Posted on 05/17/2003 7:23:43 AM PDT by joesnuffy
And yeah, they do refer to it as pounds of fuel. Only us piston drivers use gallons any more.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Hmmm. Thai Airways, March 3, 2001. 737, on the ground. Like 800, the a/c was left running on the ground during a long hold (TWA was an ATC ground hold, Thai was waiting for a VIP). One stew was killed.
Want another? OK. May 11, 1990. Depending on which report you read, a Phillipine 73 was either taxiing or pushing back when its center wing fuel tank just blew up. (Guess what was going on while it was sitting?) 8 pax were killed.
On both of these machines, the structure was compromised, and between that and the fire, it was clear that if either one had blown up in the air all aboard would have perished. So yeah, it has happened other times.
In all three cases there is no doubt the tank went kB! What is puzzling and unclear, is why. Bombs have been ruled out (like I said, bombs leave very particular evidence in their wake). It looks like under some circumstances, high temperatures can alter the physical properties of Jet A and other jet fuels (this was unknown until studies occasioned by 800). Specifically, they can reduce the flash point (which has nothing to do with explosion, but is where the fuel vaporizes) to a fuel-air mixture. Then, the fuel-air mixture has to be stoichometric, or at least combustible. (In most cases short of an empty tank with unusable fuel only, the mixture is too rich -- too much fuel, not enough air -- to blow up). Then. something has to set the mixture off -- a spark from a pump? A spark from the fuel level sender system? Static electricity?
Of course, just because we have other evidence of fuel tanks blowing up in planes, that might be something else if we can't blow them up that way in the lab! Unfortunately, while the statement "No one, yet, has been able to reproduce such an explosion," and variants thereof, are articulated with great vigour by Cashill and Co., the facts are quite different This page, again at Cal Tech, specifically debunks that common misconception, as well as many of the other misconceptions, misunderstandings, and outright lies that some people have told.
So, if the evidence leans so strongly one way, why do people still believe in conspiracies, missiles, whatever?
I see several reasons. One, who wants to believe that planes can "just blow up?" I mean, we all fly on planes and we like to think that they will get us where we are going, and not give us a Go Directly to Final Judgment card in the Monopoly game of life. Unfortunately, under some circumstances, they do blow up -- as the three I cited in this post did. We'd like to think that professional aircrews don't just run out of gas, or fly into mountains, but unfortunately I can point you to a few of those, as well. We'd like to think that rudder actuators don't get a wild hair and flip planes into the ground on approach, but it's happened. Anyway, we want there to be a reason, a neat tied-up package, a bad guy like the ones on TV. Osama did it! (or Bush, if you're Rivero!) But sometimes bad stuff just plain happens. Sometimes there are circumstances we didn't think about when the plane was on the drawing board. The FAA didn't used to require a failure-mode analysis on fuel systems, now it does... a little memorial to the victims of 800. That, if statistics hold, might save a life in another five years or so.
A few of the people in this fight have an agenda. They believed that there was a vast conspiracy of some kind before TWA 800, and they believe it afterward, and everything that happens is just one more article of proof. If it contradicts them, hey, the SEALs ate my homework, or the guy's an agent or informant, or something.
And a lot of well-meaning people have been sucked in by the agenda crowd. It's understandable. For instance, some of these books are decent reading and construct a plausible scenario. They don't tell you what they are leaving out (the "unknown unknowns" as Rummy says). So you have to find that out on your own. One good way is to read the NTSB stuff I posted earlier, read the Cal Tech thing in this post, by all means read Sanders and Cashill and the missile guys' websites. There is a book on TWA 800 for the general reader, Deadly Departure by Christine Negroni. it's not a very technical book and it ends with the usual liberal "Government-must-save-us-from-all-risk" nonsense.
I think that Cal Tech Misconceptions page is so important that I'll cite it again.
Read it all, make up your own mind. I did.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
True, but everybody's the target of sicko Arabs.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Thanks.
It would seem to me, that if the pumps can't get too the last 50 gallons, then the alarm should not sound alerting the pilot to pump fuel.
Thanks.
It would seem to me, that if the pumps can't get too the last 50 gallons, then the alarm should not sound alerting the pilot to pump fuel.
Ah. The all-purpose conspiracy answer--just say "well, maybe it was, but the Evil Conspiracy hid it."
That's not evidence.
Also, many telemetry packages have shrouds designed not to break apart because the test engineers would like as much data as possible. These packages can even survive impact on water for up to the first 100 feet.
Perhaps. But only if the missile hits at a relatively low velocity. SAMs smacking a 747 broadside aren't in that kind of environment.
I would suspect that the package of any missile used in such a test would EASILY penetrate a 747 without breakup.
Wrong. According to the missile theorists, this Navy missile was boosting all the way--the witnesses agree that a plume that only matches a very high-impulse booster motor was still running at the time of impact. So, if it was fired from 200 miles away, it had developed some truly fearsome velocity.
But there's the problem. A Standard Block IV fired from the Normandy (the only ship out there able to reach Flight 800--JUST barely) would have been gliding to target and not showing any plume.
Strike your telemetry-package theory. The missile in question would not have been visible from shore.
NO S**T, SHERLOCK!
But it's the missile theorists' argument.
Second, a missile theory is just that, a theory.
A theory without much evidence at all to back it, and what little evidence does support it is contradictory.
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