Harry Veeder wrote:
I suspect the WTC towers were designed with a structural weakness to make any future demolition easy.
ABSOLUTELY NOT! That would be insane. The WTC Towers were one of the strongest structures made up to the 1970s. They withstood the effects of the crashing airplanes and fire far longer than any previous structure could have, or than most would today.
They collapsed because millions of tons of steel and concrete fell about 6 meters when one of the floors finally collapsed. The force from that immediately sheered the next floor supports, and the ones below that, one after the other. This was obvious from the metal recovered from the wreckage. It is easy to tell the difference between metal that was melted and broken from heat, and metal that was broken by the force of falling weight. In any case, putting explosives in the lower floors would be pointless. They would not be needed. The energy of the falling building was roughly equivalent to a small nuclear bomb. It far exceeded the force you could achieve with conventional explosives. Along the same lines, having the airplanes fire missiles into the building before they struck would be ridiculous. The energy release from a missile is trivial compared to the kinetic energy from an airplane, and that kinetic energy is far smaller than the energy release from the burning jet fuel. The fuel has enough potential energy to drive the aircraft for hours at close to the speed of sound! Firing a missile first would be like hitting someone with a pillow first and then hitting him with a Mack Truck going at 60 mph. Why bother with the pillow?
A missile is effective that it can be guided to the target and it causes intense damage to the machine it strikes.
- Jed
