Off Topic – Did this really happen?

[Anonymous]

707 & 767 comparisons

I found the 767/707 comparison data on the Boeing website, and the numbers between the two planes are very similar. I have always heard that the 767 was much larger and heavier than the 707. Note, WTC 1 & 2 were meant to be able to withstand a 707 strike travelling at 600 mph. Here are some quotes by the WTC structural engineers:

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/design.html

Boeing Aircraft Data:

707-320B
Wingspan 145 feet 9 inches (44.42 m)
Length 152 feet 11 inches (46.6 m)
Wing Area 3,010 square feet (280 m2)
Gross Weight 336,000 pounds (152,400 kg)
Cruising Speed 607 mph (977 km/h)
Range 6,160 miles (9,913 km)
Service Ceiling 36,000 feet (10,973 m)
Power Four Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofans of 18,000 pounds thrust each
Passenger Cabin 141 passengers mixed class or a maximum of 189 all economy

Boeing 767-200ER
Cargo 2,875 cu ft (81.4 cu m)
Engines
maximum thrust Pratt & Whitney PW4062
63,300 lb (281.6 kN)
GE CF6-80C2B7F
62,100 lb (276.2 kN)
Maximum Fuel Capacity 23,980 U.S. gal (90,770 l)
Maximum Takeoff Weight 395,000 lb (179,170 kg)
Maximum Range 6,600 nautical miles (12,223 km)

Here is a quick comparison:

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/boeing_707_767.html

[powayseller]

This video was made by a Republican, who set out to prove that the offical version of 9/11 is correct, and that the demolition theory is wrong.

His research led to one conclusion: the offical story is a lie.

Anyone who seriously wants to say the offical story is true, should first take the time to watch this video. Without hearing both sides, how can you possibly know the truth? Just saying “it could never be a planned demolition because I don’t want to believe it to be so” is just burying our heads in the sand. It’s like saying the housing bubble doesn’t exist.

Seriously, those of you who say the government version is correct, reminds me of the anger?? thread, where people get mad when you say their house will go down in value. They don’t want to consider the other side. PD’s most recent posts are interesting science fiction, but don’t contain any serious substance to address the problems with heat, pancaking, seismographs, center support columns, explosions, lack of fuel, impacts, physics, and eyewitness accounts.

I was open minded enough to consider this. Why don’t you?

[gold_dredger_phd]

If you hate Bush, then 9/11 was a conspiracy ginned up by the current administration to start wars to take over the Middle Eastern oil. This has parallels with the Russian apartment bombings in Moscow in 1999 that were used to start the second Chechen war.

If you like Bush, then 9/11 was done by fanatical Islamic fascists lead by a egomaniacal leader.

Crashing fuel-laden jet planes into skyscrapers is not a new idea. The Columbine duo had fanatasies about crashing a 747 into Manhattan before their killing spree on April 20, 1999. No major newspaper or news outlet has discussed the parallels between the Klebold fanatasy of the 747/Manhattan crash and 9/11 because it would make Osama bin Laden’s crew look like a bunch of childish nihilists.

You have to understand that most news outlets and journalists hate this country.

Just because you can’t melt a metal, doesn’t mean that it will *not* lose significant strength well below its melting point. You don’t have to melt a metal just to make it sag under a significant load. The steel used in trusses is not refractory and will loses most of its strength by the time it reaches red heat, 1200 Fahrenheit. If you want hot strength, then you have to use nickel or molybdenum alloys. These alloys are exotic and only used in jet engines and powerplants.

One of the proponents of the 9/11 conspiracy is some loser 47-year old graduate student who has no understanding of metallurgy or any other real science.

There is YouTube footage of an F-4 phantom jet crashing into a thick block (6 feet thick, at least) of concrete at 500 mph and completely disappearing. Nothing comes out the other side of the block. The speed and heat of impact melts and crumples the plane.

Conspiracy theorists tend to be a bunch of scientifically illiterate political fringe types. Either they are a bunch of extreme leftists or they are religious zealots. Losers!

