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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
The differences between the Empire State and WTC are enough that they don't have to come up in these discussions. The speed of the aircraft probably made all the difference.
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We are taking planes and skyscrapers, but the differences are huge.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
If the outer structure was damaged - and we know only one quarter of the outer structure at the uppermost portions of the buildings was affected - how can you say nothing was holding up the floors. Even NIST says this isn't so. About seven percent of the structure encompassing those floors at that elevetion was compromised.
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At this point I have no idea what building we are talking about.
Keep in mind that the NIST is doing a lot of guesswork. Being as no one inspected the buildings before it came down, we can only try to piece together what happened by the debris. That's like trying to figure out what happened in a car accident when all you have is six thousand small pieces of metal.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
And even if this would lead to collapse - how could it lead to uniform collapse? Why wouldn't it just collapse on one side...
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Because there is a huge difference between a building tipping over and a building collapsing. In these cases, the buildings collapsed because at some point the a section of the building was unable to support the weight above it. Once one floor falls, it falls down, and once a floor falls all of the floors above it come down too.
How can you not see this?
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
When these NIST and engineer people refer to weakened steel, they mean softened by exposure to heat.
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Call it whatever you want. I've never seen the word "softened" used in this context by the NIST. Either way it was weakened. If you put a five hundred ton load on a steel beam and subject it to six hundred degrees for an hour, guess what - It's gonna be weakened.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
Taking this into account, modern skyscrapers, beyond using complex infrastructural design to create stronger steel constructs out of equal or lesser volumes of material, are also built to take massive fires and heating into account so that softening or "weakening" distributes gravity loads equally to absorb the weight and prevent failure, effectively turning the weakened areas into a spring or shock absorption system.
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Yes.
However, designing with a certain goal in mind and being correct using 1960s technology is two different things. My car is designed so I would survive a collision at a certain speed. However, if my car explodes, all bets are off.
With the WTC towers, yes, the building was designed so that it could survive a fire. However, it was not design to withstand a fire that was started by ten thousand gallons of jet fuel. It was also not designed to withstand a fire after an impact.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
Normal building "debris" wouldn't burn for weeks, or cause massive steam explosions when firefighters dropped water on it.
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Your right - normal building debris would not burn for weeks.
But nothing here was normal. This was not a "building" - it was one of the world's tallest skyscrapers.. Two of them in fact.
Again, you completely fail to understand what the WTC complex was. Don't think of as a building; Think of it as a city. You have to understand that they underground tanks of diesel to run back up generators; They portions of entire floors in the towers dedicated to backup batteries full of acid. There was six hundred automobiles in the complex when this happened, as well as an entire subway station. The amount of shit that caught fire and burned for weeks must have been stunning.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
Hydraulic fluid, I feel confident in stating, is not composed of anything potentially explosive; regardless of it's rapid expansion potential, I doubt it could take out cross-welded industrial steel connections or it wouldn't be used.
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Where do you get that took out anything? The pipes here connected to the outside of the buildings, where window washers could access it. They hooked up their tubes to connections on the outside of the buildings. It became the greatest week point, and when that fluid was forced out, it came out at the weakest point.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
One video in particular taken from nearby, not miles away and zoomed in, clearly shows WTC building corners disintegrating explosively.
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No, it doesn't. It shows air and other fluids being compressed out of a building.
The only reason you think this is because the only videos you've seen of buildings collapsing were intentionally done. This looks similar. Doesn't mean it's the same.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
All agreed, all until they were severely compromised. Regardless, temperatures that were about 20% less of what would have weakened steel did not occur. And if they were so hermetic, how could the fire have had the oxygen it needed to propagate and generate temperatures sufficient to weaken steel?
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No. Stop making shit up. Steel melts at about 2500f. But it's weakened at at less than half that. The estimated temperature of the fires in the WTC was 1340f - more than enough to weaken it.
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Originally Posted by MediaGuy
Dude, seriously - this is a description of what I told you about welding with thermite. It's done outside, usually with copper for big electrical connections or things like railway ties; it's not used indoors.
Also, I never said it was explosive; in fact I distinctly cited "incendiaries" and metal cutting - and thermate, which is generally iron oxide mixed with sulfur or "super thermite". However it burns very hot and very fast and cuts steel like butter, producing molten iron (which was observed in the basements and beneath the rubble after the collapses).
What's described above is when you used a very small amount of thermite; and thermite and thermate (especially the military application) can be used to coat areas, or directed by devides, to simply slice through steel beams from railway ties to the incredible thick and strong core columns of the WTC.
I never said it was an explosive, or even explosive. I said unignited flakes of thermate (and possibly thermite, I don't remember) as well as thermite residue were found in the dust.
From what I know, the steel beams of the WTC were bolt-welded, unless the very earliest foundational components were done with thermite, which I doubt; I might look it up if it's possible, though from what I understand exothermic welding or whatever it's called is usually done to bond two different types of metal or for major electrical copper and other conductive electrical joints. Not for steel skyscraper frame construction...
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Where do you think they used Thermite?
