to leave to risk my wellbeing, it would be foolish. Others come here to be safe as well. Also, it is not the citizens that I don't approve of but the politics the US is playing and doing to the world.

Essentially that is always the case. The citizens are peaceful but the Politics causes the problem.

Praise is empty and meaningless if your foot is already in your mouth. I suppose you wear aluminum hats.. your conspiracy theory is total BS. Those towers were knocked down by other self righteous people trying to impose their will and expand hatred of Americans. BS smells the same everywhere.

You have a high number of GA's over 8%, very good. You also talk sense, all just fine.

However, on 911 you got sucked in like most of the US citizens. This event is physically not possible from the relative little kerosene in relation to the size of the building and size of steel columns.

The second point is the constant alert by the military. The planes were for a long time in the air and could not be intercepted?

The third plane heading for the White House was shut down, no problem, as destroying the White House would have been too much, and an embarrassment that the public would not have excused.

Bush simply needed an excuse to go to war in Iraq who had nothing to do with it as most hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, whose ruling family are very good friends with the Bush clan. Need I say more?

I know it is hard to swallow or to believe that the own government would work like that. Because these thoughts are so outrages that it becomes simply not believable. And that is what happened, understandably so.

But is perfectly possible when the building is full of furniture and other flammable material.

Why don't you people think before you swallow?

I don't actually know what to believe, the way the towers fell did seem strange and to answer you question I suppose it would be possible if all the furniture and flammable material was located at the base of the towers - however I don't think it was as I was not there. Had the planes crashed into the basement then I suppose there would be no argument, but they crashed into the top floors. There was a documentary/ film made about this, does anyone know what it was called. I remember seeing bits of it a while back and I think the title was "Terrorism" or something.

The is a quite long thread on this topic where all these 'oddities' are explained. No sign or need for conspiracy - apart from hijacking - is required to explain the physics of what happened.

What about building 7? It was never hit by a plane. Could you please explain, from an engineering point of view, how that building collapsed. Perhaps you could also explain the distinctive "kink" in the roof of the building as it collapses in upon itself. Please compare this to how buildings are taken down by controlled explosives.

I am not saying who put the explosives there, it just looks like that explosives were used. The conspiracy theorists can come up with their own ideas on who put the explosives there.

There is a phenomena in pile driving where shock waves meeting shatter the pile. Have a look at the frequency and collapse sequence.

Does it not seem more likely that explosives were used rather than some theory regarding shock waves taking down a single building while leaving other building unscathed. In addition the shock waves would have to be fairly accurate and the timing would have to be almost perfect. Did you actually see the video showing he collapse of building 7.

Please read the original thread. Title was something like "how much energy to accelerate 50000 lbs in (?) seconds"

Maybe one of the long standing members can find you the link.

As long as the opposite has not been proven, I agree with explanations given in this link:

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

What do you take as Proof? When statements are issued by the government? Is that your foundation for "proof"?

Your thought is fundamentally flawed.

There are sufficient counter-proof statements from engineering sources that are much more scientific then the one from the government.

Sure, Lee H. Oswald shot JFK. (Based on official sources.)

I referred to a publication. Maybe you can too? The government didn't make this statement. I was afraid for more diversion.

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_

8_2006.htm

You can't even see that it is the government that has the final say what is being published in its own publications. They have an interest in diverting any blame away from themselves, which should be obvious.

This report is full of non-sense.

And you have a publication of scientific repute that proves otherwise?

I thought you are following the thread sue, are you? Same goes for dvmdsc

Look at post 61 by esbuck, or have you conveniently overlooked that? You should look at it all.

The first casts doubt on a plane hitting the pentagon and clearly states it was a demolition job bringing down the 3 WTC buildings.

The last one from building and engineering professionals demands a truly independent investigation. These people do not believe the official gov. story either.

Juliani 'knew' beforehand that No 7 is going to collapse.

Can't you people see the flames in a row on specific floors that all ignite at the same time. If these are not explosives, what is it then?