[gold_dredger_phd]

I’m really sick of Powayseller’s “Utne Reader” talking points being posted on a housing forum.

[cabinboy]

This is an extremely disappointing post. Why on earth are we discussing conspiracy theories on Piggington? Maybe we should be discussing the economic implications of 100+ IQ people actually believing that the burden of proof lies in disproving the conspiracy theory beyond a shadow of a doubt rather than proving it beyond some measure of doubt. I encourage anyone intersted to Google a phrase like “Psychological State of Conspiracy Theorists” to get an cursory assemssment of the path they are heading down.

Wall Street is one of the most important institutions in our country today. The U.S. government does not want to do anything to damage it. There is no motive for the U.S. government to do anything to damage the island of Manhattan. It’s a jewel in the U.S. crown, and anyone who doesn’t realize this quickly needs their head examined.

For every structural, materials or aerospace engineer that will say they’re suprised by how the buildings behaved, you can find one that says they are not. Remember the U.S. fighter plane that severed the tram cable like it was butter in Switzerland? Materials do very strange things under stressful conditions. The average engineer doesn’t know squat about material properties beyond standard boundary conditions. So folks, any argument from any engineer as to what they thought should have happened doesn’t prove or disprove anything. The smartest bridge builders in the world built the Tacoma Narrows bridge, only to see it collase within 6 months.

A number of folks here are quoting things that people say when they are not under oath as though it is the truth. If one can be sure of anything in our modern society, it is the fact that a tangled web of self-interests will necessarily emerge on the other side of any catastrophe. Everyone will say whatever they can to avoid bearing the burden of any liability. What do you think an engineer from the Steel company who produced the WTC beams is going to say in an interview? So please, before any of you try and use a statement as support for your viewpoint, please try and assess what that person’s motive is.

In science, knowledge is forwarded by forming a hypothesis and testing it. The difference between successful and unsuccessful scientists is the degree of thought that goes into forming the intial hypothesis. This would not be true if we had an infinite amount of time to test every possible outcome, but obviously, we don’t have that luxury. So, scientific progress is accomplished by a very careful concentration on the factors that are *likely* to matter the most.

In this forum, there are some that like to sling around the concept that one must have an open mind to every possible concept or explanation surrounding a problem. Futhermore, they go on to chastise those that do not as “close-minded.” This is just simply not true. The open mind wants to make progress towards a solution, and understands that that progress can only be achieved in a finite amount of time by eliminating the absurd and evaluating the facts surrounding the possible. The conspiracy theory developing mind is in fact the close-minded one, since it crafts a web of facts to support an intial hypothesis rather than focusing on the standard scientific exercise of elimintating the remote. Psychology is not my field, but I might hypothesize that since a closed-mind is far more comfortable clinging to a “truth” for long periods of time (even an infinite amount of time), it sabotages its search for that truth from the very beginning by constucting a low probability theory and then looking to support it (and even asking others to try and discredit it??!!?? Goofy city!).

Along these lines, I have on final bone to pick with some of the posters here…especially those who present their interpretation of some tidbit of fundamental economic data. Please make an attempt to harvest at least four distinct interpretations of this data. Right now, we know what Roubini thinks. But, what does Jim Rodgers think? What does Soros think? What does Warren Buffet think? What does Joe analyst at Merrill think? Roubini is not the only smart guy in this world, and furthermore, he’s well down on the totem pole of people who make money by interpreting fundamental economic data. Either get a clue, or get content with your +5% returns from fixed income sources, and -5% from variable ones.

[powayseller]

Have you ever seen a pancake collapse? Look at photos of earthquake buildings, where the floors are pancaked; it looks like a stack of pancakes.

A pancake collapse would take 90 seconds for the WTC.

[powayseller]

Have you ever seen a pancake collapse? Look at photos of earthquake buildings, where the floors are pancaked; it looks like a stack of pancakes.

