Fuckin’ A!. That’s IT! It was them damn BOLTS that are to blame. It was SO OBVIOUS! :smack:
Who was the short-sighted guzzler that didn’t see the obvious and likely potential for a GODDAMN FULLY-FUELED AIRLINER JET COMING STRAIGHT INTO EACH WTC TOWER AT 400 MPH?
Who was this asleep-at-the-wheel slacker? What was he/she doing choosing bolts that wouldn’t withstand this typical kind of stress incident?
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?!
And then this excerpt from Yahoo! News:
YA THINK?
I wanna believe the engineering firm, but the experts can’t seem to agree. I guess we’ll see.
Not sure why this is in the Pit, or what precisely your beef is.
<i>Of course</i> the cause of the towers’ collapse was being hit by fully fueled jetliners travelling at high rates of speed. But from an engineering standpoint, “then what” is a perfectly legitimate question.
Remember that the towers stood for a good bit of time after the impacts. So we can infer that the kinetic energy alone was not sufficient to “knock them down.” If one were designing a future skyscraper, one might reasonably want to know what happens when an airplane strikes so that one might try to engineer such that a collapse would not happen.
Wouldn’t you want to know that someone is thinking about this stuff before they erect future buildings?
Actually, I’m firmly convinced that it was the aliens from planet Zurvizurch that caused the WTC towers to collapse… the plane crashes were just a distraction!
Actually, the planes didn’t knock the buildings down.
It’s easy to say they did. It’s a simple shorthand for what technically happened. But it’s not what really happened.
You might say to yourself: who cares HOW the buildings collapsed. We all know planes crashed into them.
That answer doesn’t help the engineers who want to design the next building to withstand these attacks.
It doesn’t help the firefighters who would normally recommend that those people trapped above an office fire stay there until the blaze is extinguished.
Yes, planes crashed into the WTC. But a plane crashed into the Empire State Building and it still stands today. The twin towers stood for over an hour before succumbing. What was the breaking point? What can be strengthened for next time?
If you stop at the simple answer you’ll never figure it out
Well, manhattan and Enderw24 have already beaten me to most of my points, but I just thought I’d point out that
the World Trade Center was designed to withstand the impact of an airplane, at least according to this article in Discover magazine. So the fact that it didn’t withstand such an impact is of some interest, don’t you think?
The WTC (built of steel/aluminum) was hit by modern airliners doing well over 100KIAS, while the Empire State building (steel reinforced concrete) was hit by a B-17, with a fraction of the weight of a modern Boeing airliner, and less of an airspeed - thus, much less of a kinetic energy.
[/Nitpick]
In any case, according to the report:
False. They did for over 25 years. Sucessfully for anticipated loads, too . . .
Which is a direct result of the warping accomplished by heat stresses induced by flaming jet fuel poured/spread onto said floor trusses due to the accident.
Every idiot knows the real reason: There are fuckheads out there that want nothing more than to kill as many Americans as possible, and will stop at nothing to do so.
They exploited a loophole. And we got blindsided by it. . .
Tripler
People want to kill us. Remember that. . .
I’m just anticipating litigious-conscious building engineers having to slap labels on all steel girders:
WARNING: HIGH SPEED COLLISION BY JET AIRCRAFT WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY.
A detailed examination of the exact sequence of the collapse is interesting and useful for future construction, but I’m not sure why booka is getting all freaked out. The cited article uses some slimy phrasing like “the bolts did not properly secure the…trusses”, “unconventional design” and “weak floor supports”, but only an idiot would conclude the blame should be shifted (even slightly) away from the hijacking scum and their supporters.
betcha this will be used as “proof” that the design was neglient, and, therefore, the Port of NY, the architect, engineer, bolt mfg, et. al. will be held responsible for a building collasping after being doused with 10,000’s gallons of flaming fuel.
Anyone interested in this topic should watch the TLC documentary “Why the Towers Fell”. I missed it when it was originally on, but rented it from Netflix a while ago. It was very fascinating. The actual reasons seemed to be a combination of factors, but the big one was that trusses were made of steel that can weaken (although not melt) when heated to a high enough temperature. They were coated in fireproof material, but it was apparently completely blown away from the steel in the original impact. The fires that were started then weakened the trusses to the point that they were unable to hold up the weight of the building.
Anyway, good documentary, interesting and definitely not sappy. No montages of American flags flying, or anything. The few “human” moments are made even sadder in comparison. They interviewed the original engineer, and he just seems so incredibly miserable about the whole thing. Can you imagine how he must feel? God. I don’t know how I’d be able to live with the if onlys.
Yes, I know. But I suspect that when a building is “designed to withstand the impact of an airplane”, the designers at least consider the possibility that said airplane might catch fire. The buildings were supposedly designed to withstand fires, too, at least for much longer than the twin towers did.
The point is, there are perfectly valid reasons to investigate exactly why the buildings collapsed.
Math Geek, I love Discover! I just got a subscription last month and I’ve read both issues cover to cover. That’s partly where I got my information for my previous post.
Tripler, The low casualty rate was due to the crash occuring on a weekend and the small amount of structural damage was because the floors above were vacant so there was very little to keep the fire sustained.
But you are right. In terms of amount of fuel, sheer mass and speed, it is a bit like apples to oranges.
To nitpick on your nitpick, it was a B-25 not a B-17.
They were designed to withstand typical high-rise office building fires, not exploding jet fuel fires. Burning paper and cubicles and computers does not really have the same catastrophic effect.
So…how long till the 1st of many multi-million dollar lawsuits against those who constructed the towers(and anyone else in filing distance from them) is filed???
Actually they did take that into account, what they didn’t take into account was the existance of planes in the future much larger than the ones being used when the towers were designed. According to a program I saw on the WTC that interviewed one of the original engineers on the team, they designed it to withstand the impact of a 707 (which, IIRC, was the largest plane in the 60s when the towers were designed). Also they asked the designer what could be done to ensure that something like this couldn’t happen again and his response was, “The only way you can insure that something like this doesn’t happen again is to prevent planes from crashing into buildings.” IOW, it doesn’t matter how good the design is, if someone wants to use a plane to destroy it, they’ll find a way.
It’s patently impossible for an American jury to assign blame to the WTC architects and engineers because the softening of the steel members was caused by burning jet fuel and not spilled McDonald’s coffee.
