Reply #332: mmmmmm [View All]

[OnTheOtherHand]

The velocity of the block affects its momentum, yes. So (for instance) if you can somehow induce the upper block to creep down slowly until it's just a few inches above the lower block, and only then begin to fall, then the towers probably won't collapse. All that is obvious, even to engineers.

I am asking you to make an engineering argument about why you purport to believe that the towers should not have collapsed. Here I think the problematic word was "favors," which is why I prepended "appreciably." Suppose we assume that the upper blocks free-fall 6 feet instead of 12. Result: collapse of the towers. So, what on earth are we talking about? And why do I have to ask you over, and over, and over, and over?

As far as the alternatives, I started with the floor sections because that is the obvious weak link for fire-induced weakening of structural steel.

That's amazingly foggy. It's one thing to emphasize the importance of sagging floors; it's another thing to assume that collapse initiation entails the collapse of a single floor section. Are you assuming that? I can't tell, because you seem to insist on using fuzzy language like "weak link."

Of course the natural reaction is not always right. But your stated position is that "the only way 9/11 would have been a more obvious inside job is if the official death toll were 3,333." Yet you are, to put it charitably, struggling to come up with an argument that the towers might not have collapsed without controlled demolition, never mind that they obviously could not have.

In any case, it is still true that the columns get progressively stronger down the tower, and there is major loss of material from the floors at each collision-- both are complicating factors for your fillet.

Spooked, people have been modeling those for years. Of course they are "complicating factors" -- and of course we are nowhere near having a collapse model that would explain the fate of every piece of metal and concrete in each tower -- but if you want to "argue" that obviously those considerations would prevent the towers from collapsing, then really all anyone has to say is, "I refuse to take your word for it."