End of Moussaoui trial may destroy Bush administration

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by NeOmega


They are built to be flexible, not to rigidly fall in onestraight downward motion.



What kind of acceleration?

Plus, what abot all the other buildings around the Twin Towers, how come they didn't even partially collapse? Was Silverstein just lucky/unlucky enough that 7 was hit hard, whilst all the other real estate all around was pretty much unscathed, nowhere near any structural damage?

first of all neither the fact that the twin towers fell straight down nor my point that essentially all sizable skyscrapers would likewise fall straight down if they were to fall at all are intrinsically related to questions about what happened to wtc7. I'm not interested in wtc7 because I have no strong opinion about it apart from believing that it was easily tall enough that it could only have fallen straight down once it began to fall.

Secondly, when you mention that skyscrapers are built to be flexible and not rigid that actually doesn't contradict my point at all and I didn't mean to imply that skyscrapers are rigid. The point rather is that they are designed to deal with lateral loads far far smaller than their vertical loads.

And this is where acceleration comes in. If you want something to not fall essentially straight down you will need to accelerate it laterally with an acceleration that is at least an appreciable fraction of the acceleration of gravity or it's bulk won't appear to have gone anywhere apart from straight down. Since only negligible external forces are acting on the skyscraper when it falls (even if it's a fairly windy day) the only lateral forces acting on the building will be those lateral forces which are transferred from the vertical load. Since the designers only designed the buildings to deal with redistributing lateral forces that are a tiny fraction of the vertical forces when a large lateral force is encountered the structural components fail rather than transfering it and no large lateral acceleration can occur.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by NeOmega
You have to at least admit, on the outside, regardless of what the technicalties may be, that collapse looked just like a rigged demolition.

No I don't admit that. It looks to me like the natural result of unexpectedly extreme horizontal stresses on a structure whose designers were concerned primarily with vertical stresses (as Geronimo pointed out). The column joints would be most likely to snap in a zig-zag pattern, which would cause a vertical collapse. The fact that rigged demolitions aim to achieve zig-zag vertical collapses (and thus happen to resemble the one at WTC 7) is irrelevant.

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by Darius871
1) You seemed to conveniently skip B, which noted that the level of damage to the south side is unknown. The corner is the only damage proven by photographs, not the only damage.

I didn't conveniantly skip it, I just can't find any photos of the south side. If it were significantly damaged, (and onthe wtc7 site, you can find a diagram from ths NIST that shows how much they say wa damged on the south side), then it should have collapsed along the south and southwest side first.

Doesn't that go against your point? If they suffered no damage then of course they didn't collapse.

Why didn't they suffere any damage, is my question.

No I don't admit that. It looks to me like the natural result of unexpectedly extreme horizontal stresses on a structure whose designers were concerned primarily with vertical stresses (as Geronimo pointed out). The column joints would be most likely to snap in a zig-zag pattern, which would cause a vertical collapse. The fact that rigged demolitions aim to achieve zig-zag vertical collapses and thus resemble the one at WTC 7 is irrelivant.

Whatever, dood. Most likely according to who? Most likely, the tower would start to collapse along the side, and tilt towards the direction that the "scooped" out damage was caused at. You know it. That looked like a controlled demolition.

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by Geronimo

Since only negligible external forces are acting on the skyscraper when it falls (even if it's a fairly windy day) the only lateral forces acting on the building will be those lateral forces which are transferred from the vertical load.

What aboiut teh dragging forces of the horizontal beams and the structure itself. Those would be lateral forces dispersing the vertical forces, especially if only one side or corner was damaged.

Since the designers only designed the buildings to deal with redistributing lateral forces that are a tiny fraction of the vertical forces when a large lateral force is encountered the structural components fail rather than transfering it and no large lateral acceleration can occur.

Do you have proof that designers are only worried about wind gusts? I could have sworn they had some other very cataclsms in mind, like large fires or earthquake, which is not just , "light lateral forces"

and here is what a building with one face damaged severly would look like:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_P._Murrah_Federal_Building

Especially since none of the 25 central supports of WTC7 were even scathed:

[Geronimo]

Also an important difference between controlled demolition and these collapses is that in controlled demolitions practically no debris is thrown laterally apart from dustclouds. Controlled demolitions do not spew clouds of hefty chunks of material into nearby buildings. However, in the terrorist 'engineered' collapses sizable material was sent violently in all directions. Only the overwhelming bulk of the building went straight down.

