Plume in Flight 93 photo is different

Is the plume in this photo from Flight 93 crashing?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 129 90.8%

  • No.

    Votes: 13 9.2%
  • Total voters
    142
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Ok. I got nothing from him. And that's because he got nothing from me. I didn't give him anything to work with and so now my input, which once was important to him, is immaterial. And that's ok. I told him on RightNation that I wasn't here to prove that the photo implied conspiracy, I was taking up the discussion simply to point out that ignoring variables, of which there were many, and pressing on with his argument just presented many more questions than answers. And that I was simply going to ask those questions by reminding him of those variables, and that process in itself would simply make him look like an even larger fool than he is able to do all by himself.

An air crash is a complicated matter, killtown. The experts have said so. I've presented by exchange with one on here. And again, it seems that you know far more than a qualified Ph.D does on explosion dynamics. But please don't PM me anymore. You're a waste of bandwidth.

Thanks.
 
Buckwheatjones said:
Ok. I got nothing from him. And that's because he got nothing from me. I didn't give him anything to work with and so now my input, which once was important to him, is immaterial. And that's ok. I told him on RightNation that I wasn't here to prove that the photo implied conspiracy, I was taking up the discussion simply to point out that ignoring variables, of which there were many, and pressing on with his argument just presented many more questions than answers. And that I was simply going to ask those questions by reminding him of those variables, and that process in itself would simply make him look like an even larger fool than he is able to do all by himself.

An air crash is a complicated matter, killtown. The experts have said so. I've presented by exchange with one on here. And again, it seems that you know far more than a qualified Ph.D does on explosion dynamics. But please don't PM me anymore. You're a waste of bandwidth.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
So you don't concur with mainly R.Mackey's estimations?
 
The moderators may believe that my remarks here belong in another thread. I respectfully submit that Killtown has done everything in his power to see that the subject of this thread is not 9/11, but Killtown, and I ask that this post remain here.

Killtown, do you understand that real people died on 9/11, and that real people live with its painful legacy every day?

Do you understand that you have needlessly added to that pain, and that you have the power, with a few keystrokes, to make amends?

Do you also understand that people on this forum take 9/11 seriously?

If so, then why are you playing games? You have utterly refused to confront all the evidence that flight 93 crashed near Shanksville.

Instead, you've backed yourself into a corner with your head engulfed in an opaque cloud. You cannot, or will not, see out. You have taken absurd measures to avoid facing reality, and in doing so, have made a bizarre spectacle of yourself.

From behind the anonymity of your screen name, you have effortlessly, thoughtlessly, disparaged Val McClatchey, Bernard Brown, Charles Burlingame, and hundreds of other victims and witnesses. Your refusal to acknowledge Hal Bidlack's heartfelt letter to you speaks volumes.

If you have any sense of self-respect, compassion, or honor, you will stop this behavior.

You owe Val McClatchey an apology. Anything less is indecent.

By doing so you will spare an innocent person and her family continued grief, grief that you are responsible for.

Will you, at the first opportunity, swallow your pride, retract your claims and insinuations about Val McClatchey, and issue a sincere apology to her?

Yes or no?

If you choose to do the right thing, I feel confident that everyone here will applaud you for it. I know I will.

Sincerely,
Mark Roberts
 
Killtown said:
Here is that B-52 crash. I rotated the plane as if it were doing a nose dive like UA 93 and also to show its wingspan which is 185ft/56m (60ft longer than UA 93's). I also shrank the plane 20% to compensate for camera zoom in/out difference:
Click to expand...


Based on my frame-by-frame assessment, the fireball in the B-52 crash reaches a maximum size of at least 4x the aircraft's wingspan - or a minimum of 225m.

This is, of course, only the x-axis scope of the fireball - you can't tell what the z-axis dimensions are. Given the aircraft was travelling on the z-axis at the time of impact, this may be an important consideration (or it may not, I don't know).

-Andrew
 
Killtown, before you answer my post, please take a moment to answer Gravy's post #1345, you can't get a more courteous post than that.

But I do feel you haven't answered my previous question as to the importance of the focal length of the lens that was used in Val's picture.

I want you to take a look at the pictures on this page:
http://cp.c-ij.com/english/photoshooting/techniques/camerafunction/camerafunction02.html

Look at the pics taken with the 24mm and 35mm lenses. These are what I estimate would be the probable lens that Val's camera had.

Considering the difference of size and apparent distance of the cityscape on the other side of the river in both pictures, would you agree that knowing exactly which one of these two lenses (or even another lens) would greatly influence the results of your analysis, especially these next conclusions you have come to in your blog:

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7508/1605/1600/shanks-plume-1000ft.gif
http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/4601/plumecomparisonns0.gif
http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/7508/1605/1600/plume-comparison3.0.jpg

Again, respond to Gravy first.

