See other 9/11 Articles
Title: Former senator, engineers offer ‘proof’ of 9/11 controlled demolitions
Source:
[None]
URL Source: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/09/ ... rs-911-controlled-demolitions/
Published: Sep 10, 2010
Author: Raw Story
Post Date: 2010-09-10 10:43:08 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 14638
Comments: 259
The nine-year-old body of 9/11 conspiracy theories includes many improbable (and sometimes contradictory) claims, everything from remote-controlled planes flying into the World Trade Center, to a missile hitting the Pentagon, to mass kidnappings of air passengers. But a group of more than 1,200 architects and engineers is building what it hopes is a scientifically sound argument about one 9/11 claim: That the World Trade Center buildings were destroyed not by fires caused by the airplane collisions, but by a controlled demolition. At a press conference in Washington DC, Thursday, the group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth offered evidence "that all three WTC skyscrapers on September 11, 2001, in NYC were destroyed by explosive controlled demolition." The third building the group referred to was World Trade Center 7, a skyscraper that collapsed about eight hours after the main WTC towers fell. For many 9/11 "truthers," WTC7's collapse despite not being hit by a plane is the "smoking gun" proving that something other than airplanes brought down the towers. The WTC7 collapse was not addressed in the official 9/11 Commission report. "That building fell completely into its own footprint," blogger Andrew Steele told WKTV in Utica. "You can watch on YouTube yourself and use your own common sense. Even if you don't have a scientific background ... if you have two eyes, you can see that fire alone did not bring down that building." His claims, and those of the 1,270 architects and engineers who have signed on to the effort, were bolstered by the support of former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel, who said in a press release that "critically important evidence has come forward after the original government building reports were completed." Gravel has been concerned with the events of September 11, 2001, for some time now. He has called for an independent investigation into 9/11. "Unlike the first investigation, this commission should be granted subpoena power and full access to all governmental files and personnel," Gravel wrote. "George Bush should be forced to testify ALONE." San Francisco architect Richard Gage said the way the towers collapsed was consistent with a controlled demolition, not a chaotic structural collapse. "The official FEMA and NIST reports provide insufficient, contradictory, and fraudulent accounts of the circumstances of the towers' destruction," Gage said. "We are therefore calling for a grand jury investigation of NIST officials." But Gage added that "government investigators at the NIST have been forced to acknowledge the free-fall descent, an indicting fact, after being presented with analysis by AE911Truth petition signers." On its Web site, the architects' and engineers' group lists facts that suggest explosives were used to take down the towers. -- Rapid onset of "collapse" -- Sounds of explosions at ground floor - a second before the building's destruction -- Symmetrical "structural failure" -- through the path of greatest resistance -- at free-fall acceleration -- Massive volume of expanding pyroclastic dust clouds -- Expert corroboration from the top European Controlled Demolition professional -- FEMA finds rapid oxidation and intergranular melting on structural steel samples WTC7 exhibited none of the characteristics of destruction by fire, i.e. -- Slow onset with large visible deformations -- Asymmetrical collapse which follows the path of least resistance (laws of conservation of momentum would cause a falling, to the side most damaged by the fires) -- High-rise buildings with much larger, hotter, and longer lasting fires have never "collapsed". Debunking9/11, a Web site devoted to disproving the claims of 9/11 "truthers," argues that no aircraft was needed to bring down WTC7, because "while building 7 wasn't hit by an airliner, it was hit by the large perimeter columns of the Tower collapse. It was 400 ft away but the towers were more than 1300 ft tall. As the tower peeled open, it easily tilted over to reach building 7." "Truthers" and debunkers have been arguing for years over whether the scant photographic evidence of WTC7's south side after the main towers' collapse shows enough damage to justify the building's collapse. "All the buildings just as far away from both towers as WTC7 were hit," Debunking9/11 asserts. "The others were either very short buildings which didn't have to support a massive load above or had no fire. Only Building 7 had unfought fires and the massive load of 40 stories above them." "Justice for all." What's wrong with calling for a transparent, internationally-supported investigation? I want to know what happened that day to all of those buildings, and I want the chain of events that happened up to their collapse. Don't care how ugly the truth is, I just want to know. Why is asking for an independent investigation so bad? I'm not an engineering expert, but ALL of the buildings collapsing (WTC 1, 2, 7) look just like every other controlled demolition video I've seen from around the world. The pieces of the day's events (NORAD, Bin Laden's family being sent out, etc) don't fit together right. It just smells fishy. Who got fired for not doing their job? Who went to jail for criminal negligence? People of authority responding "nothing to see here, move along" aren't helping convince me that what we're being told is the truth. I just want to see Justice. Isn't wanting "Justice for all" patriotic?
