[JohnFiorentino]

I have a real cheap "test" for you. Get yourself a wooden glider, you know the kind, with that little metal piece on the nose. Fly it, lotsa fun right?.....Now take off the metal piece and try to fly it.......Not so much fun, huh?

[timestax]

bump

[sam_paine]

Well, Mr. Activity Coordinator, you are quite the condescending fellow, aren't you?

I simulate mixed signal circuitry for a living, and if you use this type of model to test a theoretical implementation, then I hope you are not in the engineering business.

If the zoom-climb trajectory was simulated based on data from the NTSB, let them publish those data to the FOIA requester. If their simulation generates a track that matches the radar, then how could reviewing the data be so problematic??

If the simulation was very coarse, (i.e. did not detail actual aerodynamic damage to control surfaces, account for actual thrust of remaining engine(s) running, blast impulse...) then why not entertain an emulation of the scale wreckage in a wind tunnel? Relatively inexpensive, and less "model theory" to argue over.

The NTSB works for you and me. If you are satisfied with their answer, good for you. Go fly your balsa wonders elsewhere.

[willyone]

I was thinking the same thing. However something that weighs 250 plus tons traveling at three hundred miles an hour may do some strange things. One thing though not discussed is the change in drag when the nose came off. Instead of a streamlined nose section there is now a hollow tube with all that air slamming into it. We had two family friends sitting in row 18 and I hope that it was quick for them.

[Timesink]

I have a real cheap "test" for you. Get yourself a wooden glider, you know the kind, with that little metal piece on the nose. Fly it, lotsa fun right?.....Now take off the metal piece and try to fly it.......Not so much fun, huh?

Michael Rivero? Is that you?

Bluntly stated, a wooden toy glider is about as aerodynamically similar to a 747 as a Model T is to a Corvette, if not less.