Posted on 05/04/2007 10:51:10 AM PDT by Hal1950
Remember, you’ve already eliminated being out of range and inconsistent damage as not constituting sufficient proof of elimination.
Besides you know, there’s no limit to modifications that can be made to a signal flare, and it solves the streak of light problem. Probably a CIA modified signal flare to boot.
Your lack of response to direct questions does not go unnoticed. Name that missile.
With 80,000lbs of less weight on the wings, they stay intact and the pitch up becomes a zoom climb.
You are aware that those two sentences are mutually exclusive, aren't you?
When a wing stalls, it stops flying... there is no lift to counter the force of gravity. To climb, the aircraft needs lift... but the wing is stalled.
Without lift, what provides the force for your "zoom climb?"
What has "yaw," the "twisting or oscillation of a moving ship or aircraft around a vertical axis," have to do with the pitch?
Also "Center of Pressure" and "Center of Lift" are not synonymous. Center of pressure can change with changes in angle of attack... while Center of Lift is pretty much fixed by the design of the aircraft's airfoils.
Move the center of gravity, which is designed to be ahead of the center of lift to maintain a "nose heavy" condition which allows the tail airfoils to control the pitch of the aircraft, behind the center of lift and that movement will cause the aircraft to pitch up... move it too far back and the pitch becomes extreme and the wing will stall.
You are aware that those two sentences are mutually exclusive, aren't you?
When a wing stalls, it stops flying... there is no lift to counter the force of gravity. To climb, the aircraft needs lift... but the wing is stalled.
Without lift, what provides the force for your "zoom climb?"
It's not that hard to visualize. A wing that is stalled still makes lift (especially one going 400 mph with 5,000 square feet of area). It just makes a ton of drag along with the lift.
Lift doesn't instantly go to zero. The entire wing doesn't stall at once, either. The root will stall long before the wing tips. What's left of the plane goes into an upwards ballistic trajectory.
Its not going to start tumbling in pitch, that is for sure.
Maybe if the tail fell off, but not the nose.
Also "Center of Pressure" and "Center of Lift" are not synonymous. Center of pressure can change with changes in angle of attack... while Center of Lift is pretty much fixed by the design of the aircraft's airfoils.
Move the center of gravity, which is designed to be ahead of the center of lift to maintain a "nose heavy" condition which allows the tail airfoils to control the pitch of the aircraft, behind the center of lift and that movement will cause the aircraft to pitch up... move it too far back and the pitch becomes extreme and the wing will stall.
Yaw has nothing to do with pitch, but an airliner is more likely to "tumble" in yaw than pitch. Airbus 300's have a nasty habit of doing this when their vertical stabilizers break off.
747-100/200's do not (see JAL 123/8119).
If the nose were to break off of a 747 it won't tumble in pitch (even you are saying this) so I was addressing the possiblily of "tumbling" in yaw, which is also low (at least initially) for TWA flight 800.
I didn't bring up "tumbling". I was merely responding to someone who was calling my Aeronautical Engineering degree and 20 years industry experience into question.
Hope this helps, UNGN
It’s fun to watch you and a few others on here argue with the tinfoil hat crowd. Keep up the good work!
I would love to see an accident like this where the multiple investigators from FAA, NTSB, FBI, ATF, and CIA agents could silence the fact that a missile struck a commercial airliner.
Hell, they even had the gumption to think up a perfectly plausible explanation supported by the evidence. Amazing!
If only the gov’t were that efficient. Those of us who have worked for them or with them know better.......
Thanks.
I think the 747 is a remarkably stable aircraft. But I also think that the forces that were brought to bear on TWA800 were overwhelming after the nose was lost... from whatever cause. I believe that the wing did not fail structurally (the center wing tank box girder system finally blew and compromised the strength of the system) until much later in the event... but the wing did not "fly" in a zoom climb because it had stalled fairly quickly.
If you look at the time line I constructed, there is a small climb after the loss of the nose. My thinking is between 100 to 200 feet of ballistic climb left from the upward trajectory (33 ft per second) plus some lift as the pitch increased to stall.
It is my opinion that it then completed a quasi-ballistic fall with the wing occasionally finding an angle of attack that brought some lift back into the mess... but randomly vectored.
The drag had to be enormous. The engines were no longer countering the force of drag (IIRC, the throttles were set to maintain velocity and perhaps a little more to start the authorized climb - a 747 co-pilot once told me that would probably be about 60%) when the engines reverted to idle. (The throttle controls are apparently digital... FADEC - Full Authority Digital Engine Control?).
If I recall correctly, the max thrust of the Pratt & Whitney engines of TWA-800 was approximately 186,000 LBS for all four engines. 60% is ~110,000 lbs. I estimate that 100,000 lbs of that was used in overcoming drag. When the engines reverted to idle, the equal amount of drag (100K lbs) was acting on the crippled airframe unopposed except for the momentum of the system.
When I worked out the mass equations, and checked the theoretical possible climb available from converting forward velocity into vertical climb, it required 100% of the available momentum in the system to achieve the 3200 feet. 100% - That means there would be no forward vector after reaching peak altitude. I did not believe that possible. Not given the final splash in location and distance from the initiating event and the time available for all these events to take place.