A pancake collapse would take 90 seconds for the WTC.

William Rodriguez, a 20 year maintenance worker at the WTC and the last person to enter the building alive, felt a huge explosion under his feet (between floors in the sub=basement, B2 and B3), in the basement, before the plane crashed 95 floors above. The floors cracked and the false ceiling collapsed. A coworker ran into his office, with skin damage, yelling “explosion!”

Construction workers Phillip Morelli in North Tower sub=basement4, felt the explosion in the basement, which threw him to the floor. Some people in the basement were killed, got broken legs, from the damage done in the basement. He then ran underground to the South Tower and felt the same explosions again.

Firefighters talked of explosions all over the building, and they were likened more to the sound of bombs.

Watch the video, the eyewitnesses are intriguing.

[PD]

There are lots of people who claim to have been abducted by aliens who forced them to have babies before they implanted tracking devices in their necks and set them free.

[PerryChase]

Piggington is one of the few blogs I read regularly…. so I don’t mind posts on non-housing topics. There’re like the foreign language radio stations. If you don’t like them, don’t tune to them.

Just don’t take things too seriously. If you don’t agree with a post, think of it as entertainment and have a good laugh.

[Borat]

There are some hilarious nuggets on this thread:

gold_dredger_phd:

You have to understand that most news outlets and journalists hate this country.

Didn’t know that. That’s a whole lot of USA-hating goin’ on!

cabinboy:

The average engineer doesn’t know squat about material properties beyond standard boundary conditions. So folks, any argument from any engineer as to what they thought should have happened doesn’t prove or disprove anything.

Yep, don’t listen to any of them university-edumacated smarty-pantses and all of their understandin’ and equations and whatnot.

[PD]

The most hilarious thing said is the assertion that a vast number of people in the US knew and/or encouraged a group of 20+ Islamic extremists to highjack four planes. This vast number of people then bet the farm on the dubious chances of success by planting tons of explosives without anyone knowing any better or blowing the whistle before, during or since. According to them, the government was looking for any excuse to start a war and didn’t care squat about massive damage to the United States financial center or the possibility of financial meltdown and resultant chaos. Further, Silverstien is supposed to be connected to a terrorist information pipeline and calmly got an insurance policy all the while letting people install tons of explosives which would have been damn hard to explain, had they been found. Further, conspiracy theorists believe everything written in support of this crackpot idea, no matter how crazy or farfetched. A bunch of smart people seem to have checked all common sense and reality at the door.

Here’s your sign.

[PerryChase]

Sounds like the 9/11 conspiracy is some kind of “intelligent design.” Belief in intelligent design is also not too far off from believing in the conspiracy theories. Truth like beauty are often times in the eyes of beholder only.

The Bushies have been pushing Intelligent Design on us for a long time now, so let’s not be so surprised when people do start to believe it. It’s called the law of unintended consequences.

[powayseller]

PD, I would be more interested in a scientific approach to the shortcomings in the offical story than in your ramblings about aliens planting bombs.

[zk]

Come on, PS, are you serious?

I only watched the first couple minutes of that video before it lost all credibility. The man-in-the-street interview videos are obviously faked. And just because the guy claims to be a republican, and therefore “should” want to debunk a conspiracy theory, you give his video more credibility? The logic and standard of proof that led you to that conclusion is no different from the rest of the logic and standard of proof that supports the conspiracy theory. Which is to say extraordinarily lame.

My impression that conspiracy theorists are engaging in confirmation bias has only been strengthened after watching this thread develop. Solid evidence contrary to your theory is ignored. And solid evidence that discounts what scant evidence that does create doubt on the official story is also ignored.

You’ve asked us to be open minded about the conspiracy theory. I’ve been open minded, but haven’t seen anything but hysteria backing up the conspiracy claim. Now, how about you be open minded and take a look at the psychology of conspiracy theorists and see if it doesn’t apply to you.

[sdcellar]

powayseller,

Please take this crap to the one website that you actually have created.

[Author]

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