Since you introduced the issue of credibility then you could have at least mentioned GW and his buddies. Why is it always the first thing people do is attack someones credibility without actually looking at the evidence - are you saying that the videos of the collapsing buildings were fake?

God help us all if this is the way that "engineers" look at things.

Engineers read reports, like the one repeatedly cited which:

"Some 200 technical experts—including about 85 career NIST experts and 125 leading experts from the private sector and academia—reviewed tens of thousands of documents, interviewed more than 1,000 people, reviewed 7,000 segments of video footage and 7,000 photographs, analyzed 236 pieces of steel from the wreckage, performed laboratory tests and sophisticated computer simulations of the sequence of events that occurred from the moment the aircraft struck the towers until they began to collapse."

NIST is the government defending itself with lies.

I know this is another story but it fits:

JFK was shot from the left at close range with rapid fire. L.H. Oswald was at the right and high up at a far distance with only a single shot gun. Yet the Warren report, a government report, "proved" Oswald did the killing.

We have the same story here. The government issues a Report to make it look good and to deflect any wrongdoing. It is just like a murderer issues his own report of the incident and points the finger to someone else. Would a court of law accept that as evidence? No way, but in the case of the government it is accepted. Now, by whom you may ask? Well, by the government, of course.

Thats all well and fine, but no aircraft hit building 7 and as far as I know building 7 is not mentioned in the official report on the incident. Perhaps building 7 decided to collapse of its own free will because its two friends had been knocked down.

http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.cfm

Here is the FAQ on building #7's collapse. You'll see it addresses the controlled explosion question.

fire does not cause steel buildings to collapse. period. If it did, the collapse would most certainly not be straight down.

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/fires.html

cheers,

chris

Building 7 was mentioned in Section 14 of the NIST report (cited herein by betomachine in post 63).

It helps to read the report..., which gives a reasonable explanation.

I said that when I read the NIST report, I would have given it a failing grade. That was an earlier report, as compared to the recently posted Q&A. The one I read, for example, showed how the exterior walls would collapse if disconnected from the floors and how the floors would fall if disconnected from the core structure, but they didn't explain the simultaneous disconnections and the wished away the central core, which had huge beams 4" thick, saying the airplane must have cut the beams! They suggested that the explosions on/below the ground floor were caused by fuel running down an elevator shaft, but there were no continuous elevator shafts! To get to the top one had to exit the elevator and go to another one, twice. They had not addressed Bldg. 7.

Maybe they have done it right, now.

Can you believe the engineers who designed the steel structure of Bldg. 7 designed a structure which would progressively and completely collapse with the failure of a single column (#79)? If I were a liability lawyer...

This is plain silly:

"Can you believe the engineers who designed the steel structure of Bldg. 7 designed a structure which would progressively and completely collapse with the failure of a single column (#79)? If I were a liability lawyer..."

We design to resist the loads and conditions that are requested and required by code, experience and judgment. We do not design for them to fail in other circumstances, we just don't prevent them.

I doubt anyone asked for that kind of redundancy in Bldg 7, the codes don't, in fact, I have performed and supervised work on nuclear power plants and there is no such requirement there. I will admit that failure at the loss of one column is unlikely, but not specifically addressed. We did however, design for airplane impacts on the exterior of the reactor building where the plant was in the flightpath.

From what I've read WTC 7 was built with a double structure (almost an exoskeleton) specifically designed to absorb a direct hit from an airliner.

So typical, you are attacking peoples "crdibility" and not what they say. The first military man is quite right, there was no plane that hit the pentagon. Why do you dismiss his statements and reasonings???

Really, a very useless comment from you. What about the last link?

Why hide as a guest?

we know who you are

Feel better hiding behind the skirts of moderators?

here's a link in rebuttal to the paranoia

http://www.debunking911.com/

"There are sufficient counter-proof statements from engineering sources that are much more scientific then the one from the government."

Name one.

I heard these were the first steel buildings ever to collapse from fire. that makes it non-standard.

Furniture or carpet fires do not melt steel !

Especially not suddenly as in an explosions that were clearly visible.

I know, it is just too outrages to believe. I can forgive your thinking.

