Posted on 07/27/2002 8:30:11 AM PDT by JohnFiorentino
Without knowing the co-efficient of drag of the object and the location of one of my books with formulas in a box in the garage (we just moved) I can not do that calculation.
Not only this, but the Center Wing Tank is not a gas tank just stuck in the space between the wings. It is composed and constructed of the LOAD BEARING transverse beams and trusses that tie the wings tegether and to the aircraft's fuselage! I doubt the integrity of the aircraft (re: the continued attachment of the wings) could survive a blast sufficient to blow the nose completely off AHEAD of the CWT!
The NTSB would have us believe the structural box that connects the wings and the fuselage together experiences an exposion that compromises is carefully calculated and built stressed structure survives this exposive event sufficiently intact that the wings don't fall off. Indeed they would have us believe that it is still strong enough to support the massive forces of torque, windsheer, gravity, and engine thrust to allow the now noseless 747 to continue to FLY?!?!?!?!
Absurd.
And you contend that it then ACCELERATED so it could climb 1200-3800 feet in 18 seconds???? Where did the additional velocity come from? Did the departing nose section give its momentum as a gift to the balance of the plane???
Did Scotty beam it up????
i just love the way you disinformation specialists try to obfuscate the issues.
No one needs to "image" a missile big and fast enough to counter the planes momentum... gravity and air will do that quite well enough.
NO ONE is saying that TWA800 stopped dead in its track and dropped straight down. I have stated several times that the radar track data areconsistent with a BALLISTIC FALL from the moment of the initiating event.
A ballistic fall does NOT prohibit some rise in altitude... the inertia of the 747 is not compromised by such a statement, it is merely now distributed among all the parts of the plane as they depart in different vectors. In fact, since the plane WAS climbing, a certain amount of inertial movement in that vector would continue. HOWEVER, Absent thrust from the engines and lift from the wings (in stall) then the ONLY FORCES acting on the various parts are gravity and wind, both resistive and ambient.
A ballistic fall occurs in a gravity field when all propellant forces are exhausted. In a vacuum, the only force affecting the object(s) is gravity. In atmosphere, wind, random lift producing flutter, etc. complicates things, but only a bit. The object has NO OTHER SOURCE OF EMERGY to add or subtract velocity other than gravity (which is nothing to ignore) and fluidic air effects.
As soon as the engines converted to idle at the loss of control signals from the cockpit (at the initiating event) the plane would start to decelerate. Add in an open fuselage, wings in stall, and the forces that caused the separation of the nose, the loss of streamlining would cause the deceleration would be even greater.
Unless you have some method of breaking the conservation of energy and magically add a lot more energy to this system, it could not have climbed.
The idea that anyone can be so blind as to seriously believe that comment isn't just laughable, but highly troubling..
Exactly which witnesses were those? You mean the ones that said that the CIA never interviewed them?
PS: Still at this game Rokke? Man, what a boring job..
For our purposes we will assume that the VECTOR of this force is straight up. The aircraft is subject to gravity and, absent a counteracting force, will fall 32 feet in the 'next' second. The wing lift force is actually sufficient to overcome that 'fall' AND to also to lift it another 33 feet in that 'next' second, a total of 55 feet per second of force straight up.
Another force being applied to the plane is the drag of the atmosphere's fluid flowing into, around, and behind all surfaces of the aircraft. To maintain forward speed at level flight this force is counteracted by the thrust of the engines that is kept in equilibrium with the TOTAL drag. Drag increases with speed and decreases with altitude. Let's assume that TWA800 was equipped with the most powerful Rolls Royce engines Boeing mounts on that airframe (it wasn't) which are rated at 80,600 LBS of maximum thrust each. Let's further assume (conservatively) that TWA800 had its throttles set at 50% and the engines were producing 40,300 Lbs of thrust or a combined total thrust of 161,200 Lbs to overcome 161,200 Lbs of drag.