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 204.
#1. To: Ada (#0)
Former senator, Mike Gravel. What a media-hungry nutjob. I do actually know someone who sent $10 to his presidential campaign which does prove that even nutjobs, with publicity, can rake in money from the public no matter how nuts they are. During his "campaign" for president, he went back to NYC where he drove a cab back in the Fifties and took out a classic Yellow Cab. He was promptly involved in a collision.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” M. Ghandi Hey, doesn't this guy know we are way past stage two, the fighting has begun, and the "W" is in sight. Peace.
Actually, you have reached the point where everyone knows to avoid you, change the topic if you try to talk about 9/11, etc. The 9/11 Truth movement peaked 3-4 years ago, part of the Bush-hate peddled by the old elements of the "professional Left", namely the old academic commie ideologues that led the "antiwar" movement (but think Obongo-war is just fine). The future of the Truther movement is declining numbers, an ongoing stream of literature by clever con-men to peddle to the faithful as the decades unfold until all of you die off around 2070 or so. These conspiracy groups are like cults. One key difference is that they do not have a single leader but have many nutjob leaders. It is a form of cultism that is personally defined, not under rigid central control. This tends to make the cult members evaluate everyone around them in light of whether they assent to their Truth or not. It can become their entire way of relating to other human beings.
These conspiracy groups are like cults. yeah, just like those who still continue to talk about the Kennedy assassination, huh? i believe that the 9/11 truth movement is global and that only those working for government in some capacity or another and have their selfish asses to protect are the majority of those who continue to believe the government CONSPIRACY. con•spir•a•cy
Exactly like that, yes. Do you want to buy into the Cubans or the Mafia or the CIA or Mossad or...well...one of the dozen or so other major theories about JFK out there? And many of them are totally ridiculous, presenting the kind of "evidence" you'd expect to find about some story in National Enquirer about some woman who got pregnant with Elvis' baby when she was abducted by a UFO in a three-way with Bigfoot. No doubt, it is stronger overseas where expectations of gross government corruption and criminality are visible on a daily basis. Especially in the Third World. This is essentially another false numbers idea that is popular but entirely false. It doesn't matter who believes what or how many. The truth is the truth and you have to have evidence, not a pack of con-men spinning nonsense for gullible people wherever they are located around the world. I, for one, don't give a rat's ass what people as ignorant as the Afghans or the Egyptians or the Nigerians or Kenyans think about anything (since I would first have to care that these medieval barbarians even exist).
What evidence is there that 9/11 was perpetrated by the 19 named individuals? Hint: Some of them are still alive and well, and have been reported as such in the world press. The manuevers performed by the aircraft that day could NOT have been performed by somebody who never flew a jet in their lives, yet NONE of them had ever flown a jet, and not one of them was even a mediocre pilot.