Here is an off the cuff treatise I posted on FR five years ago:
Think of it this way... the plane was climbing by the application of a force that caused it to rise at approximately 33 feet every second. This force is the TOTAL LIFT of all wing surfaces.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 16 feet [Corrected - Swordmaker - 05/07/2007]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 49 feet per second of [lift] 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. [I was wrong on these estimates... I had not at this point done the actual math... these were estimates off the top of my head - Swordmaker - 05/07/2007]
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.
192 posted on 07/31/2002 2:52:06 AM PDT by Swordmaker
FADEC in a 747-100... BZZZTTTT.... Wrong answer.
Assuming the throttles will go to zero after the cockpit breaks off is a very bad assumption to make.
The fuel control unit for the JT9D engine is controlled with a mechanical cable.
If the cable was destroyed when the cockpit fell off (A good assumption), there is no guarantee the engines would return to Idle, until they smacked the water.
When conspiracy theories are based upon bad assumptions, do you see why the rest of us cling to the "status quo"?
Well said.
According to Boeing the engines in a 747 are digitally controlled. I don't know if their acronym is FADEC or something else... but it is not controlled by a mechanical cable from the cockpit.
And it is NOT an assumption. It is what Boeing testified to, what numerous 747 pilots have stated, and what is in the record.
And it is NOT an assumption. It is what Boeing testified to, what numerous 747 pilots have stated, and what is in the record.
The engines in Flight 800 were JT9D-7AH's. There is NOTHING Digital about these engines (The "D" in FADEC).
If someone testified they were FADEC controlled or even electronic controlled, they are confused.
The JT9D didn't get electronic engine control until the 7R4D in the 747.
Please post a link to this "testimony", if you can.
Awwwwww, give it a shot and show them what you REALLY know about missiles.
Every conspiracy theorists worst nightmare - actual facts.
What’s scares them even worse is when you understand what you quote or publish.
SampleMan
Why don't you tell everyone why it was a MANPAD system and not a signal flare from a fishing boat.
EOD:
Awwwwww, give it a shot and show them what you REALLY know about missiles.
I don't claim to be an expert on missles, unlike S'man, who now wants to say the eyewitnesses saw a signal flare. -- I suggest you ask him why.
And perhaps both of you could explain why it's so important that the gov't version of this incident be accepted as gospel?
No, you don’t know much about missiles. I suggest you contact Rosie O’Donald for support. She has the same mind set.
Whatever.
Sure you do. You claim that they can do things that they can't, and that despite the facts we should believe you. We don't.
unlike S'man, who now wants to say the eyewitnesses saw a signal flare. -- I suggest you ask him why.
Poor TP can't read straight. I challenged you to explain why it couldn't be a signal flare. The point being that it couldn't have been a MANPADS for the same reasons, and that it met your only evidence (a streak of light) just as well. Again logic is not your strong suit.
And perhaps both of you could explain why it's so important that the gov't version of this incident be accepted as gospel?
The facts, not the governments report, should be what weighs heavily. Your kook ideas simply aren't supported by the facts. And any conspiracy that requires more than three people to keep a secret (for no apparent reason to boot) is highly questionable. Your particular kook theory requires hundreds of people with no stake in lying to do just that. I especially like the claim that the USN shot down TWA 800 and got several thousand people to keep it perfectly secret.
The idea that it might have been a missile was fine, until all of the evidence showed that it wasn't.
Are you even vaguely aware of the inaccuracy rate of eye witnesses in plane crash reports? Its monstrous. That doesn't mean you ignore them, but it does mean that you don't hang your hat on them either.
Still waiting for you to answer my question (several now actually but let's focus) as to why it couldn't have been a signal flare? Can we assume, as usual, that you won't be answering questions because of your fear of self-incrimination?
The facts, not the governments report, should be what weighs heavily.
I agree. The facts of the gov't report have been questioned by responsible people [eyewitnesses among them] since it was issued.
Your kook ideas simply aren't supported by the facts.
I know what I & my wife saw that night on a network satellite feed. Many others saw the same 'streak of light' in person. - We are not "kooks" and you are violating FR's personal attack rule by saying so.
Your particular kook theory requires hundreds of people with no stake in lying to do just that.
Bull; - post my "particular kook theory" that says anything like that; - or quit this BS.
I especially like the claim that the USN shot down TWA 800 and got several thousand people to keep it perfectly secret.
You would. Your main stock in trade is 'straw man' BS.
The idea that it might have been a missile was fine, until all of the evidence showed that it wasn't.
"ALL of the evidence"? Get a grip on your empty rhetoric.
Are you even vaguely aware of the inaccuracy rate of eye witnesses in plane crash reports? Its monstrous. That doesn't mean you ignore them, but it does mean that you don't hang your hat on them either.
There are other aspects of this incident that cast reasonable doubt on the gov't version of events. Those, together with what my lying eyes saw, mean that my hat is hanging securely.
Still waiting for you to answer my question (several now actually but let's focus) as to why it couldn't have been a signal flare?
I've seen signal flares in the service. This was not a signal flare, as many testified, and as the missing 'cocktail party' TV tape would verify.
Can we assume, as usual, that you won't be answering questions because of your fear of self-incrimination?
Your basic weirdness surfaces again S-man. How on earth could what I've said here "incriminate"; me?
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