Now we have the initiating event. The nose is blown off, the control signals to the engine are instantly cut off, and the engines immediately revert to idle speed (per Boeing) producing minimal thrust. The aircraft, responding to the sudden loss of the nose and power, pitches upwards on the fulcrum of its center of gravity. The drag (if the plane were intact) is the equivalent of all four engines thrusting in the OPPOSITE direction at 161,200 Lbs! The plane starts decelleration. The pitched up attitude increases forward drag by some unknown but not insignificant amount. The vector of the lift is NO LONGER STRAIGHT UP... it is instead angled somewhat backwards and adds to the decelleration. The wind of forward motion no longer flows over a conical nose but rather is caught on a jagged fuselage skin, adding to the force torquing the plane about the fulcrum of the CoG. The tail surfaces are also dropped into the windtream and will, being on the other side of the fulcrum add a countering vector to the massive forces working to pitch the plane up. However, the tail is designed to be either slightly reverse lift or nuetral, it will stall even earlier than the main wing.
Remember the lift? It is falling off rapidly as the angle of attack is increased and the speed is decreasing. Gravity's acceleration vector is STILL straight down. The drag's force vector is still straight back through the direction of travel... both still being applied to the aircraft. There are no forces being applied any longer to counteract any of these.
No more energy is being added to the system. The disconnected parts of the plane still have a lot of kinetic energy but they can only lose energy at this point. The momentum is retained by all parts proportionate to their mass. All of those parts are subject to the forces of gravity and those applied by drag and friction. What energy the plane had in its momentum is rapidly being applied to lift or trying to overcome drag... it is a losing battle. If the wing miraculously maintains a proper angle of attack, the energy momentum will be exchanged for altitude... but the wings don't and go quickly to stall... no lift at all.
All energy contained in the momentum of the system will be applied in trying to overcome the drag. Gravity is INSTANTLY pulling the entire shebang downward at an acceleration of 32 feet every second. The Upward momentum vector is overcome fairly quickly after lift is lost... less than one second. Without lift, the aircraft will fall 64 feet in the next second and 96 in the following... accelerating at 32 feet per second until it reaches terminal velocity of about 450 feet per second in 15 seconds. It will have fallen 3810 feet in the 15 seconds after stall.
The forward momentum is rapidly being used up by drag. Asuming the plane mantained lift for 3 seconds after the IE, and not allowing for any decelleration or loss of lift, the MOST the plane could have risen is a mere 100 feet... but let's give it 200.
0 seconds - IE @ 13,800
3 seconds - stall and start of ballistic fall @ 14,000
18 seconds - terminal velocity - ~450 ft/sec. @ 10,190
24 seconds - Massive fireball - fuel/air explosion @ 7,300
41 seconds - Ocean impact - 0 feet.
That's what the radar said... loss of signal to first ocean impact - ~38 to 44 seconds.
If we add in either climb scenario we have to add 18 seconds for the climb... and from 3 to 9 seconds more for the fall. The CIA scenario needs 27 more seconds than can be accounted for and the NTSB scenario needs 21 seconds more than can be accounted for.
Sounds like the new Accounting math being used by Enron and its ilk.
Finally:
"Ballistic Fall.
The captain of the NOAA research ship Rude entered Flight 800's last secondary radar position, speed, heading and gross weight into his computer and it predicted the landing point by calculating a ballistic fall. He went to that spot and immediately found the main wreckage including the fuselage, wings and engines. "
Unless you want to repeal the law of gravity, there literally is not enough time for ANY climb at all.
Period.
"Let's further assume (conservatively) that TWA800 had its throttles set at 50%Its throttles were at max, but that's irrelevent. The NTSB did simulations based on throttles off, climb thrust and max thrust and found there was little difference.
the equivalent of all four engines thrusting in the OPPOSITE direction at 161,200 Lbs!
What? How are windmilling engines in idle producing 161,200 lbs of thrust in any direction?
There are no forces being applied any longer to counteract any of these.
Remember the lift? It doesn't disappear until the wings stall, which doesn't happen instantaneously even in your scenario.
All energy contained in the momentum of the system will be applied in trying to overcome the drag. Gravity is INSTANTLY pulling the entire shebang downward at an acceleration of 32 feet every second.
That's not even true in the scenario you just described. The wings did not INSTANTLY stall, and its upward momentum is not instantly reversed by the forces of gravity. In fact, the upward momentum initially increases by the aircraft's initial pitch up.
What energy the plane had in its momentum is rapidly being applied to lift or trying to overcome drag... it is a losing battle.
You are contradicting yourself here, because you just got done saying gravity is instantly pulling the aircraft downward at 32ft/sec^2. That can't be true if their as any lift at all.
but the wings don't and go quickly to stall
It took at least 3 seconds. And that is 3 seconds of a massive infusion of upward momentum based on the increasing pitch.