Not that I want to discuss it in detail but I've long mused that it would be quite possible for a single aircraft electronics technician familiar with the autopilot-GPS systems to hack out a program that could be uploaded into the aircraft systems by a terrorist in only a few moments (while an unskilled pilot held the stick steady in flight while safely thousands of feet in the air) and you could program the aircraft to fly quite precisely to its target, no expert human terminal guidance would be required. None. Hackers aren't that hard to find. These aircraft systems don't have a fraction of the security put into an iPad/iPhone/iPod or an Xbox or a PS3 yet the hackers manage to break those quite routinely despite the fact that they are protected against hacking by good hardware design and encryption keys in excess of 1024 bits. Even the original Xbox had 1024-bit encryption. Yet, despite the obvious facts about how you could reprogram the very sophisticated and capable guidance systems, Truthers insist on ranting endlessly that is isn't possible for those pilots to fly, especially the terminal phase, of these attacks. Yet there is another ready explanation: hacked guidance systems. They could have carried an ordinary device like a laptop or a cellphone or a even a calculator to do this. Recently, the PS3 was finally broken by the hackers who discovered that they could build a USB device with its own microcontroller that could be plugged into the USB port on the front of the PS3. This controller exploits the fact that, at boot time, the PS3 is vulnerable to its USB port which can (essentially) seize control of the PS3 and defeat all its other formidable protections against hacking. After they demonstrated the USB device and started selling them all over the world, they found other ways to do the same thing, including this technique they came up with last week to use a TI-84 calculator with a USB cable to hack their PS3's. (These are people who won't be happy until they can use a toaster to reprogram their PS3 and their cellphones.) And if you have 1.5B people and their talents to draw on, you have a lot of clever hackers and engineers. Then all you need is just one device to hack, even if it is in a cave in Af-Pak too. Then they take the cockpit and hold the stick steady while they reprogram the plane's autopilot and enable it to start it flying toward its destination. This way, you could make an airliner behave just like a missile. You could program it the autopilot to guide the plane into the Pentagon only a few feet off the ground, just as the video tapes (obtained by FOIA requests in 2006) showed the plane hitting the building. But of course, such obviously plausible ideas are not in vogue. Can't compete with nano-thermite, UFO technology, dark matter, antigravity, energy weapons and whatever new genius idea some Truther is peddling this week. And gooberment naturally would not this revealed but it would lead people to (rightly) question the security of all our vital systems from health care to the national power grid to our defense networks and all the rest. So one oft-debated aspect of 9/11 can be readily explained (including the gooberment's motivation for suppressing such disturbing information). In fact, the DIA is operating in suppressing all copies of this new book in exactly the way you would expect. I think the gooberment prefers us to think they're evil and/or LIHOPpy or MIHOPpy than realize just how incompetent they really are. Sorry I didn't hit Post, wrote this a couple of hours back but got called to lunch and autumn chores.
Problem with that theory is several fold. First off, the NTSB reports that the autopilot was turned off as Flight 77 approached Washington DC. Secondly, it is not obvious HOW to enable or disable autopilot, it is a function of the flight management computer. Hani Hanjour, the alleged "pilot", never trained on a 757 simulator, nor was he even capable of flying a Cessna, let alone a multi-engine jumbo jet. Finally, not even a highly trained professional pilot can negate the laws of physics and aerodynamics, and not only did the plane fly too low at too high of a speed to be able to hit the Pentagon nose first and flying level, but there is no evidence that a 757 hit the Pentagon since the windows aren't broken where the wings would have struck at 500+ mph. My hypothesis includes the following theories; a) The crews and passengers of all "hijacked" aircraft were subdued and/or neutralized with chemical agents such as nerve gas pumped into the ventilation systems. b) The planes were taken over by remote control, as you suggest. c) Regardless of whether the actual "hijacked" planes struck the World Trade Center towers, or some other specially equipped aircraft made to LOOK like those hijacked planes, they weren't being flown by "angry arabs", some of whom are still alive to this day. d) Whatever struck the Pentagon was NOT a 757, thus NOT Flight 77. What it comes down to is that the "official" story is pure BS, and the media as well as the government are complicit in the ONGOING coverup.
The autopilot or another hackable system could be hacked for this. But he could have held the stick while the autopilot and one or more flight control computers were reprogrammed. These devices undoubtedly use solid-state memory for their OS (flashable memory) like your computer or cellphone do. But a reprogrammed autopilot could certainly do so. These planes have exceptionally sophisticated autopilot systems and the flight characteristics of these aircraft are extremely well-documented. Again, some of this would require access to internal data from the aircraft manufacturer but much of it could be computed manually or drawn from sources at maintenance depots. I have considered this (or just causing the cabin pressure and emergency air supply to fail, smothering the crew and passengers and possibly even the hijackers as well. The problem is that you probably want the terrorist with minimal piloting skills to remain alive to the last moment so he could re-target the aircraft to a very large and impressive target if he realized the hacked autopilot could not hit the target accurately. And then you would have to fake the cell phone calls from the passengers and so on. No, it gets too complicated, not plausible. Not remotely. Hacked with a portable kit, maybe in a cellphone or iPod, carried onboard by the terrorists. Prove it. Produce these terrorists. Not vague rumors or scanty and unsubstantiated reports from goofball newspapers in the Third World. I require evidence when you make these claims. And since you guys have already discredited yourselves with these claims so many times already, don't post 20 of your crappy homemade YouTubes and then get mad because I won't give you hours of my life just to view the same bilge you've tried to pawn off for years. I believe the evidence supports that it was Flight 77. I've read all these objections that it wasn't a 757 and I find them ridiculous. Moreover, you ignore that these airliners could be autopiloted with high reliability so why would you send a missile that you would have to risk wouldn't pass muster as a fake airliner when you could just send the airliner? You'd have to kill or disappear the passengers or crew anyway and you'd have to take a chance that even if flying under radar, some pilot or bystander would notice you flying or landing that 757 at an airbase or crashing it into a lake or whatever and you'd still have to obliterate the evidence. It makes no sense at all, not that that bothers most Truthers a bit. Some of you don't realize that when you mix plausible or possible explanations and alternative theories with wild conspiracy theories that make no sense, it discredits even the questions raised that are valid. This is the kind of thing where you can be your own worst enemy when it comes to convincing people of your theories in numbers large enough to make a difference. BTW, I believe that some of the Truther celebs and leaders are con-men and are likely in the pay of FBI/CIA/etc. simply to discredit the entire Truther movement. Classic agentes provocateurs, FBI style. Very useful and flexible tactics to use against unsophisticated opponents.
