Do we agree the towers were designed to withstand jetliner crash?

[jaydeehess]

Again the question is simple and it is your side that ignores the most basic question and simple hides behind the word proof. The question is who is the author of the white paper and is it a likely logical inference that the paper refers to Skillings study.

Really? That question is not contained in the thread title, nor is it contained in the OP.

I have provided proof that Skilling stated that he did an anaylsis for fire and you ignore that as well.

I have addressed that subject several times now, and yet you do not recognize that fact. Are you ignoring it when I do?

.

So get real with your no proof nonsense.

You surmise that Skilling or at least whomever authored the white paper, did a study on the amount and distribution of passive fire suppression materials and of the effect of impact on the active fire supression systems. You surmise that the abilities of people doing calculations by hand in 1963 are equal to the abilities of 21st century supercomputers. You surmise that the science of fire engineering has not advanceed since the 1960s.
I do not surmise these, I would like therefore to see the paper and you say you saw a copy of it on a truther site. So how about you let is take a look-see ourselves? Does this site give a citation for the paper? Where did they find it? You say you saw it but you also say you surmise that Skilling was an author. Did the paper you saw not contain the names of its authors? That would be extremely odd for such an engineering paper.

Further the idea that understanding jetfuel fires has changed significantly in twenty years is not supported by any 'proof' that i have seen by your side

,
We are not speaking about jet fuel fires as that fuel burned away within 20 minutes of impact. This fuel was an ACELLEREANT, that ignited office fires over large areas of several floors all at once. A fire situation that would typically take several hours to develop was therefore in effect within seconds of the first flame appearing. Your sentence above seems to illustrate a distinct lack of understanding of the situation on your part.

though in general I imagine we will here the same retort of you have to be an expert like all of you supposedly are to understand anything. If you are experts then explain your expertise or it is meaningless

I do not know a great deal about structural or fire engineering but I do know that in 1960s no office structure was ever purposely designed to withstand impact of a large fast jetliner or the fires ignited by thousands of gallons of acellerant when the sprinkler systems have been made inoperative.
I have been an electronics tech for 30+ years and I know the advances in technologies used in designing those systems has grown from pencil and paper development to computer programs that design a circuit practically on their own. I have seen circuit drawing go from drafting board to Autocad. What used to take days now takes minutes. I understand that structural or fire behaviour analysis was a pen and paper operation in the 1960s and that took weeks to do what would now be considered a first approximation, and that with modern computing a much more accurate and precise approximation can be had in a shorter time period than would have been required in the 1960s lower accuracy study.
All of this is moot however as I and several others have pointed out. The towers both DID withstand the impact of the aircrafts. It was the combination of the impact damage and the fire stresses that caused the building's demise.

 

[Oystein]

What you have shown is that Skilling thought the fires would kill many people. Everything beyond that is conjecture.

"Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building"

Now if you can sit there and claim he did not do an analysis on fire you are simply looney tunes

(I put quote tags about what I actually said, and added ending quote marks to the quote)

But Skilling goes on:

"Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed."

In my world, the biggest problem would indeed be that a lot of poeple would be killed. Do you agree, or do you have another opinion on size of problems?

What Skilling said proved to be exactly true:
- The planes cause horrendous fires
- The fires killed a lot of people (and prevented the evacuation of more)
- The towers were still there after the planbe crashes.


To claim that Skilling's (or anyone's) analysis in 1964 or earlier included the consideration of progressing fires and the structural response of the structure through the entire time (hours, days) till the fires are out is, as I said, conjecture. Skilling doesn't say that. You can repeat his quote as often as you want, but that will never change the fact that all he said is:
- Plane would cause horrendous fire by dumping fuel into tower
- Plane would not destroy tower
- Fire would kill a lot of people
- Fire is a huge problem

It is possible, going by that 1993 quote alone, to conjecture that his analysis included an analysis of fire effects on structural integrity, but that is and foreever remains conjecture, until you find additional evidence.

In addition, however, we do know from Robertson that the state of the art of fire science wasn't advanced in 1964, and no one did in fact calculate the effects of horrendous fires started by a plane that crashes into the towers, an event that is guaranteed to change the as-designed structure and knock off the as-designed fireproofing, both in hard to predict ways. From this follows that it was exceedingly unlikely that such a calculation was performed in 1964, and even more unlikely that it yielded realitic, solid results.


So your task now is to find evidence that this analysis was done. Evidence, not conjecture.

If ans when you find such evidence, you must explain why this calculation, done in 1964, should have been superior to ones done after 2001, for example by NIST.

 

[Gamolon]

Your unfounded assertion, that no fire analysis was ever performed is absolutely ridiculous.

Public concern in NYC at that time contributed to the professional motivation behind the Boeing 707-impact analysis.

What possible crash scenarios were covered in this study?

