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Flight 11 Wheel Issue

Brainster

Penultimate Amazing
Brainster
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May 26, 2006
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Ningen, a budding no-planer, thinks he's got proof that Flight 11's wheel and the columns from WTC 1 could not have ended up where they supposedly ended up, which is on Cedar Street, approximately 500 feet from the tower.

He (I assume) goes into great detail but essentially the argument boils down to "I don't believe it." So I thought I'd do a little rough calculation.

We'll assume that the wheel hit on the lowest level impacted by Flight 11, which according to Wikipedia is floor 93, which we'll estimate at approximately 1,189 feet above the ground. Therefore, we know that the freefall time to the ground would be about 8.6 seconds. How fast would the wheel and the steel columns have to be going to end up 500 feet away?

Well, about 58 (500/8.6) feet per second, which works out to 40 miles per hour. This seems to be a pretty trivial calculation. Yeah, maybe with air resistance it might have to be a little faster, but nothing that seems impossible on its face.

Anybody having a hard time believing the impact and explosion could have ejected the steel with the wheel away at roughly 40 miles per hour? Any problems with my logic/calculations?
 
Calculations...who needs them if you are a "no-planer".

lol

TAM
 
Brainster said:
Any problems with my logic/calculations?
Click to expand...

I have a slight problem with your calculation. Your assumption that the wheel would end up where it landed seems unfounded! In fact, it's likely the wheel ended up farther away then where it initially hit, making the impact point closer than the final spot. This implies a horizontal velocity below 40mph.
 
The alternative being that some guys with a crane planted this in the street? Or that after the landing gear became lodged in the panel, explosives blew it away from the building? Hmm. Those options seem equally likely to me.

879045aee5fae68e7.jpg

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Anti-sophist said:
I have a slight problem with your calculation. Your assumption that the wheel would end up where it landed seems unfounded! In fact, it's likely the wheel ended up farther away then where it initially hit, making the impact point closer than the final spot. This implies a horizontal velocity below 40mph.
Click to expand...

You need to look at the photo. The wheel is embedded in one of the windows (according to the text on the photo, which appears to be from the NIST report) and thus attached to a fairly large three-column chunk of metal. This didn't bounce much.
 
Brainster said:
You need to look at the photo. The wheel is embedded in one of the windows (according to the text on the photo, which appears to be from the NIST report) and thus attached to a fairly large three-column chunk of metal. This didn't bounce much.
Click to expand...

I'd be willing to bet you that you are wrong. I have no idea how we'd settle it though.
 
This diagram shows the landing gear to be much farther away, at Rector & West St. Unless that's a second landing gear? I don't think I've seen a photo or description of another from flight 11.

879045aee9ce9b232.jpg

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Gravy said:
The alternative being that some guys with a crane planted this in the street? Or that after the landing gear became lodged in the panel, explosives blew it away from the building? Hmm. Those options seem equally likely to me.

Click to expand...
the wheel was installed on the inside of the panel during the power downs the previous weekend, i mean think about it, if you were a businessman working in teh towers, youd have more important things to do that wonder why a 3 foot, 1000 pound aircraft wheel it sticking out of the wall, right?

Brainster said:
Maybe I could put a piece of cyclone fence on my front hood, get the car up to 40 mph near a cliff...
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if you end up going with this id like to place a bet on the quality of your brakes :)
 
Gravy said:
This diagram shows the landing gear to be much farther away, at Rector & West St. Unless that's a second landing gear? I don't think I've seen a photo or description of another from flight 11.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/879045aee9ce9b232.jpg[/qimg]
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Poking around, it looks like the 767 has two sets of four wheels on the back, one set of two on the front for a total of ten wheels. This is just an unspecified wheel. Since St Nick's was destroyed by Tower 2's collapse, this is a photo of evidence that likely wasn't visible only an hour later.

It does speak a lot to the CT mindset that they leap to the conclusion that it was put in place by a truck and a work crew while everybody was looking up at the building.
 
Brainster said:
Poking around, it looks like the 767 has two sets of four wheels on the back, one set of two on the front for a total of ten wheels. This is just an unspecified wheel. Since St Nick's was destroyed by Tower 2's collapse, this is a photo of evidence that likely wasn't visible only an hour later.

It does speak a lot to the CT mindset that they leap to the conclusion that it was put in place by a truck and a work crew while everybody was looking up at the building.
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You're right. Here's the piece that went farther south. The other photo shows the parking lot next to St. Nick's.

879045aef77a575fd.jpg

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Gravy said:
The alternative being that some guys with a crane planted this in the street?
[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/879045aee5fae68e7.jpg[/qimg]
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Holy cow, I hadn't seen that before. Was the street not crowded with traffic when that landed there?

I've often wondered, when I see videos of the crashes themselves, how many people were injured/killed by the falling debris from the crashes.
 
CurtC said:
Holy cow, I hadn't seen that before. Was the street not crowded with traffic when that landed there?

I've often wondered, when I see videos of the crashes themselves, how many people were injured/killed by the falling debris from the crashes.
Click to expand...

I've read of one account of a woman who was hit and severely injured by a piece of the plane. IIRC she was partially eviscerated when a piece hit her in the lower back. I don't know if she survived or not though.

ETA this might be about her...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/09/10/MN80965.DTL
 
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CurtC said:
Holy cow, I hadn't seen that before. Was the street not crowded with traffic when that landed there?

I've often wondered, when I see videos of the crashes themselves, how many people were injured/killed by the falling debris from the crashes.
Click to expand...

I seem to recall a woman finally dying just last year who had suffered horrible burns from jet fuel while she was walking in the street next to the WTC.
 
CurtC said:
Holy cow, I hadn't seen that before. Was the street not crowded with traffic when that landed there?

I've often wondered, when I see videos of the crashes themselves, how many people were injured/killed by the falling debris from the crashes.
Click to expand...
That piece landed on the sidewalk/parking lot next to 90 West St. and St. Nick's Church. Many people described it, including firefighter Dean Coutsouros here.

I don't know if anyone was hurt by it, but others were apparently hurt by landing gear parts, as EMT Orlando Martinez describes here (warning: very graphic account).

According to NIST NCSTAR 1-7, 18 bystanders/occupants of other buildings were killed by debris and jet fuel from the aircraft impacts. Another 17 people were killed at unknown locations (may have been in or out of the buildings). It's safe to say that many more were injured by the flying debris.
 
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