No, an aircraft of the size and wingspan of a large airliner most certainly COULD NOT fly that low to the ground at that high of a speed and DESCEND. It would CLIMB, not DESCEND.
Strangely enough, I believe that airliners fly that close to the ground every day. As we write, I expect a dozen or more airliners around the world are flying exactly that close to the ground without climbing. This is commonly known as "landing the aircraft". Somehow we really see this in fundamentally different ways. I believe that aircraft actually land on a routine basis. You guys do know that we gave up fly-by-wire a while back, that these are all electronic computerized systems that control the flight surfaces? Hell, even your car has computer controlled braking systems and your car throttle is a computer system. Fly-by-wire is getting to be a dated concept even in $20,000 cars.
This is commonly known as "landing the aircraft". Strangely enough, airliners don't land at 500 mph (which is their cruising speed at 35,000 feet). They land at about 150 to 185 mph.
If your angle of descent is programmed and you have full control of air control surfaces via computer and can respond in milliseconds to the instruments, yes, you can hit the ground exactly that way. The flight control program would use GPS and a programmed descent path so that the aircraft hit the ground and the building. If you are coming in at 500mph at even a modest incline, the ground effects cannot force you back up into the air because of inertia. I find this particular item of Truth especially annoying. Believe me, you cannot simply pose arguments that end up along the lines of irresistable-force-meets-immovable-object. It really doesn't work that way in the real world; ask any engineer. If the plane is in a basic approach pattern but programmed to touch down exactly at the outside edge of the building, the speed and inertia of that huge-ass aircraft would overcome the ground effect that would try to rebuff the plane back up further from the ground. So it might rebuff the aircraft except that it hit and devastated the Pentagon before the ground effect could force it back into the air. This argument does overcome the need for a human pilot to fly an airliner below treetop level for a mile or more at 500mph. I would expect an autopilot controlling the flight would make much more sense since no pilot training program would ever try to teach even airline pilots how to fly such a big plane so fast so near the ground. You would almost have to have it under computer control or have an insanely expert and daring pilot. Ah, well, maybe I do have my own cranky little Truth going here, eh? I'm gonna go slumming for election news elsewhere. Enough Truth for one day.
Thing is, for the plane to descend it would have to lose airspeed, yet it increased airspeed at the beginning of the approach while maintaining the same relative altitude, then somehow descended without losing airspeed or pointing the nose down. That's pretty much impossible for an airliner, but not impossible for a cruise missile painted to LOOK like an airliner.
You can keep repeating this but I don't believe you can prove it. Tell me, if you have an airliner at 20,000 feet and your pilot points the nose downward at the ground, you will hit the ground, won't you? Let's say you pin the plane into a nosedive. We can agree that you will hit the ground, there once you are below a certain altitude, say 4000-5000 feet, there is no chance you can pull out because the inertia is too great. So would it work the same if you only aimed at the ground with a 45-degree approach angle. Yes. But you could pull out of the dive a little longer. Same applies at 20-degree angle. Or 10 or 5. The real problem I have with this is that denying an airliner can hit a building in this way relies on the removal of inertia as a factor. And I do demand that Truthers aren't allowed to repeal the fundamental laws of physics. Next thing you know, they'll toss entropy on the bonfire and the whole universe will go poof. LOL. Now I am going to go follow the elections. So don't leave me 5,000 posts to catch up with.
