[areafiftyone]

Thanks for posting this reminder. I just clicked on the website and read Brian Clark's story. It brought that day right back into my mind. I will never forget! WE MUST NEVER FORGET!

[epluribus_2]

it had better not be about why we need to understand why they hate us...yada yada... or the "Bush administrations lack of engagement in the mideast peace process..." or ANYTHING having to due with palestinians. They fell because of the islamic hatred of a group of subhuman maggots who have no place in this millenium - or the last one for that matter.

[pikachu]

Any Freeper know if there is any thruth the urban legand that the hijackers, due to their lack of real flying experience, ran the port tank nearly dry before crashing into the WTC? Supposedly the out of balance aircraft caused more damage because shift the kinetic energy into the starboard wing actually, for a fraction of a second, caused the right side to expand!! They are calling it the 'vast right wing conspiracy'.

</groan> :-)

[dead]

Thanks for the ping.

Nova does great work (when they stick to non-political things like astronomy or engineering.)

[Harrison Bergeron]

This was published only weeks after the attack. It's still the most comprehensive explanation out there. I'd be surprised if Nova has anything more believable or accurate.

[JoeGar]

I'm interested in knowing if they air the fact that there was no asbestos insulation on the steel piers (to keep them from melting). (I've read that the asbestos was not used to satisfy the environmental wack-os of the time.)

[Pyro7480]

I saw a documentary on the History Channel or the Learning Channel along these lines sometime over the past couple of months. It quoted a fireman saying an old rule of thumb amongst firemen is "Never trust a truss." If I remember correctly, the documentary went over how the floors of the Towers consisted of trusses lined up next to each other. The reason why the Towers rose so quickly during construction is because the walls and the floors were prefab, and all that needed to be done at the site was the raise them into place and attach them (oversimplifying the process, of course). When the jet fuel was ignited in the areas affected by the impact of the planes, it weakened the trusses of the floors in these areas, causing them to sag in the center, until the weight of the material on each floor became too much for the sagging trusses to hold, causing the floors to pancake one on top of the other. I think the footage of the Towers' collapse and the evidence from the rubble supports this theory.

[gridlock]

The towers fell because Islamic terrorists flew fully fueled airliners into them. At the moment of impact, the result was inevitable. The exact mode of failure may be interesting from an engineering point of view, but is not relevant otherwise. The forensic studies of this structure will be used to design the next-generation hardened structures. But to suggest that there was any negligence in the design or construction of the towers mitigates the culpability of the evil men who perpetrated these attacks.

From everything I have seen, the towers were a marvel of innovative and intelligent design. Unfortunately, there are some parameters which are beyond the scope of what is designed for. Airliners smashing into the upper floors at 600 mph is one of those things. If every design were require to withstand every concievable event, we would all be living in holes in the ground, and there would be no skyscrapers (and precious few two story buildings).

[Kay Soze]

Clinton already told us why they fell:

"This country once looked the other way when a significant number of native Americans were dispossessed and killed to get their land or their mineral rights or because they were thought of as less than fully human.

"And we are still paying a price today,"

The Washington Times

www.washtimes.com

Clinton calls terror a U.S. debt to past Joseph Curl

Published 11/8/01

[dr_who]

Fire. Insufficient insulation to prevent the fire from melting the girders. There you have it.

[Timesink]

late night bump

[jriemer]

TLC and / or the History Channel had a program called the "How the Twin Towers Collapsed" and was shown several months earlier. The preview video that I saw this morning for Nova's "Why the Towers Fell" appeared that it was copied frame for frame from the same program.

It goes to show that the For-Profit networks got off their butts faster and investigated the science and engineering of the issue much earlier than the PBS crowd. They understood that people out "there" were curious about why the buildings came crashing down and got their show on TV before the Big Bird set. The only reason why there's such a big commotion right now about the PBS documentary is that they have so many supporters in the media at large.

Discovery Channel, TLC, History Channel, Animal Planet and all the kiddie networks are all making money hand over fist in programming territory that used to be the sole domain of PBS before the advent of the cable box. Why? PBS didn't care about the viewer's interests - just their own agenda.

The only thing I'm surprised about is that this show about the WTC is not being aired during one of their fundraising drives. Call me a cynic.

jriemer

[Howlin]

Thanks!

[dead]

For a heartbreaking, amazing story, a preview from tonight's special, check out:

Above the Impact: A WTC Survivor's Story

[ZinGirl]

OK...so we watched it...and we concluded that "Why The Towers Fell" is because insane, militant idiots crashed huge jetliners into them.

While the show was interesting, my husband and I found it to be a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking....IF the structure had different fireproofing or IF the structure hadn't used dry wall...basically just blaming decisions from 30 years as being cheap and stupid (you know, back when we didn't have the technology to use computer models....)

and, being PBS, IF anybody had flat out said, "well, the towers fell because insane, militant idiots crashed huge jetliners into them" it was edited out.