"I can forgive your thinking".

Whilst I struggle to believe you can.

Do you know nothing about building construction? or even what is in a furnished high-rise? As said above there is a thread on this - go read it. Then if you still can't understand - come back with a coherent engineering question, or not at all if all you have is 'ill informed mantra'.

As far as engineering goes, the carpet and furniture fire should do harm to the building floor beams first not to the columns that had a much larger cross-section and in addition are constantly cooled from the outside air. It just does not make sense from an engineering point of view that a carpet fire melts a large outside steel column to the brink of collapse. Especially not these huge columns in the buildings like these towers were.

Just like the small building No 7 on the side, the downing of the two towers looks very very similar to a controlled demolition. The kerosene, furniture, etc. would burn out the interior but not bring down the steel frame.

Show me just one incident were an internal fire brought down the steel structure. Not possible, it may be gutted inside but the steel will stand.

Remember buildings in the 2nd WW that were not even steel structures, were after a bombing raid the chimneys often were the only section still standing. Steel has a many-fold higher fire resistance due to the additional strength. There is no prior example or precedent to what happened to the towers from just an internal fire.

Correct. That why I asked for an engineering rationale. Steel will probably need in excess of 2000^oC to melt, I find it hard to believe that a carpet fire will reach that temperature, however I could be wrong. Another explanation given was due to shock waves, when that is discredited I am sure that we will have to blame rust.

I see it the same way. An internal fire from furniture, carpets and the like are not hot enough to melt steel. Besides, in today's buildings columns and floor steel is coated with fire retarding material. However, I am not sure it these tower had such protection.

The outside cooling of the columns should not be overlooked either. The other point is the location of the steel structure failure which was quite few floors lower. Why did it not occur where the impact of the planes and where the fire was? Why were the floor(s) right below untouched by fire and harm? The likely scenario is fire damage of one or two floors below and then the fire would stop. For sure the columns would stand up.

Shock waves, Where from? There were no piles driven at the time. It was not the piles that failed but the columns. If shock waves were present it would have been from these explosives we are talking about.

I am constantly amazed that people who do not realize the building was fully furnished jump from "black smoke" to "orchestrated by the Bush gang".

Equally on the other side, the roots are in religion, not foreign policy.

(that go's far further back than "orchestrated by the Bush gang".

On a lighter note;

Fort Dennison (Sydney)

Built to repel unfriendly Americans;

In 1839, two American warships entered the harbour under the cover of darkness and circled "Pinchgut" Island. Threat of attack from France and America led to a review of the defences of the inner harbour and the decision to build a fort on Pinchgut island.

Then shot by friendly Americans;

When a Japanese submarine entered the harbour in May 1942 (passing through the anti-submarine nets) the American cruiser USS Chicago fired upon the fort. A secondary salvo hit the Martello tower, causing minor, but still visible damage.

Ar the comedy of 'foreign policy'.

_{And thank goodness Yanks are lousy shots.}

One of the conspiracy bunch! Just proves engineers are easily caught up in silly sh*t like the average population.

Anyway - for the ones that I consider foolish - cry in your beer and whine on.

I also subscribe to this. I am very sad that american people died, and that thousands more suffer from having given of themselves to save whosever could be saved.

The question IS: who dunnit?

If the "terrorists" really wanted to hurt the people of the united states, there are so many better targets, as to make this choice appear riduculous.

If the "terrorists" really wanted to attack a symbol, the could have also done better than this.

If "terrorists" were supposedly declaring war on America, why would they not....

well you know what?

"Now I'm not gonna sit here and blow sunshine up your ass, Lieutenant. A good pilot is compelled to always evaluate what's happened, so he can apply what he's learned. Up there, we gotta push it ... that's our job"

I'm not going to teach anyone anything about techniques or targets, but if you can't smell shyte when you step in it... you have a bigger problem.

cheers,

Chris

Thanks for the two off-topic votes. It proves my suspision correct.

Poor cowardly fellow - has to use 'guest' to cover himself!