You can keep repeating this but I don't believe you can prove it. I'm repeating the reported flight characteristics of the alleged hijacked aircraft. What part of it don't you understand or comprehend? Tell me, if you have an airliner at 20,000 feet and your pilot points the nose downward at the ground, you will hit the ground, won't you? Yeah sure, so what? That's not what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11. Let's say you pin the plane into a nosedive. We can agree that you will hit the ground, there once you are below a certain altitude, say 4000-5000 feet, there is no chance you can pull out because the inertia is too great. Again, so what? Nothing to do with what we're talking about. So would it work the same if you only aimed at the ground with a 45-degree approach angle. Yes. But you could pull out of the dive a little longer. So what? Same applies at 20-degree angle. Or 10 or 5. Now you're getting ridiculous. The real problem I have with this is that denying an airliner can hit a building in this way relies on the removal of inertia as a factor. And I do demand that Truthers aren't allowed to repeal the fundamental laws of physics. Next thing you know, they'll toss entropy on the bonfire and the whole universe will go poof. LOL. Now you've gone from ridiculous to hypocritical. First off, the aircraft which is alleged to have been Flight 77 (NOBODY can tell for sure since the transponder was off and they only picked up the radar return after having somehow lost it completely from radar between Ohio and Washington), performed a sharp descending turn which many at Dulles Air Traffic Control assumed was a military aircraft by the way it manuevered. It turned AWAY from the side of the Pentagon where the high value targets were (such as Rumsfeld's office), where it could have easily DOVE into the Pentagon and exploded all over the roof, spreading flaming fuel over a good portion of the complex. It would have been INFINITELY easier to simply dive into a structure the area of 28 or so football fields, than to perform precision manuevers and line up to hit a 77 foot high wall at ground level. Yet that is what is CLAIMED to have happened. The aircraft is reported to have come out of it's final turn after having descended to tree top level, then picked up airspeed for about a mile before impacting the Pentagon. At 500 mph, the amount of time necessary to clear the trees and structures near the Pentagon would have left a fraction of a second before reaching the Pentagon itself, yet within that time it found a way to descend, overcome ground effect, and keep the nose level with the wings straight (since neither engine nor wingtip hit the lawn), and penetrate at ground level straight into the Pentagon (at an angle of course, but straight in as far as pitch). That is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. You can talk about diving from 20,000 feet all you want, yet that is NOT what happened even in terms of the OFFICIAL story, and in terms of physical damage to the Pentagon itself. That, and there was no fuel spread over the external walls as there would have been, and no damage to glass windows where wings allegedly struck them at 500+ mph. Now take your own advice and stop trying to suspend the laws of physics to make your pet theory workable.
I have always assumed the Pentagon has defenses against such an attack, the same way the WH does and many military bases. So only an attack coming in below radar would be expected to succeed. Now who is being silly. Assuming "treetop" is less than 50 feet, executing a sharp turn would put the wings hitting trees or buildings as you turn the plane since the wing would dip downward, the sharper the turn the more it dips. You also have an absolute confidence in these instruments which are not necessarily designed to be at their most accurate at ground level. Certainly radar gets flaky near the ground. And if it was a missile, how did they make the plane "disappear"? How did they keep people from seeing it pass at treetop? Where did they land it? How did they hide it? Etc.? I think my explanations, imperfect as they are, are still more plausible than what you're offering. But relying on the data we have at this point may be a mistake. We don't have any kind of independent study of the data and lack some information on the systems themselves under extreme conditions like flying at such high speed so near the ground.
Your explanations rely on magical thinking, where laws of physics are violated, and actual evidence is either tossed out or ignored. The wings and fuel disappeared in order for your story to make sense, and a gang of cave dwellers took an iPod, plugged it into the cockpit, and made it fly like a cruise missile. Oh, and the people who performed these superhuman feats rose from the dead, since at least some of them are still alive. If you want to read what a real pilot and aeronautical engineer has to say about all this, read the following link... 9/11-The Impossibility of Flying Heavy Aircraft Without Training
Interesting info. It does not preclude my scenario. And my explanation of a hacked autopilot is still far more conceivable than untrained pilots performing such maneuvers. With full control over the plane's control surfaces on a millisecond basis, one could cause a crash by altering the flight characteristics in the last few tenths of a second prior to impact. Again, this is the kind of thing that no aircraft designer would ever test for because they would never expect any airliner to be flown in this way. My explanation still beats the expert-caveman-pilot scenario even if you don't happen to care for it.
