Posted on 12/02/2001 2:36:46 PM PST by Map Kernow
Edited on 05/26/2004 5:02:39 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
LITTLE wonder the National Transportation Safety Board has bleated for help from NASA to help them out in the tragic crash of American Airlines Flight 587. The NTSB has shown in the past that it is run by a bunch of bumbling bureaucrats who couldn't find a needle in a thimble. Here they were with 265 dead, and God knows how many mourners, giving us this claptrap that the tail fell off mysteriously.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Well, I would say Rockaway is "heavily populated" by cops and firemen. People who work for the government. People committed to public order. People with a sense of patriotism and community. People who would strive for accuracy in recounting what they saw, wouldn't you think?
And let me say to anyone who wants to start in about the "inherent unreliability of eyewitness testimony"---just think about what might happen if you're ever a victim of a crime, and the only evidence to prosecute the perpetrator is your eyewitness testimony and that of a cop's. Puts things in a different perspective perhaps...
And one has to explain how the tail was found the furthest back along the flight path if it wasn't the first thing to fall off.
It's educational to look at all the posts last night about the Russian booster re-entering over the midwest..wildly varying descriptions of it, some people even describing it as a set of airplanes with contrails, etc.
Eyewitness testimony is better than none at all, but I'm familiar with the scientific tests and demonstrations where it's revealed to be ridiculously unreliable. Have you ever seen any of them?
I'm not much for tin foil hats or conspiracy theories, however the first eyewitness reports I read claimed their were explosions in the air, these reports were from several people. I don't remember anyone who claimed to see the plane crash before exploding, but then I'm sure I could have missed these reports. I will do some thread searches later. As far as the tail being found first, if an explosion caused the tail to come off, I would expect it to not travel near as far as the rest of the plane, the engines, etc. simply due to the mass vs. drag of the varous components, the tail would likely "flutter" and slow down quickly, dropping to the water. I don't like tin foil hats, but then again I don't like theories that exclude what appears to be excellent eyewitness reports.
Not at all. Now that you've brought up these alleged accounts, let's see if you can post them with links. Otherwise, keep your "tinfoil" invective off this thread---or explain why the two ordinary citizens whose eyewitness testimony is cited in the story are "tinfoil hatters."
And one has to explain how the tail was found the furthest back along the flight path if it wasn't the first thing to fall off.
No, one merely has to reconcile the eyewitness accounts with that fact, unless the only possible explanation for the tail's location in the debris field was that it "fell off first."
It's educational to look at all the posts last night about the Russian booster re-entering over the midwest..wildly varying descriptions of it, some people even describing it as a set of airplanes with contrails, etc
"Educational"? You mean that two eyewitness accounts by respectable citizens of Rockaway who saw Flight 587 directly overhead as it came apart are no more reliable than these accounts of a rocket booster re-entering the atmosphere at many, many times the altitude of Flight 587?
Yes, it's "educational," all right: it educates everyone that you want to intimidate everyone into disbelieving or rejecting these eyewitness accounts of the 587 air disaster, based on scurrilous charges that they're promulgated by "tinfoil hatters."
Yes, I am. A lot of them are funded by defense counsel. I don't happen to believe that eyewitness testimony is inherently "ridiculously unreliable." We might as well chuck out our whole system of criminal justice if anyone really believed that.
Why don't you discuss what the witnesses saw, instead of pontificating about eyewitness testimony?
What kind of forces (in unusual directions) are on seen on those engine mounts due to gyroscopic precession?
Air resistance? A tail alone is much less aerodynamic than the rest of the plane.
Indeed. One would not expect the tail or vertical stabilizer or whatever, as cleanly as it came off (whenever it came off) and as intact as it was, to follow a straight trajectory with the rest of the craft. I don't know what exactly happened, but I do know that finding the tail in a cerain place doesn't conclusively establish when it fell off, or in what sequence with respect to other parts of the craft it came off.
Seems to me like terrorist might consider the Rockaway area as a prime target for an attack.
People who would strive for accuracy in recounting what they saw, wouldn't you think?
Yes...that is what I think.
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