Did they consider a scenario where the perimeter columns of one corner of one floor were severed by the left wing of the Boeing 707, say 10 columns in on the face were severed by the wing and 10 columns perpendicular were served also?

What if the impact scenario was then moved in to the left to include the fuselage? How many perimeter columns were severed then? How many core columns were severed possibly? How many suffered a percentage of damage and how did that affect their ability to support a load?

What if the plane hit fully into the face of the building, level flight path? What if the wings would have been tilted 60 degrees? How many floors would be impacted? What if the plane struck at floor 110? 105? 100? 73? What if the plane flight path was coming down at a 60 degree angle?

Now add fires? Temperature? Which floors? 7 of the core columns severed? 7 damaged by 50%? 3 core columns severed and 5 damaged by 30%? Floors damaged by 20%? 10%? 3 core columns on the long axis of the core severed, two on the short axis of the core severed, and the engine of the plane severed one core column on the opposite side?

Which permutation did they analyze MM?

Are you telling me that the analyzed every single possibility?

 

[DGM]

One glaring problem with using an office fire study from the 60's and comparing it to today is, the contents are not even close to being the same.

It must really suck for "truthers" having to rely on studies from the 60's to support their views of the today.

 

[Justin39640]

Which permutation did they analyze MM?

Are you telling me that the analyzed every single possibility?

He just compared an impact analysis to the engineering behind the Manhattan Project. Obviously, they had hundreds of thousands of engineers working on that analysis.

 

[Stamuel]

I can predict that anyone that starts with "No- You are still wrong" likely has nothing relevant to say and I will be damned if I was right on the mark. Your analogy is inept to say the least. Anyone with a brain understands that Einsteins relativity only overturned certain aspects of Newtonian physics. John Skilling was not offering a vision of unified field theory, the question is in regard to a rather specific piece of information. That being the damage a jetliner crash would cause to the WTC. Now you can equivocate until the NIST investigators go public, oh i mean until the cows come home, and you can think up lame analogies all you like, but the fact of the matter is that either the science predicted the buildings would stand or it did not

If I understand your claim, you are saying that something like a scientific consensus existed in the 1960's regarding whether the WTC would survive a 600mph plane impact. You believe this based on the existence of a white paper written in 1964. Thus, you treat those who doubt the conclusions of the white paper as attempting to overturn a scientific consensus, and thus requiring extraordinary evidence.

This line of reasoning fails in several ways.

1. A finding representing scientific consensus should at least pass peer review. Unless I am confused about the meaning of "white paper," they do not go through peer review.

2. A single paper, even if it passes the strictest peer review, does not automatically represent a scientific consensus. Replication (or some kind of verification) is required. Pilot studies, hypotheses, interesting contrary views, and so forth all pass peer review. The best of these get other scientists to say, "They might be onto something." Then people test it. Often, initial results in an area that has not been studied very much turn out to be incorrect. The mere existence of a paper is not good enough.

3. Replication of a result requires a fairly precise formulation of the result. If your paper just says, "That thing I was looking at reacts with water," no one will be able to replicate it. The fact that we only have vague third hand descriptions of the original white paper means we cannot treat it as a definitive statement on much of anything. We do not know specifically what its results were.

4. From what I have seen written about the white paper, the white paper probably said that if a 707 hit at 600mph, the WTC would not topple over. If that is indeed what the paper said, then it was correct. Thus, we do not need extraordinary evidence to prove it wrong, since it was not wrong.

5. If there was anything about fire in the original paper, 1-3 above show that we cannot treat those results as a consensus. Just a preliminary calculation. However, even if for the sake of argument we pretend that 3 pages of handwritten calculations represented a definitive scientific of the impact of fires on a plane-impact-damaged building, we still have extraordinary evidence to show that it is wrong: the NIST report (and other papers, studies and reports). The conversation goes something like this: 1964 says, "The buildings collapsed. How did I get that wrong?" 2006: "Here's how." 1964: "Oh."

Let me know if you think this is a dodge of your questions.

 

[twinstead]

I'm still confused. As many of us have pointed out, the buildings did indeed survive the plane impacts.

What's the issue?

 

[Justin39640]

I'm still confused. As many of us have pointed out, the buildings did indeed survive the plane impacts.

What's the issue?

Apparently, comprehension.

 

[000063]

What possible crash scenarios were covered in this study?

Did they consider a scenario where the perimeter columns of one corner of one floor were severed by the left wing of the Boeing 707, say 10 columns in on the face were severed by the wing and 10 columns perpendicular were served also?

What if the impact scenario was then moved in to the left to include the fuselage? How many perimeter columns were severed then? How many core columns were severed possibly? How many suffered a percentage of damage and how did that affect their ability to support a load?

What if the plane hit fully into the face of the building, level flight path? What if the wings would have been tilted 60 degrees? How many floors would be impacted? What if the plane struck at floor 110? 105? 100? 73? What if the plane flight path was coming down at a 60 degree angle?