Your "hacked autopilot" is about as likely as Hanjour being blessed by Allah with the superhuman power to fly the aircraft better than a pro, for the host of reasons I've already gone over. It still doesn't explain the following, even if it were possible; A) The aircraft could not have descended to ground level from 50 feet high in a fraction of a second while maintaining a neutral pitch (ie. keeping the nose level). B) The section of the Pentagon where the left wing should have impacted still had intact glass windows, and no external fuel fire from the exploding fuel tank located inside the wing. C) You have no explanation for the second aircraft witnessed by credible witnesses, including two Pentagon police officers. Even IF an instant descent to the correct altitude were possible, the plane would not have STOPPED descending (due to inertia) quick enough to avoid crashing into the Pentagon lawn.
It left a scar on the lawn. The plane hit the ground and bounced, the collapsing plane exploding as its wreckage hit the building between the first and second floors. And the plane did, as I've said, penetrate all five rings. In this section of the Pentagon, renovations were five days from completion for its new steel underframe, a project which had been underway for the entire Pentagon since the mid-Nineties. The Pentagon wasn't too well built and was sort of a rush job originally and they had to do something to reinforce the entire structure. Perhaps you already know about the renovation project.
You are thinking as if this thing was a solid chunk of lead, which not only can fly like a needle in a hurricane, perform like a cruise missle and dart about like a mosquito, but it can crash into the lawn, bounce (at over 500 mph), shoot directly into the first floor of the Pentagon, penetrating a blast proof wall, and pierce through 5 separate rings of the building. Did you know that aircraft are basically egg shells made of aluminum? Do you know what happens to an egg when you throw it into a lawn? Do you know what happens if you throw that egg into a brick wall?
You can "bounce" an egg off the ground, just like skipping a stone on water. We had a lot of chickens when I was a kid so I can speak from personal experience. Actually, an egg skipping off the ground is probably a much more durable object than an airliner at 500mph.
Put up a video on YouTube of you bouncing an egg off the ground, I'd like to see it done.
I don't have any videos like that. I do have a few of using an egg as a golf ball and as a baseball in fast-pitch. Would those do? Yes, you can bounce an egg off buffalo grass.
Here's an even better picture which wud has already posted a few times. How do you fit a 757 into that hole?
There are no replies to Comment # 204. End Trace Mode for Comment # 204.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#10. To: TooConservative, Ada, Ada, Richard Gage, 4, Lod, wudidiz (#1)
#12. To: Lysander_Spooner (#10)
Hey, doesn't this guy know we are way past stage two, the fighting has begun, and the "W" is in sight. Peace.
#66. To: TooConservative (#12)
The future of the Truther movement is declining numbers, an ongoing stream of literature by clever con-men to peddle to the faithful as the decades unfold until all of you die off around 2070 or so.
1 : the act of conspiring together
2 a : an agreement among conspirators b : a group of conspirators syn see plot
#69. To: christine (#66)
yeah, just like those who still continue to talk about the Kennedy assassination, huh?
i believe that the 9/11 truth movement is global
#73. To: TooConservative (#69)
This is essentially another false numbers idea that is popular but entirely false.
#103. To: FormerLurker, christine, Cynicom (#73)
The manuevers performed by the aircraft that day could NOT have been performed by somebody who never flew a jet in their lives, yet NONE of them had ever flown a jet, and not one of them was even a mediocre pilot.
#106. To: TooConservative (#103)
Not that I want to discuss it in detail but I've long mused that it would be quite possible for a single aircraft electronics technician familiar with the autopilot-GPS systems to hack out a program that could be uploaded into the aircraft systems by a terrorist in only a few moments (while an unskilled pilot held the stick steady in flight while safely thousands of feet in the air) and you could program the aircraft to fly quite precisely to its target, no expert human terminal guidance would be required. None.
#112. To: FormerLurker (#106)
First off, the NTSB reports that the autopilot was turned off as Flight 77 approached Washington DC.
Secondly, it is not obvious HOW to enable or disable autopilot, it is a function of the flight management computer. Hani Hanjour, the alleged "pilot", never trained on a 757 simulator, nor was he even capable of flying a Cessna, let alone a multi-engine jumbo jet.
