At 08:37 AM 2/16/99 -0600, Billy Brown wrote:
>Ian, I must have missed something. What exactly is the government supposed
>to be covering up in this mess? Absent some motive, I'm more inclined to
>suspect them of incompetence than malice.
IAN: I guess you didn't know about the witnesses.
There were over 150 witnesses of a streak of light.
Out of 102 that said where it originated, 96 said
it originated on from the surface of the Earth.
That's from the still covered-up (but leaked
through Aviation Week) NTSB witness report.
Dozens of witness accounts are available.
Those that I could place on a map are here:
http://www.erols.com/igoddard/twa-core.htm
Witnesses say that the streak left a column of
white smoke in its path. Solid-rocket fuel gives
off white smoke, yet burning jet fuel, what the govt
needs you to believe they saw, yields black smoke.
Of course when it comes to government claims, most
people seem are willing to believe black = white.
>1) An unpowered object, starting from rest, can not fall through atmosphere
>faster than it would through a vacuum. It doesn't matter what shape the
>object is, because any acceleration it gains from aerodynamic effects will
>be smaller than the drag from having to pass through atmosphere.
IAN: We agree, but...
>2) An aircraft that has significant horizontal motion, and then goes into a
>dive, can easily fall much faster than it would in a vacuum. There is a
>rather complex aerodynamic effect that allows it to trade horizontal for
>vertical motion.
IAN: That didn't happen to PAN AM 103, and it went from horizontal to falling without any upward rise. The forward velocity translates into a higher velocity upon impact, but not a faster rate of fall. From the physics textbook "Elementary Classical Physics":
"If one throws an object horizontally and
simultaneously drops a second body from
rest, the two objects strike a horizontal
plane at the same instant. The thrown object
strikes the surface with a larger velocity..."
>I haven't seen anything that shows FLT800 to have 0
>forward momentum - in fact, such a claim seems highly unlikely.
IAN: It seems you also havn't seen the CIA video.
>Moving up
>at a steep slope seems to fit the evidence better, but that would leave the
>aircraft with significant forward motion when it starts its descent.
Edward Zehr's dynamic analysis:
http://www.copi.com/articles/Goddard/ZehrGut2.html
Zehr's static analysis (scroll to A REALITY CHECK):
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a40058.htm
The fact is that the CIA video has been abandon by 99% of missile-theory critics, since they realize that Ed Zehr is right. It is still accepted by the government and the media, who do not have to defend their claims.
>3) We don't know exactly when the engines went out. Obviously, if some of
>them were still running when the plane went into its descent this would
>produce a very fast powered dive. This sort of descent can easily approach
>the speed of sound, even for otherwise subsonic aircraft.
>4) Air/aviation gas explosions are not limited to some puny level of force.
>I don't know who this info originally came from, but they're wrong.
>Depending on the exact mixing conditions you can get anything from
>non-explosive combustion to very large explosions. Under worst-case
>conditions (small droplets dispersed through a large volume of air before
>being ignited) the effect can be equivalent to several times the same mass
>of TNT. The air force makes some impressive bombs that use this principle.
>5) Burning fuel tanks sometimes produce a significant propulsive force - the
>tank can act like an inefficient rocket engine.
IAN: Any evidence to support that claim?
>When you add up all these factors, it becomes obvious that you really can't
>say anything definitive about the fall rate of a crippled aircraft without a
>lot of detailed information. Even then, getting anything better than a
>rough estimate of its behavior would require a supercomputer-based physics
>simulation.