Now add fires? Temperature? Which floors? 7 of the core columns severed? 7 damaged by 50%? 3 core columns severed and 5 damaged by 30%? Floors damaged by 20%? 10%? 3 core columns on the long axis of the core severed, two on the short axis of the core severed, and the engine of the plane severed one core column on the opposite side?

Which permutation did they analyze MM?

Are you telling me that the analyzed every single possibility?

I find it interesting how Truthers demand precise evidence of others, then make vague claims about "fire analysis" and "jetliner crash" themselves. Almost as if they're trying to ignore the difference between what was expected and what actually happened.

One glaring problem with using an office fire study from the 60's and comparing it to today is, the contents are not even close to being the same.

It must really suck for "truthers" having to rely on studies from the 60's to support their views of the today.

For one thing, they have a lot more computers. Those things MM and NB are trying to ignore and downplay, even while they use them to make their posts.

I'd still like to know what NB's point is.

 

[jaydeehess]

He just compared an impact analysis to the engineering behind the Manhattan Project. Obviously, they had hundreds of thousands of engineers working on that analysis.

not to mention that the variables involved and margins of error for these parameters were actually less chaotic in the Manhattan project.
It took months to develop that first nuke with dozens of on site physicists and engineers and the docuementation of this exercise would fill volumes.

Much the same applied to the space program though it was indeed much more complex. That fact is reflected in the number of test rockets that failed, often spectacularily, the very definite slow development despite political pressure , and the fantastic amount of physical testing of components and subsystems.
Once again the documentation on each component and system testing would fill volumes and took large teams of professionals weeks/months/years.

Yet MM andNB would have us believe that a complex fire response analysis considering aircraft impact and essentially immediate, large area, multilevel office fires, was performed quickly by a handful of engineers.

To that end they refer to a three page paper, for which NB was reluctant to post a link to and which had to be supplied by a debunker.
What we learn is that it is a NIST docuement! Skilling is not named as an author and there is direct implication that he wasn't.

 

[jaydeehess]

I'm still confused. As many of us have pointed out, the buildings did indeed survive the plane impacts.

What's the issue?

The question never was whether or not the structure could survive impact. The 1964 first approximation indicated it would, NIST's computer modeling indicates it would, and real world recording shows it did.

The question is whether or not this was a stipulation of the design and a requirement for the design.
However we know for a fact that this was not part of the original design and was not even considered until very late in that process. An first approximation analysis (would the transfer of momentum cause the structure to topple?) was done on the already completed design. There is no evidence that any changes to original design were made due to this analysis.
So NB has moved on from mechanical response to impact, to structural response to fire. There is no evidence at all that such an analysis was ever performed nor evidence that it was possible to do to the level required to state that the building would survive.

OTOH such analysis is possible to some extent using the research done in the past four decades and making use of the computational tools now in existance, which indicate that the buildings would fail.

 

[Horatius]

Here, I'll do his work for him.

http://911caper.com/2011/10/17/wtc-...lanes-without-collapse-or-substantial-damage/

Please show me where this paper states that did anything more than calculations for the physical impact only.

Also, read point 7 of this paper. Why would John Skilling write "In a letter to John Skilling", if he actually wrote the paper?

Also note the initials on the bottom of the last page, "MPL:fg". This is the format used when a letter is typed up by a person's secretary. The capitals are the initials of the person who dictated the letter, or wrote the draft copy. "MPL" doesnt seem to be consistent with "John Skilling".

 

[beachnut]

Here, I'll do his work for him.

http://911caper.com/2011/10/17/wtc-...lanes-without-collapse-or-substantial-damage/

Please show me where this paper states that did anything more than calculations for the physical impact only.

Also, read point 7 of this paper. Why would John Skilling write "In a letter to John Skilling", if he actually wrote the paper?

The best information to debunk 911 truth, is posted by 911 truth.

The web site got it wrong. Skilling did not do the white paper.

The white paper was done to counter criticism about the WTC, not done by the engineers who built the structure of the WTC. You got the nut who posted the white paper who spreads a lie and says...

Below are photo stat images of WTC designer John Skilling’s 3 page 1964 White Paper showing the buildings could withstand impact by Boeing 707 – DC-8 class aircraft at 600mph.

The only study done with Skilling by Robertson was for 180 mph.

Same white paper is included in the NIST report 911 truth does not read.

 

[jaydeehess]

I read the paper. At best it is a summary of the design and comments of other firms on the design.

It refers to the 1200 page design docuements. Is that available, and if so does it mention the impact analysis? If there were I would expect some reference to that by truther sites but none exists to my knowledge. This would imply that original design did not consider impact. There no mention at all of structural response to fire, only to physical impact. This would at least suggest that an analysis of impact is separate from the 1200 page design document.