The killing of thousands of innocent civilians, as was the case for 911, was rightly called a terrorist attack. What about the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan? Do you also consider this to be an act of terrorism or was it ok because "we" carried out the killing?

Hi Ron,

Can you give one example in history where a conflict has been dissolved with brute force? History, and I mean the real history, not the soon fed colored versions in the history books, has proven that the last 1000 years. Countries can be invaded, destroyed and brought into submission for only "that" time. Nations and people cannot. They rise and stand again. If it takes the US also 2000 years to understand (like Europe) that peaceful unification and introduction of "life standards" are not to be forced with arms, there will be a lot more DEFENDING- hmm- to do. WAR.. in my simple mind is an armed conflict to be fought by the nation's armies. If only one side is using the army, it is called breach of sovereign values and invasion of everything possible. There was a 100 year war, The Romans failed, many in between, and to name a few of the latest: Napoleon, The German Emperor (1914), WW2.(1940) What did they solve? I remember in 1980 Olympics were held in Moscow and the US tried to convince their athletes and those of the allies NOT to participate because the then "Sovjets" were fighting in Afghanistan. If we look back to the Olympics in China, no better day could be chosen to start the dirty GEORGIA lie. Credibility and reliability are values a nation can establish. Let us start working on these. Here we can make a lot of progress. Just look at it with logics. Who kills with the sword will die by the sword?

It sounds like you have your own selective version of history that you have decided is your 'truth'.

Hope it doesn't come as too big of a shock when most don't agree.

Perhaps your logic is different than that of most?

I am just a little guy and I respect everyone's opinion. If I were to collect a flock of same mind thinkers, I shouldn't post here. Also, how many are left with an own mind? I like your reaction. I cry wolf only when there is one. Thanks, D.

I see that you are based in Turkey. I now see why you support the ideal of brutal force - just ask the Kurds what they think of Turkeys agenda.

Who are the "We" that you are referring too in your post? Would the "we" be us good civilized folk from the western world? How about dropping a Nuke on "them" or putting "them" into concentration camps or locking up a 15year old boy for 6years and then putting him on a military trial or perhaps degrading prisoners - oh I forgot these actions have already been committed by the civilized western world. Extreme prejudice has what has gotten "us" into this mess in the first place.

Don't you think internal security should come first, Lady GaGa then and then and then, maybe we will have enough energy and money to worry about your broad brush approach to a minor threat. What about big tobacco and alcohol and cocaine and meth and and and...

Guess we shouldn't of given those missiles to the mujadeen,taliban, al queda, bad guys.

Quote: 'The cost of this reaction has been tremendous in American personnel and world empathy'.

The empathy of the world for the US was greater before the Iraq war? No and to think so would be great foolishness.

Were we not correct in viewing Germany and Japan as a threat to our American way of life? The same threat is present today from Islamic countries. These are not people you can rationalize with. The only thing they know is violence and it has to be met with like violence. It's either you or me baby. Would the Pope go to Iraq or Afghanistan to plead for peace? He would be killed at the first opportunity and he knows it. Hmmm, Maybe it would be a good idea if he was looking for instant martyrdom.

P.S. I know this is off topic.

I can tell you one thing, I won't be moving to Biloxi any time soon if you all think this way. You do realise that this is 2010?

ronseto

Please educate your self with blinkers off. It is such a waste to see a man running in circles and not listening or reading nor taking a laid back look at events. Fear eats soul and you are eating away at yours and my impatience with intolerance.

Even to mention Germany in the same context as the problems of today shows your uneducated, self imposed way of thinking. What you are constantly doing is contradicting all other studies done and being developed as we speak. Only now secret documents are being revealed, but not all. It would be to embarrassing for "some", even 60 years later.

I could explain what I mean down to the smallest detail but have no time to waste. I just hope that there are not too many warmongers in positions that could influence other under educated.The attempt to have real peace one day is under mined by people with a mindset like you have.

You are as dangerous as "they" are, but are blinded by your miserable state of education. What a shame we can't have a one on one and I could tell you over a beer or three were I am coming from. My dad was one of those who told me what he thought of the whole thing back then. He was an unreliable eye witness but he still made more sense than you are making here.

