Originally posted by ridgeback
What kind of structure is the US bank tower? Is the main structure internal like most buildings or the external walls like the wtc ? Then crash a 757 at around 570 mph into it and see how long it stands.
To be clear, what you have to do to make a 1000 ft steel skyscraper fall is:
1. Pick the highest speed possible for a plane in your failure model.
2. Pick the highest possible weight for a plane in your failure model.
3. Pick the highest possible strength for the plane's structure in your failure model.
4. Pick the lowest possible strength for the tower structure in your failure model.
5. Reject all models that don't come remotely close to inducing failure.
6. Run your model repetitively with the failure model steps 1-5 give you and when you can't initiate failure, start cranking the internal temperature up 300% over what you have data to support. If that doesn't initiate failure, go higher. If that doesn't work throw in words that people think you're using correctly, but aren't, like "creep", etc.
7. That just initiates localized failure...not global failure, so this step involves..."it can easily be shown that" or "therefore" or "verily verily we say" - "the whole damned thing fell in on itself."
Now those are the required steps... to make it glitzy you throw in lying, changing your reasoning, and retracting complete statements for rejecting models that didn't initiate failure. You refuse to disclose needed data to review your work, you discard evidence (i.e. the steel of the structures) so that no one else can verify your data, and you reject scientific data that contradicts your statements....without any real scientific basis for doing so.
So, I'm sorry, but it takes a hell of a lot more than one 757 going 570 mph (pffft) to bring a skyscraper down...just ask NIST. They threw everything but the kitchen sink at the building to get it to fall...and then put a LOT of time into obfuscating that very point.
[edit on 5-19-2009 by Valhall]