 

[LSSBB]

Others here of course claim we do not know about what models are used so it seems little more than conjecture to propose we know the difference between the two types of modeling systems.

What do you mean by two types of modeling systems?

But as usual those here will have it both ways- claiming we don't know what they did- but a the same time being certain the older calculations were faulty.

If you mean by this that the two ways you mention are mutually exclusive, I don't see your point. We may not know what they actually did in the calculations, however we do know that the buildings did not eventually survive collision with an airliner, so if they concluded that they did, and there is no other evidence of any other cause for their collapse, then it can be reasonably concluded that despite their best efforts, the buildings were not designed to survive the impact of the airplanes with the result being the damage to several columns and an extended period of out of control fires. No ding on the creators of the 1964 study, the full extent of the damage done by these planes may not have been foreseeable.

As I said before do not conflate advancing technology with the idea that Skilling was simply mistaken.

I don't understand your point here. Everyone makes mistakes, and also technology advances.

Either he had good science to understand his structure or her did not. a bunch of isolated government appointed science shills will not provide a worthy refutation for me

Who here is a government appointed science shill?

 

[triforcharity]

What you have shown is that Skilling thought the fires would kill many people. Everything beyond that is conjecture.

"Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building

Now if you can sit there and claim he did not do an analysis on fire you are simply looney tunes

Show me the paper. Show me the load calculations, fire spread analysis, heat temp analysis, anything of the sort. I'd love to look at that.

 

[Justin39640]

Who here is a government appointed science shill?

You really should sign up. The badge they give you is awesome!

 

[MRC_Hans]

By your standard of reckoning, the engineering complexity behind the Manhattan Project back in the 1940's would have made success too difficult.

And of course NASA going back to the 1950's had a serious need for precise engineering analysis of complex problems.

Because of a lack of modern computer technology, you attempt to spin the notion that engineering research and development for steel building construction was crippled or seriously handicapped back in the 1960's.

Your incredulity is not an argument.

MM

I really think this whole line of argumentation is silly, as underlined with your own examples, above:

The Manhattan project, and early NASA launches were very much trial and error. Even now, space launches, as we know, don't always go according to plan.

Obviously, there could be no experimentation in connection to the WTC tower's resistance to plane impacts.

Whatever the tools, whatever the premises, such a calculation would be theoretical.

As often, practice did not conform to theory. Live with it.

Hans

 

[Oystein]

I read the paper. At best it is a summary of the design and comments of other firms on the design.

It refers to the 1200 page design docuements. Is that available, and if so does it mention the impact analysis? If there were I would expect some reference to that by truther sites but none exists to my knowledge. This would imply that original design did not consider impact. There no mention at all of structural response to fire, only to physical impact. This would at least suggest that an analysis of impact is separate from the 1200 page design document.

No, the 1200 page design documents has not been found, according NIST NCSTAR 1-2, Chapter 1.3.

It seems that indeed this 1200 page engineering report by Skilling's firm is what the PANYNJ, who authered the three-page white paper (@ Non Believer: Do you understand by now that Skilling is NOT the author of the three-page white paper? Truther sites lie about this!), based point 3 of the white paper (the 600 mph collision claim), but it is not certain - different points in that white paper pertain to different sources. Point 1 mentions the 1200 page calculations by Skilling's firm, and points 2, 4 and 5 contain numbers that describe properties of the structural design, so it appears like these points are based on said calculations. This would be consistent with what Skilling said in 1993, when he imlied that he (his firm) considered a 600 mph impact.


Again, it needs to be pointed out:

• None of this implies that a 600 mph collision was a design objective prior to actually finishing the design; it was merely found in retrospect that the design would also be able to absorb such a hit
• None of this implies that a fire started by 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, in addition to crash damage, was at all considered in the calculations

 

[000063]

I really think this whole line of argumentation is silly, as underlined with your own examples, above:

The Manhattan project, and early NASA launches were very much trial and error. Even now, space launches, as we know, don't always go according to plan.
...
Hans

Such as Apollo 1. And Challenger. And Columbia.

http://artofmanliness.com/2009/07/20/lessons-in-manliness-from-gene-kranz/

”Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect. Somewhere, somehow, we screwed up. It could have been in design, build, or test. Whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung ho about the schedule and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work. Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, ‘Dammit, stop!’ I don’t know what Thompson’s committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause! We were not ready! We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day, when in our hearts we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words: ‘Tough’ and ‘Competent.’ Tough means we are forever accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control we will know what we stand for. Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect. When you leave this meeting today you will go to your office and the first thing you will do there is to write ‘Tough and Competent’ on your blackboards. It will never be erased. Each day when you enter the room these words will remind you of the price paid by Grissom, White, and Chaffee. These words are the price of admission to the ranks of Mission Control.”​