Please do not take this as an attack on your self. It is more an effort to protect the intelligence which is required to get us out of this mess. Never mind who started it. I know that too, but will keep it to myself, for now. It is CR4, remember? Real solutions to real problems and not and after school meeting to further ones education in history.

Stop grandstanding, it is embarrassing and damaging the development of peace, that is what you are after, aren't you?

Go read a book or 300 and then get back to me, Ky.

Many kinds of steel begin to weaken at temperatures above 650°F. Steel does not need to melt in order to sag or warp. Among the flammables in the building were quite a bit of paper, furnishings, and jet fuel from the planes, which would still have been a substantial fraction full when they hit.

I'm no Dubya fan, but this conspiracy theory is ridiculous.

but this steel was specified and designed to withstand exactly these kinds of temperatures and shocks, and that had been proven, not only with test data prior to construction, but also with previous fires and bombs at the WTC.

no conspiracy. its the truth.

chrisg288, When you actually look at the details then something in the official story seems a bit off. I don't know what happened but the official story has too many holes in it to be true.

I'm surprised at you, this is a horrible example of spin, it takes a tiny bit of truth and plays, it out of context, as a major piece of evidence. There is only so much that can be done to structural steel without reducing it's strength and some of those are not compatible, the one adjustment makes the steel more vulnerable to the other problem.

Links my man, where are the links? "but this steel was specified and designed to withstand exactly these kinds of temperatures and shocks, and that had been proven, not only with test data prior to construction, but also with previous fires and bombs at the WTC." this totally overstates the truth.

Links.. um er.. it was video I watched. I'll see what i can find.

Chris

I am not an aircraft or structural engineer. However, it is ridiculous to even contemplate a conspiracy by anyone but the hijackers. Many metals burn very hot and one metal with a low ignition point can trigger other metals like magnesium to burn. And Mg can do get very hot. Zinc can be a catalyst to ignite magnesium and then temperatures can reach >2000 degrees C, hot enough to melt lots of building structures. I suspect there are lots of zinc, aluminum, and magnesium used in aircraft construction.

Lay the blame where it belongs. The conspiracy theory is far to convoluted give any credence.

That seems like a good response except for one little detail: NO Plane hit building 7 so could you kindly explain how that building managed to collapse and please don't come back and tell us that was from shocks from pile driving or some birds farting.

I have little or no knowledge of the structures that collapsed. I did watch a documentary on the collapse of the main towers and the theory then was a collapse similar to a house of cards. One floor collapsed onto the one below and continued in a chain reaction similar to the house of cards. Eventually the main structure gave way to weight, friction, and heat and collapsed. It really made sense and was aired shortly after the terrorist actions. I do know that building 7 was hit by significant debris and I assumed that main structures were damaged enough to cause a collapse. I am not an expert in the area of buildings and do not feign to have answers for your question.

I would question the conspiracy theory and simply say that if Iraq was the objective, destroying buildings and killing your own people to provoke action in a foreign country flies in the face of even my basic logic. There are many ways to accomplish foreign provocations that would not jeopardize your own people. (Wasn't that WMD). I cannot and will not believe that any modern American government or its agencies would stoop to such atrocities against human life. Sorry but this fits into the same conspiracy of area 51, the faking of moon landing, etc. It is sometimes fun to look at such possibilities (not fun in this case) and conjure a conspiracy but that should be the limit. Most actions have simple answers so look to the obvious not the extreme complex. Otherwise all you are doing is fueling the egos of the real culprits. Lay the blame where it really belongs on the radicalized Islam extremists who expressed hate for all infidels. Do not read that as a slight on all Muslims. We need more of the good Muslims to retake control of their religion and restore trust by speaking out.

