Posted on 11/12/2001 9:26:15 AM PST by Merovingian
NTSB News Conference beginning......
How do you know those calculations are valid? Where did they come from?
You're right! Yikes!
An aircraft wing flies at two measurable angles, the angle above or below horizontal, called the pitch angle, and the angle of attack.
Most people think the wing stalls when a certain pitch angle is exceeded. This is completely false. An aircraft can fly at virtually any pitch angle, even upside down. It can even stall in perfectly level flight. Pull the power off and if you try to hold altitude, the speed will decay and if you continue to try to hold level altitude, the wing will stall.
Likewise, wing can even stall in a dive.
The critical element isn’t pitch angle, but rather angle of attack. That is the angle at which the wing is facing the oncoming or relative wind. Stall is entirely determined by angle of attack, angle of bank and G loading. For example, in level flight, at max speed, oncoming air (relative wind) is coming straight at wing. As speed decays, pitch angle is increased, because les air moving over wing is being asked to do same job (of lifting A/C) Angle of attack also changes. Finally, the critical AOA is exceeded and wing stalls. Same thing can happen in climb, dive, etc.
Now move to an aircraft in air. Pull back on stick, A/C climbs, pull too much or have not enough power and wing stalls.
TWA 800 had more than enough potential energy in a mass of 800,000 pounds moving at 325 knots+/- to cause a climb of the magnitude experienced. Engines played a very small part of it, and forget any “calculations” that A/C would stall in ½ second.
It’s easy to be a worrywart, senseless skeptic and simply report false information heard from others. It’s even easier to repeat BS from those who want to discredit everything. Crash of TW800 fits entirely into the physics models. Just because some armchair experts can’t understand it, don’t be discouraged.
Flying magazine did a great series of articles on this. Would suggest then. Also get the NTSB report. Makes very dry involved but fascinating reading. Much better to read the original than what some “expert” says it means.
Some of the people here won't believe the government under any circumstances. The next time they see a car accident on the highway, are they going to assume that it was a terrorist attack?
They have to do with torque of the unbalanced airplane, with its extremely aft-of-center CG, operating on the moment of inertia of the noseless craft. The tail balances the nose, and when the nose falls off, the tail tips down like a seesaw, which (rapidly) increases the angle of attack.
Which, by the way, checks with what the witnesses saw: the plane stopped "like it hit a brick wall" and the remaining pieces fell ballistically from there, albeit with some remaining forward velocity.
Whatever you believe about physics, can you explain why the eyewitnesses were never allowed to speak in any official forum, why the CIA produced its video, or why many of the witnesses and some of the family members, are extremely upset about the TWA 800 "investigation"? I can.
I understand that, but where did they come from? Who did them? What assumptions did they make? What agenda did they have?
This is a beautifully crafted example of a straw man argument. I did not claim that stalls never happen in level flight - in fact, I claim that TWA 800 stalled in level (or nearly level) flight when the nose was blown off, and the pitch angle then rapidly increased. Stall is entirely determined by angle of attack, angle of bank and G loading. For example, in level flight, at max speed, oncoming air (relative wind) is coming straight at wing.
Right. And when the nose falls off, the tail section drops and the angle of attack increases rapidly.
Now move to an aircraft in air. Pull back on stick, A/C climbs, pull too much or have not enough power and wing stalls.
TWA 800 had more than enough potential energy in a mass of 800,000 pounds moving at 325 knots+/- to cause a climb of the magnitude experienced. Engines played a very small part of it, and forget any “calculations” that A/C would stall in ? second.
You just contradicted yourself - you just said in the first of these two paragraphs that the wing will stall if you pull too much - then you say, the plane will climb irrepective of the engines, because there's enough kinetic energy, and forget about stalling. What does your rocket science say about how the plane gets the upward force ("lift") to change its path from level flight to ascending flight, so that it can thereby undergo a zoom climb.
By the way, total kinetic energy has nothing to do with it. There was enough chemical energy in the space shuttle Challenger to make it into orbit, but it didn't do so as a result of the explosion because that energy wasn't usefully available as propulsion. So it is with the kinetic energy of TWA 800, post nose separation: with stalled wings, there is no lift, and with no lift there is no upward component to force, and without that, there is no ascent. (Which is what the witnesses saw.)
It’s easy to be a worrywart, senseless skeptic and simply report false information heard from others.
It's also easy to be a condesending shill, using big words and straw man arguments to pretend that you speak from some sort of expertise, when in fact you actually contradict yourself, in such a way that even a non-expert can see this.
It’s even easier to repeat BS from those who want to discredit everything. Crash of TW800 fits entirely into the physics models. Just because some armchair experts can’t understand it, don’t be discouraged.