All energy contained in the momentum of the system will be applied in trying to overcome the drag.
You are contridicting yourself again. You've forgotten your previous statements about lift.
Gravity is INSTANTLY pulling the entire shebang downward at an acceleration of 32 feet every second. The Upward momentum vector is overcome fairly quickly after lift is lost
These statements cannot both be true.
The Upward momentum vector is overcome fairly quickly after lift is lost... less than one second
Where is your proof lift was lost in less than one second?
You've proceed to disprove your entire theory with your table of data. After repeating several times that lift is lost instantly, your table shows the stall occurs at 3 seconds. Then, you completely ignore any momentum gained in those 3 seconds and assume there is no upward vector when you state the ballistic fall starts immediately after the stall. I don't know how you calculated terminal velocity since nobody knows the drag coefficient of a 747 without a nose is. Finally, an aircraft with wings doesn't fall ballistically. Even if stalled. Neither does a sheet of paper, a leaf, or the famous noseless balsa wood glider
Here's what another "shootdown" tinfoil hat had to say about that and related issues.
LSoft Flight 800 Forum
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 1997 21:26:05 -0400
From: Ian Goddard
[excerpt][emphasis added]
Breaching the security of a criminal investigation, which all FBI investigations are, is a matter of National Security by definition.
Did Sanders illegally acquire evidence? Yes.
Did someone illegally give him evidence? Yes.
Is it the role of the govt to enforce law? Yes.
Because the answer to all those questions is "yes," the fact that the govt is pursuing violations of law proves only that the govt is guilty of enforcing laws.
The situation presents zero evidence of illicit cover-up and should not be measured as evidence of anything except that the govt is doing its stated job. If the FBI does not go after the violation, that would be derelict.
Another thing, it's been suggested that opponents of the Friendly Fire theory on the list are govt agents and that they work for some PR firm or some such hired to defend the Navy and the official case. Assuming that that is true, it is implied that this is yet more evidence that the govt is guilty of downing TWA 800 and has hired people to cover it up.
Let's think about it for a moment: if people started accusing Sears of killing people, and if it was false, would Sears have a duty to not defend itself? A duty not to hire a PR firm to defend itself? No. Would hiring a PR firm to defend itself constitute evidence of culpability? Absolutely not!
YET those who WANT to believe Sears is guilty will see it and paint it as evidence of guilt. That is in fact fascistic: any entity, private or public has a right to defend itself against charges made against it; to attempt to pervert that right to self-defence into evidence of culpability is a profound injustice. It is an effort to rape the opponent.
BTW, I'm not "switching sides." After taking time off to cool down from my TWA 800 fever, I've realized that I should look at things from the other side, make the other case, and then test the logic. Too much I was piling up anything I could to support the F-Fire theory with anything that felt like evidence, but which, upon a more objective analysis, might not even be evidence at all.
It's fun and even addictive to kick around the government, that big faceless establishment that your allowed to pummel with words; but that does not necessarily ensure logical conclusions.
Could the FF theory simply be a house of cards built upon a base of wishful yet errant analysis? It's not wrong to propose a theory. When I proposed the FF theory over a year ago (not the first to do so) I was viciously attacked, my reputation smeared and called insane 10 million times. That will cause the meek to quickly disappear, it caused me to go to war, to prove I was not wrong, it was an ego battle. So as a matter of fact, I started off on the wrong footing. The people who attacked me did everyone on all "sides" a disservice.
If no one had attacked me, I probably would have wandered off onto other things. Instead I had to prove my case by any means short of the unethical. I don't consider listing all the reasons to believe X unethical,even if the reasons not to believe it are omitted, so long as those for are true.
While not unethical, it's not objective, it is biased. The need to defend my reputation against such base assault compelled be to be as biased as ethics would allow. If I had to run everyone in the Navy into jail in the process, so be it. Which is not to say I did not induce belief in my case in myself. I was 99% sure.
Taking several weeks off my TWA 800 fixation has been the best thing I've done in over a year! I don't care to ever get involved inthe case again and will ignore replies to this, which I'm sure will accuse me of becoming a govt agent and therefore as more evidence that the Navy shotdown TWA 800... yawn. I've had enough of all that paranoia.
I think we all need to get over TWA 800 and let the families pursue the case in the fashion that they see fit.
[end quote]
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