ETA: Come to think of it, it would most probably be between the 35mm and the 50mm lenses, it's hard to tell.
 
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The MOAB

Killtown's dishonesty on the MOAB comparison is annoying me, so I've assembled a VERY ROUGH mathematical rebuttal. Please be aware a lot of this is "best guess" type stuff and not absolute science.

Right.

First, there's information on the MOABitself.

The MOAB uses 18,700 pounds of H-6 as its explosive filler[2]. At 1.35 times the power of TNT, H-6 is one of the more powerful explosives used by the US military.
Click to expand...

So, first to clarify, it is not a Fuel Air Explosive. It uses high-explosives.

But we'll forget that for now, because Killtown is wanting to compare the explosion size.

According to this video:

The Massive Ordnance Air Blast is the biggest conventional bomb ever created. At 21,000lbs, it can flatten an area the size of six superbowl standiums.
Click to expand...

Okay, so we have a blast area here. Now. "Superbowl Stadium" isn't exactly a precise measure, so this is where it all gets less solid.

I don't know much about football or "superbowl stadiums" so if someone has better information, please step in.

I went for the stadium that hosted last year's Superbowl - ALLTEL Stadium in Jacksonville Florida.

Now, for area, I have assumed the stadium is a circle, calculating its diameter off the longest dimension (which gives a calculation in favour of a larger area).

By my rough Google Earth measurements the stadium is 240m along its longest axis, giving a radius of 120m.

For a circle:

Area = pi x r^2
= pi x 120^2
= 45,239m^2

Now, the Wikipedia entry on ALLTEL Stadium states:

The stadium sits on 10 acres (40,000 m²) of land and originally had a capacity of 73,000.
Click to expand...

I wasn't sure if that number included carparking space etc... it appears it does not. So we will go with both numbers - 45,000m^2 and 40,000m^2.

Now, back to "an area the size of six superbowl standiums"

6 x 45,000 = 270,000m^2
6 x 40,000 = 240,000m^2

Assuming an evenly distributed blast area, the diameter of a MOAB blast would be:

r^2 = area / pi
= 240,000 / pi
= 76,394m
r = 276.3m
d = 552.6m

Or for 270,000m
d = 586.3m

Ahah! Cries Killtown. The smaller number is 5 football fields! I was right!

Not so fast.

"an area the size of six superbowl standiums" refers to the area in which the overpressure is sufficient to cause destruction. This is not necessarily the size of a fireball. Indeed, with high explosives the overpressure area is significantly larger than the fireball itself.

I don't know enough about explosives to determine how big the actual explosion would be, but I know it is smaller than the length of 5 football fields.

-Andrew
 
Buckwheatjones said:
First, let me remind you that you have come to me for my input. Three times just tonight. So if you don't respond to what I've written here, EVERYBODY is going to see this as a big Dodge. And if you respond to me in part, but not the part about apologizing to Ms. McClatchey, they will also see that as a Dodge and it will be a de facto admission of a bankruptcy of your integrity.
Click to expand...

Killtown said:
Buck, your making things waaaaaaaaaay too complicated than they need to be.

Just want to know if you concur with these estimates for your guys theory...
Click to expand...
So Killtown, you're dodging and weaving. That's great. :rolleyes:
 
Killtown said:
Your min peak is 2x the length of the wingspan.

Your max is almost 18x wider.

Don't you think that's quite a bit of difference from the fuel min/max being only 1.34x difference?
Click to expand...

So 93 made a fireball the width of 7 football fields? Hardly.
Click to expand...

My, you're just one big, walking argument from incredulity, aren't you ?

well if Andrew, Buckwheat and Apathoid concur, I'll concur.

This whole experiment shouldn't be based on one person's assumptions alone.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't be based on ANY number of people's assumptions, Killtown.

Are you afraid to see if the other OCTs concur or not?
Click to expand...

:covereyes

I rotated the plane as if it were doing a nose dive like UA 93 and also to show its wingspan which is 185ft/56m (60ft longer than UA 93's).
Click to expand...

And in the process, ignored the fact that it DIDN'T crash like this at all. Do you realise that this, and the speed of the impact, might have made a huge difference ?

Eyeball. If you'd like to show your guess, please save that pic, shrink to what size you think and post so we can compare.
Click to expand...

Incredible. Killtown, you don't understand what Mackey's saying at all, do you ? You CANNOT estimate the zoom. CANNOT. CANNOT. CANNOT. Do you get that ?

so this B-52 was going min what, 150mph? so if that was going 580mph wouldn't the fireball only be 5.8 football field lengths?
Click to expand...