To any observer that alone makes those collapses look quite different from controlled demolitions.

[NeOmega]

Originally posted by Geronimo
Also an important difference between controlled demolition and these collapses is that in controlled demolitions practically no debris is thrown laterally apart from dustclouds. Controlled demolitions do not spew clouds of hefty chunks of material into nearby buildings. However, in the terrorist 'engineered' collapses sizable material was sent violently in all directions. Only the overwhelming bulk of the building went straight down.

To any observer that alone makes those collapses look quite different from controlled demolitions.

You are guessing. As a matter of fact, the walls fell in on top of eachother, the building imploded, and sent out very little extra debris, (which always happens at any collapse, not matter how well it is engineered, that is why they clear the are for at least half a mile around)

The resulting pile of rubble was nicely covered in it's own outer walls, wrapped up just like a controlled demolition.

http://www.wtc7.net/rubblepile.html

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by NeOmega


What aboiut teh dragging forces of the horizontal beams and the structure itself. Those would be lateral forces dispersing the vertical forces, especially if only one side or corner was damaged.





Do you have proof that designers are only worried about wind gusts? I could have sworn they had some other very cataclsms in mind, like large fires or earthquake, which is not just , "light lateral forces"

The displacement of the earthquake is not transfered either because of the very flexibility that you mentioned which prevents the moving ground from being able to act as one linear acceleration on the whole bulk of the building. Rather the displacement ends up very gently flexing the whole structure a few feet as with wind forces.

If the ground moves suddenly 3 feet to the left the bulk of the mass of the tower will not likewise move three feet to the left.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by NeOmega


You are guessing. As a matter of fact, the walls fell in on top of eachother, the building imploded, and sent out very little extra debris, (which always happens at any collapse, not matter how well it is engineered, that is why they clear the are for at least half a mile around)

The resulting pile of rubble was nicely covered in it's own outer walls, wrapped up just like a controlled demolition.

http://www.wtc7.net/rubblepile.html

yes, very little extra debris relative to the total mass of the building but an immense mass compared to what is thrown out in controlled demolitions done in built up areas.

They will clear people out to a half mile but nearby buildings that can't be likewise 'cleared out' and must remain well within half a mile away haven't been damaged by controlled demolitions as buildings around the wtc were.

[NeOmega]

NM..

YOu win, natural but very suspicious looking collapse.

I don't care.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by NeOmega
NM..

YOu win, natural but very suspicious looking collapse.

I don't care.

although, if we now all accept that all tall skyscraper collapses will more or less look alike, this obviously does not rule out the government or evil space aliens or disgruntled fairy god mothers or whomever from having secretly engineered the collapse of some or all of the buildings that fell 9/11/01

[Agathon]

OBL has chimed in on Moussaoui's behalf. Text below. This is the most cogent and semi-logical speech OBL has ever given, it's not like him at all.

Text of bin Laden audio tape as translated by IntelCenter, a private company that does contracting work for U.S. intelligence:

----

"In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and prayers and peace upon the Prophets and Messengers. As for what follows:

From Usama bin Muhammad bin Ladin to the American people: peace be upon he who has followed the Guidance.

This is a brief message whose topic is my testimony on behalf of the Muslim prisoners you are holding, and in it I will talk about the truth concerning them, which is something which the Bush administration hates and is hostile to.

I begin by talking about the honorable brother Zacarias Moussaoui. The truth is that he has no connection whatsoever with the events of September 11th, and I am certain of what I say, because I was responsible for entrusting the 19 brothers - Allah have mercy upon them - with those raids, and I did not assign brother Zacarias to be with them on that mission. And his confession that he was assigned to participate in those raids is a false confession which no intelligent person doubts is a result of the pressure put upon him for the past four and a half years.

