Letters to the Editor
JulieAnna
Published Letters: 31
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@talesofunrest
[Read the article: 9/11 Commission: Our investigation was "obstructed"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Was that 32 story building in Madrid a 110 story building that got hit by a 767 going 500 mph? Ah, never mind. I’m sure that sort of thing wouldn’t make a difference.
John Skilling, chief engineer of the World Trade Center project, speaking after the 1993 bombing, stated, "The buildings have been investigated and found to be safe in an assumed collision with a large jet airliner (Boeing 707 - DC 8) traveling at 600 miles per hour. (about it's maximum speed.) Analysis indicates that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building and would not endanger the lives and safety of occupants not in the immediate area of impact... There would be a horrendous fire (but) the building structure would still be there."
Mr Skilling died in 1998.
From Gregg Roberts, Associate Editor of 9/11 Research:
"NIST's estimates of the impact speeds are 443 mph + or - 30 mph for the North Tower and 542 mps + or - 30 mph for the South Tower. These speeds are far below the cruise speed stated on Boeing's website, although of course cruise speed is not normally reached below 10,000 feet. Regardless, the question here is not whether the planes were flying above their rated speed or maximum safe speed, but whether the planes' mass and speed exceeded what the buildings were designed for. Skilling said, and the Port Authority and NIST agreed, that they were designed to survive a 600 mph impact by a 707. Such a plane if fully loaded (as Skilling claimed the design assumed) would have 336,000/395,000 = 85% of the mass of a fully loaded 767 (which the impact planes were not, since they were not carrying full loads of fuel.) Thus, the North Tower impact would've had less than 87% of the momentum and 64% of the kinetic energy designed for, while the South Tower impact would've had less that 106% of the momentum and 96% of the kinetic energy designed for. Correcting for the estimated fuel load of 10,000 gallons, I get 300,000 for the 767s (close to FEMA's 274,000 figure) and accordingly far lower momentum and kinetic energies designed for. Thus, the impacts were either close to, or well within, the Towers' capacity to absorb them without collapse."
Source: http://journalof911studies.com/volume/200704/Roberts_AnnotatedJones-RobertsonTranscript.pdf
From ondelette:
Pancaking buildings, by definition, have the upper structure already broken. The support across the beams that hold the weight of the floors is weaker than the beams that hold them at the ends. That means that they bow downward and the velocity vector on each collapse points inward.
This "pancake theory" ignores the actual amount of support provided by the 47 massive, vertical steel columns that made up about 40% of the area within the core of each tower. The 9/11 Commission Report also ignores the support provided by the steel cores of each tower, claiming that the cores were made up of "hollow shafts" enclosing stairways and elevators. The steel perimeter structure also provided a sort of steel mesh surrounding each tower. You state that the, "support across the beams that hold the weight of the floors is weaker than the beams that hold them at the ends." The beams that hold them at the ends (the core structure and the steel "mesh" surrounding the buildings) are what would prevent them collapsing in a "pancake" manner.
This pattern of deception concerning just how massive the steel cores of the towers were began very early on, as you can see from this article from the BBC titled "How the Towers Fell" dated September 13, 2001:
http://www.public-action.com/911/jmcm/BBCNews/
The illustration would make sense if the person who created it had been told to come up with the stupidest way possible one could build a high-rise building. Obviously, the cores were not made of a single, vertical column of reinforced concrete. Sure, you can blame this on the ignorance of the reporter and editor, but she actually quotes a man, within the article, by the name of Hyman Brown, and identifies him as the construction manager of the WTC. One would think she would consult him if she were going to include an illustration of how the towers were constructed.
So who is Hyman Brown? I couldn't find anything to confirm him as being the construction manager of the twin towers, but there is another man who is described as the original construction manager, named Frank DiMartini. In an interview in January 2001, Mr. Martini stated, "The building was designed to have a fully-loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door, this intense grid, and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting."
Mr. DiMartini died in the collapse of the North Tower.
The BBC article also quotes a man by the name of Chris Wise and describes him as a structural engineer. After the article tells us that the fires would've heated the steel up to 800 degrees C, Mr. Wise says, "It was the fires that killed the buildings. There's nothing on earth that could survive those temperatures with that amount of fuel burning... The columns would've melted, the floors would've melted and eventually they would've collapsed one on top of each other."
This is another fine example of how quickly the "official story" began circulating. One might also wonder where Mr. Wise got his degree in engineering where he was taught that high-grade structural steel "melts" when it reaches 800 degrees C.
Stuff that pops due to compression (windows, drywall, etc.) arcs outward. That's what the pictures show.
The pictures show massive steel beams being ejected outwards at a high rate of speed (starting with the onset of each "collapse"), as one would expect in an explosion, not in a gravity collapse. I've also seen photos of massive steel beams from the towers protruding from surrounding structures.