It wouldn't change a thing, since the "7 football fields" figure was the MAXIMUM.
 
Interesting info on the MOAB.

18,700 lbs. of explosive at 1.35 ReF means 25,245 lbs. of TNT equivalent.

Kerosene weighs in at 6.8 lbs. per gallon (roughly).

Assuming 7500 gallons of kerosene, that's 51,000 lbs.

Now, a fuel-air bomb (for purposes of comparison) has an ReF of 5.0 (average). That means that a 51,000 lb. fuel-air explosive would be the equivalent of 255,000 lbs. of TNT.

Realistically, however, only a small percentage of the fuel would aerosolize and produce FAE-like effects, and the fuel-air mix would likely not be optimal. I'd suggest that a reasonable value of a .5 ReF (similar to old black powder [not modern smokeless]) could be used. THis would represent both the flash ignition of the fuel as well as the FAE-like effects of the aerosolized portions. That would give a value of 25,500 lbs. TNT equivalent.

Or, roughly equivalent to a MOAB blast, about 550m or so.

Of course, this does not take into account the splatter of the fuel, which could add up to (733m/s * .21s = 154m) 154m to the radius (308m to diameter), giving a maximum potential size of 858m. For arguments sake I'd use a number halfway between min and max fo fuel splatter, and call it 704m...which was roughly the basis of my estimate.

And just to make clear, this is only a "best guesstimate", not even an estimate. I'd place it's accuracy within an order or magnitude, but it is only (at best) a guess.

This is the problem we have with your "experiment", Killtown, and the way you are trying to conduct it. It does not prove anything. It's possible for a fireball of 600 or 700 meters to form in such a crash. But we don't know the exact size. For you to prove your theory, you have to show that a cloud of the size observed could not be produced by such a crash.

You have, so far, offered nothign to support that besides "I don't think it looks right". Imagine being accused of murder on the basis of someone finding a bullet hole in a wall. "We think you fired this bullet, so you're going up for attempted murder." The bullet is from, say, a 9mm pistol. You have never owned a 9mmm pistol, and there's no pistol to be found anywhere. The judge responds that "Well, where did the bullet hole come from then?" You might suggest someone else fired it. The judge responds "So, can you prove this? Because if not, you're going to jail!"

You're playing the Judge in my previous story, Killtown.
 
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Huntsman said:
Of course, this does not take into account the splatter of the fuel, which could add up to (733m/s * .21s = 154m) 154m to the radius (308m to diameter), giving a maximum potential size of 858m. For arguments sake I'd use a number halfway between min and max fo fuel splatter, and call it 704m...which was roughly the basis of my estimate.
Click to expand...


Interesting info there... :D

Do you have any idea of the difference in fireball and over-pressure area for high-explosives?

While researching I stumbled across a rather complicated formula for calculating blast radius and overpressure and at given distance, but it looked far too complex for me at the time and I forgot to bookmark it... :(

-Andrew
 
gumboot said:
Interesting info there... :D

Do you have any idea of the difference in fireball and over-pressure area for high-explosives?

While researching I stumbled across a rather complicated formula for calculating blast radius and overpressure and at given distance, but it looked far too complex for me at the time and I forgot to bookmark it... :(

-Andrew
Click to expand...

There was a formula on Wiki for Thermobaric overpressure calculation (Thermobaric=FAE). However, I wasn't sure enough to use it, as I did a calc based on a 75lb. FAE and got an answer that was something like 20 kilometers, so apparently I did something wrong :)

Other than that, I don't know of any. I can figure TNT-equivalents needed for breaching of certain structures and such, but those are "quick-n-dirty" calcs intended for field use.
 
Ok, I need you guys to concur with these figures for your theory. A "yes" or "no" is all that's needed and if it's a "no," please state your concerns (it doesn't need to get any more complicated than that):


How about these figures?

-------------------------------
Your minimum:

Crash angle: 40 deg
Fuel upon impact: 7,500 gals
Fuel % burned upon impact: 75%
Wingspan: 38m/125ft
Peak fireball width: 100m/330ft (1 football field)
Plume width size at time of Val's photo: 600m/2,000ft (6 1/2 football fields)

--------------------------------
Your maximum:

Crash angle: 40 deg
Fuel upon impact: 10,000 gals
Fuel % burned upon impact: 95%
Wingspan: 38m/125ft
Peak fireball width: 700m/2,230ft (7 1/2 football fields)
Plume width size at time of Val's photo: 1,000m/3,300ft (10 football fields)

--------------------------------


If you guys concur, we can start talking about the plume color.
 
Killtown, to correctly appreciate the size and distance of the plume in Val's picture, can you adress my questions in post #1347?
 
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