And were this pressure lifted from him for him to return to his normal state, he would state the fact I mentioned. And among the things that confirm this fact is that the participants in September 11th were two groups: pilots and support teams for each pilot in order to control the aircraft. And since Zacarias Moussaoui was learning how to fly, it follows that he wasn't component #20 from the teams which helped to control the airplanes, as your government previously claimed, and your government knows this fact with certainty. And if Moussaoui was studying aviation to become a pilot of one of the planes, then let him tell us the names of those assigned to help him control the plane.

But he won't be able to tell us their names, for a simple reason: that in fact they don't exist. This is from one perspective, and from another perspective, the brother Moussaoui was arrested two weeks before the events, and had he known anything - however little - about the September 11th group, we would have told the brother Commander Mohamed Atta and his brothers - Allah have mercy upon them - to leave America immediately before their affair was exposed. And with this it becomes clear to even the novice investigator - not to mention the seasoned one - that there is no connection between him and the events of September 11th.

And then I call to memory my brothers the prisoners in Guantanamo - may Allah free them all - and I state the fact, about which I also am certain, that all the prisoners of Guantanamo, who were captured in 2001 and the first half of 2002 and who number in the hundreds, have no connection whatsoever to the events of September 11th, and even stranger is that many of them have no connection with al-Qaida in the first place, and even more amazing is that some of them oppose al-Qaida's methodology of calling for war with America.

And this is in addition to the arrest of those who were working in the relief agencies, like Abu Abdul Aziz al-Mutrafi, or those working in the media, like Sami al-Hajj and Taysir Alouni, who was imprisoned at the instigation of the American administration. So the conclusion is that all the prisoners to date have no connection with the events of September 11th and knew nothing about them, with the exception of two of the brothers, may Allah free them all. Bush and his administration are aware of this fact, but they avoid mentioning it, for reasons not hidden to the discerning.

Among these reasons is that it is necessary to create justifications for the massive spending of hundreds of billions on the Defense Department and other agencies in their war against the Mujahideen. My mentioning of these facts isn't out of hope that Bush and his party will treat our brothers fairly in their cases, because that is something no rational person expects, but rather it is meant to expose the oppression, injustice and arbitrariness of your administration in using force and the reactions that result from that. This is from one perspective, and from another perspective, perhaps there will one day come from the Americans someone who desires justice and fairness, and that is the path to security and safety, if you are interested in it.

This is what needed to be said. And may peace be upon he who has followed the Guidance."

[Kuciwalker]

Get with the times, Aggie, we're debunking inane conspiracy theories.

[DinoDoc]

We debunked them more than a few pages ago. We're just tormenting the mentally retarded now.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
You're making a really bad relative comparison

The point here is that technology to withstand plane collisions has been around since before Empire State was built

Each building considering handling airplane collisions of planes larger than their time

How the two compare to each other is irrelevent

Probably a waste of time to reason with conspiracy kooks, but this information should be disseminated anyway.

Wrong. The "technology to withstand plane collisions" was not around when the Empire State Bldg was designed and constructed. I doubt a single thought was given to aircraft collision in its design.

Buildings of that period were seriously "overbuilt" in that they used much heavier steel sections than structurally necessary. This was the result of no computational power to analyze the whole structure. A modern design replicating the ESB would use maybe 2/3 as much steel.

Add to that the practice of using heavy facing which would prevent some (or most, in the case of the B-25) of the debris and fuel from entering the building, thus little fire damage, already mentioned elsewhere.

The theory advanced by the WTC designer was that a collision would only take out a section of the curtain wall. He never considered a full load of fuel spreading out on several floors and down elevator shafts. He never considered the impact knocking fire insulation off the trusses.

There was no dynamic modelling of an impact, transfer of impact load to center columns, reduction of floor truss integrity due to impact distortion, etc. He considered only the structural integrity of the building after a certain number of consecutive curtain wall columns were taken out.

In addition, the 9/11 planes were going nearly twice as fast as anticipated. Heavies in approach zones are restricted to 250 knots, whereas the attackers flew the planes at ~450 knots. That is 3 times the energy. The planes took out far more supports, on both sides of the towers, than anticipated by the designer.

[Arrian]

LIES!



-Arrian