What is your response to the fact that the eyewitnesses, all some 700 of them, were ridiculed, suppressed, and discredited by the FBI, NTSB, and CIA? Let's hear it. They were all wrong? Including military experts who have seen missiles and who saw the crash from before the explosion? Some of them have become the "investigation"'s harshest critics.
Flying magazine did a great series of articles on this. Would suggest then. Also get the NTSB report. Makes very dry involved but fascinating reading. Much better to read the original than what some “expert” says it means.
Major Meyer, Capt William Donaldson, and others are not "armchair experts".
http://www.twa800.com/index.htm
http://www.flight800.org/
You might also try to explain why various involved government agencies stonewall FOIA requests to produce data that they are ordered to produce under federal law.
Here's a calculation that gives, very conservatively, a 3 second stall time, and much less than 3200 ft. ascent: http://twa800.com/news/zehr.htm
Be careful to not engage in an attack-the-messenger logical fallacy. In other words, it doesn't matter who did the calculation or what their agenda is - just look at the calculation.
If I were to engage in such nonsense, I could challenge the NTSB's calculations that MB26 so eagerly cites, claiming that they too had an agenda which was to cover up the crash.
Gee, is the NTSB going tinfoil on us? Don't they know this crash had to be a coincidence, an isolated incident unrelated to 9/11? Perhaps the next theory will be that it's a "lone nut" with a grudge against American Airlines.
I posted what was on the TV screen at the time; and we all know now that various "FACTS" have mutated wildly since the first reports; example: "plane arriving at JFK" vs. "plane departing JFK". However, the cockpit voice recorder has indeed been found, but not the flight data recorder yet, according to news conference on NY news radio this morning.
Happy Thanksgiving, coloradan. God bless America.
It isn't a fallacy, it does matter. Without looking at it yet (I will) I can imagine this calculation is not a simple physics equation. It may depend upon variables assigned by the calculator or it may be a formula devised to get an answer and not be the correct formula at all. These things do depend on who is doing the calculating. Evaluating that is a standard part of evaluating such evidence.
No, they are doing their jobs. They are looking at the evidence. Unlike the people that made up their minds yesterday what the real answer was. Nobody is saying it has to be an accident. We are saying, stop jumping to conclusions.
Think about it. A/C is moving through air horizontally or in slight (normal) cruise climb configuration. As it loses nose, center of lift moves instantly far fwd. Center of gravity moves far aft instantly. A/C therefore begins to pitch up, but until climb takes effect, relative wind will be coming from below extended horizontal centerline of wing, ergo relative wind and AOA DECREASE marketly. This translates to vastly increased lifting power of entire craft. AOA would not shift back through zero to positive and overly positive (stall) until aircraft had dissipated energy (effectively speed in this case) and lost speed at top of its climb.
Things in this area are well covered in the Commercial Pilot's and ATP Written Exams.
As far as your personal attacks over what supposedly 700 said, I would love to go over each with you. Some are so bad as to be funny. How about the woman, upon whom many rely, that she heard exposion, looked out to sea, saw missile, plane crash, etc. She forgot physics 101 about speed of sound, speed of light, from A/C 10+ miles offshore!
In addition, this whole things has become a circular argument. All those super secret government agencies tried to surpress all the data, etc. The data must be so real because you can't now read it, BS.
As far as Major Meyer, he has interpretation of what he saw. With 2200 hours flight time nd two tours in RVN, I have my own and itis shared by all pilots I have discussed it with. Commander Donaldson was just a trying to flak a book, period. His fellow citizens thought so much about his evidence that thet convicted him of stealing it in open court.
I'm not going to waste my time debating TW800 with you. The non-pilot conspiracy whacko crowd has made this their cause. 99.99% of real pilots have not. It's simply a case of one uninformed person passing on false infrmation to another. Some is so stupid as to be immediately recognisable. Others sound good but fail the tests of physics.
Please, there are other more important things to spend time doing than debunking the latest conspiracy whackos. Ceaser probably had to bear with "Hey, psst, Ceaser! Did you hear about Titus?"
I can not take time to debunk this anymore. Please get NTSBreport and read it yourself. Also get ALPA report. Don't depend on what someone says they say. Read them yourself.
Adios. There is fact based serious work to do.(sorry, but spell check off today)
You deserve him.
Most people understand what it is they do not understand. You do not.
I expect you are about 13, (emotionally or physically) hate your parents and all authority, and have read LOTS of books about flying REALLY big airplanes.
PS, re: God Bless America. I certainly hope he does. We certainly wouodn't have a chance with you and your type in charge.
Yes, I remember that woman. I also seem to remember that very few of these "700" witnesses actually reported a missile. When it was figured out exactly what each person really said there were only a small handful with that story.
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