I came across another thread here from about a year ago the other day and it was mostly dealing with the Thermite question that has been raised. I thought I'd post a little more there but it seams no one is subscribed to that thread anymore so I'll just drop it in here as it seems more appropriate to this discussion: "Very interesting discussion, and I realize that I'm chiming in well on a year after this thread originated, but I can't help wondering about something aside from the thermite question - how is it that those towers could come down at near free fall speed when there would be so much resistance from healthy floors below the impact areas? And the buildings fell into their own footprint with very little rubble remaining, relatively speaking. I would have thought that if it did fall as a result of the upper floors at impact zone weakening and collapsing onto the lower floors - one after the other, we'd see a pancake effect with very imperfect rhythm, twisting sections falling off to the side and toppling over a much wider area below and over a significantly longer period of time. Plus, a good deal more of these massive buildings piled up in a heap after the dust settled. This was not the case and the incongruity of it has stayed with me over the years. Any thoughts or plausible explanations on this?"

Hello Regworth:

I did post a report by FR Greening (a compelling report) in thread 156. It does seem to report the collapse in a clinical manner. Greening has used math and physics principles to explain the energy that the building collapse released. It was enough to make very fine particles of most of the drywall and cement. The collapse explained in this report is the best one I have read to date. A second report on particle distribution was also posted on that same thread entry. These reports seem to make logical sense and they do refute the conspiracy speculation. FYI

Thank you for your comments and direction to the link you had posted earlier. I began to read the contents and was nearly 4 pages into what seemed like a fairly responsible research document when I came across the following disclaimer: In using the law of conservation of momentum in this way it is 'tacitly assumed' that the impulse delivered by the impact is sufficient to rupture not only the vertical columns supporting the impacted floor but also the steel truss supports that span the gap between the outer perimeter wall and the inner core of the building. I don't know about you but for me this seems like a pretty big leap of faith. To assume something so fundamental to the whole hypothesis they put forward leaves it very flawed from the outset in my view. They also lead off the paper by suggesting the buildings came down in a pancake fashion, however everything I've seen on their collapse looks nothing like a pancake action? I guess this still leaves me looking for a plausible explanation.

I've been doing some digging around to see what answers I can find on a few topics related to that day in 2001 and it appears that there has been footage on various websites (U-Tube, MetaCafe, Google Videos) of Larry Silverstein, owner of WTC7 and lease holder of the other 2 towers, admitting that he decided later in the day to 'pull' that building - it was nowhere near damaged enough from debris penetration or fire to come down on its own but for some reason he gave the word to 'pull' it - meaning drop the building through explosives in a controlled demolition. If this is indeed accurate information it certainly opens up a whole lot of questions ...

I have had high regard for Scientific American Magazine. They said in their report that WTC I and II came down due to three primary factors.

Design as far as impacts from the air by aircraft were predicated on the largest of the day, the Boeing 707

Too regular old now common sheetrock was used instead of steel mesh plaster work in stairwells and other places where in the Empire State Building the mix of old and new creates a very strong building even when severely damaged.

3. The fire retardant was knocked off the steel.

4. 4. Well look it up.

The heat eventually distorted the unprotected trusses and the buildings collapsed straight down. Anybody that went up hoping for helicopter rescue died.

Far as missile defense for Passenger Aircraft, I stand by my earlier post position. Far as the 9/11/2001 attack on the US you would think that the Pentagon would have been so defended by then to have stopped any attack with the technologies we haven't heard of.

Ants build underground. More of that is recommended.

Note off topic score and just want to shout a f you to itssocreeps.

Agreed, there seems little evidence for this and I really didn't like our last president. To see steel support structures collapsing due to a hydrocarbon fire, see:

http://www.csb.gov/investigations/detail.aspx?SID=12&Type=2&pg=1&F_All=y

In this case, a propane fire led to the collapse of a pipe rack when the steel got too hot. Easy to see this happening in a building as well.

As your link points out, those sections of steel had not been firerproofed. The columns and steel in the WTC had been. The should have been able to withstand elevated temperatures for days.

It is fairly obvious that this is off-topic and we're not going to convince anyone on either side of the validity of these arguments, but for grins:

http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

Since you already poo-poo'ed these folks I guess it has little bearing on your opinion.

See what engineers have to say.

http://www2.ae911truth.org/newsletter/2010/09/index.php