Finally, not even a highly trained professional pilot can negate the laws of physics and aerodynamics, and not only did the plane fly too low at too high of a speed to be able to hit the Pentagon nose first and flying level, but there is no evidence that a 757 hit the Pentagon since the windows aren't broken where the wings would have struck at 500+ mph.
a) The crews and passengers of all "hijacked" aircraft were subdued and/or neutralized with chemical agents such as nerve gas pumped into the ventilation systems.
b) The planes were taken over by remote control, as you suggest.
c) Regardless of whether the actual "hijacked" planes struck the World Trade Center towers, or some other specially equipped aircraft made to LOOK like those hijacked planes, they weren't being flown by "angry arabs", some of whom are still alive to this day.
d) Whatever struck the Pentagon was NOT a 757, thus NOT Flight 77.
#117. To: TooConservative (#112)
But a reprogrammed autopilot could certainly do so. These planes have exceptionally sophisticated autopilot systems and the flight characteristics of these aircraft are extremely well-documented.
#121. To: FormerLurker (#117)
No, an aircraft of the size and wingspan of a large airliner most certainly COULD NOT fly that low to the ground at that high of a speed and DESCEND. It would CLIMB, not DESCEND.
#124. To: TooConservative (#121)
Strangely enough, I believe that airliners fly that close to the ground every day. As we write, I expect a dozen or more airliners around the world are flying exactly that close to the ground without climbing.
#133. To: FormerLurker (#124)
Strangely enough, airliners don't land at 500 mph (which is their cruising speed at 35,000 feet).
#136. To: TooConservative (#133)
Believe me, you cannot simply pose arguments that end up along the lines of irresistable-force-meets-immovable-object. It really doesn't work that way in the real world; ask any engineer. If the plane is in a basic approach pattern but programmed to touch down exactly at the outside edge of the building, the speed and inertia of that huge-ass aircraft would overcome the ground effect that would try to rebuff the plane back up further from the ground. So it might rebuff the aircraft except that it hit and devastated the Pentagon before the ground effect could force it back into the air.
#138. To: FormerLurker (#136)
Thing is, for the plane to descend it would have to lose airspeed, yet it increased airspeed at the beginning of the approach while maintaining the same relative altitude, then somehow descended without losing airspeed or pointing the nose down.
#153. To: TooConservative (#138)
#166. To: FormerLurker (#153)
It turned AWAY from the side of the Pentagon where the high value targets were (such as Rumsfeld's office), where it could have easily DOVE into the Pentagon and exploded all over the roof, spreading flaming fuel over a good portion of the complex. It would have been INFINITELY easier to simply dive into a structure the area of 28 or so football fields, than to perform precision manuevers and line up to hit a 77 foot high wall at ground level.
Yet that is what is CLAIMED to have happened. The aircraft is reported to have come out of it's final turn after having descended to tree top level, then picked up airspeed for about a mile before impacting the Pentagon.
#169. To: TooConservative (#166)
(Edited)
I think my explanations, imperfect as they are, are still more plausible than what you're offering. But relying on the data we have at this point may be a mistake. We don't have any kind of independent study of the data and lack some information on the systems themselves under extreme conditions like flying at such high speed so near the ground.
#176. To: FormerLurker (#169)
If you want to read what a real pilot and aeronautical engineer have to say about all this, read the following link...
#180. To: TooConservative (#176)
And my explanation of a hacked autopilot is still far more conceivable than untrained pilots performing such maneuvers.
#183. To: FormerLurker (#180)
A) The aircraft could not have descended to ground level from 50 feet high in a fraction of a second while maintaining a neutral pitch (ie. keeping the nose level).
#187. To: TooConservative (#183)
And the plane did, as I've said, penetrate all five rings. In this section of the Pentagon, renovations were five days from completion for its new steel underframe, a project which had been underway for the entire Pentagon since the mid-Nineties.
#191. To: FormerLurker (#187)
Did you know that aircraft are basically egg shells made of aluminum? Do you know what happens to an egg when you throw it into a lawn? Do you know what happens if you throw that egg into a brick wall?
#197. To: TooConservative (#191)
You can "bounce" an egg off the ground, just like skipping a stone on water.
#199. To: FormerLurker (#197)
Put up a video on YouTube of you bouncing an egg off the ground, I'd like to see it done.
#204. To: TooConservative, wudidiz (#199)
Replies to Comment # 204.