On Jun 28, 2006, at 2:30 PM, Warren Ockrassa wrote:
Okay, not a foot. A decimeter, about four inches. But you get the
idea. That is a hell of a lot of explosive fluid, and the 737s that
hit the WTC towers were on long-distance flights, at the beginning
of their journeys, and damn near capacity in their tanks.
"Explosive fluid"? Sheesh! It's actually pretty hard to get it lit,
and when it does get lit, it doesn't explode, and it burns at a
relatively sedate 500-800 degrees C. I wouldn't want to be in there
with it, but it would be the one single solitary time in the history
of the world that such a fire caused such a collapse.
The
only
time
ever
What part of that are you missing? Millions upon millions of steel-
frame buildings in the world. Hundreds subjected to fires, some of
the which burned for more than 24 hours, and yet not one of them ever
collapsed due to the fire.
Well, actually, three of them did. In the space of a couple of hours.
And did so at a speed that suggests that the floors below them simply
ceased to exist as the floors above fell.
And yes, it's kerosene, not gasoline. Lower octane rating. But the
flashpoints of the two are close enough to one another (-40 C for
gasoline, 29 C for kerosene, which is a lot in human space but
nothing for chemistry) that any spark hot enough to light a
cigarette would set them off. And the higher flashpoint of jet fuel
was one of the reasons the towers burned so long. Think of
carpeting, wallpaper, ceiling tiles -- wicking all that kerosene
and then burning slowly like a candle. Heat on heat, mounting
slowly, on the central steel framework of the buildings until their
central columns were like hot solder.
You can tell you're a writer -- this is fine fiction. Hot solder my
achin' ass. More like hot high-tensile steel. And LOTS and LOTS of it.
You know how much I respect you, Warren, but you're acting very
strangely about this.
It's not high heat in a crock pot that makes your stew; it's a
long, slow cook.
Yeah. My crockpots almost always collapse directly into their
footprints after a couple of hours. That's why I don't use 'em any
more. Can't afford to clean up the mess they leave in the foundation
of my house.
I'm reminded of an old Monty Python sketch, wherein John Cleese, in
an intense bid to become a freemason, proposes a new living-block
apartment model to prospective purchasers. The tower is built on a
central-column design (as are all modern buildings), and he claims
this will totally preclude the possibility of structural collapse.
As he says so, his model collapses, the little model floors falling
down along the central column he was promoting.
This is almost exactly what the WTC towers did.
Right: the WTC collapse was just a really enormous Monty Python sketch.
The towers were designed to come down. That they were made to do so
in 2001 by attack is surprising from a cultural point of view, but
not at all from the perspective of engineering or modern architecture.
Since you've been so insistence on proof, please provide
documentation that WTC1 and 2 were designed to come down.
Dave
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