NASA Scientist Ryan Mackey Answers ATS Questions

Originally posted by wsamplet
Griff, Labtop, shouldn't you take into account the mass of the top 1/10 and the fact that it had built a certain amount of momentum and force as it fell from whatever distance it was from floor to floor?

No. Because we are talking about what initiated collapse. Meaning the floor trusses sagging by creep. Which is in itself a slow deformation and not a sudden dynamic load. Hope that helps.

If this was initiated by the core leading the collapse wouldn't it pull the exoskeleton inward causing the building to fall in it's own footprint?

Now, the core is a different story all together. I haven't seen where NIST says that the core failed first. If so, I have just overlooked it. But, then, they need to explain what caused the core to fail first. I have a few ideas but you all know what I think.

Edit to add: Yes, you have it perfectly right about the core. That's the main concept in controlled demolitions also.

[edit on 10/25/2007 by Griff]

Griff :
""Hope that makes sense?""

Frankly said, no.
Please include pictures of those angle plates.
I understand the 45 degrees subject, but who else does?


You know what made no sense to me from day one after 9/11 ?

That there was no spread of fire to floors beneath the floors impacted by wings and fuselage.
As we know, wings contain fuel, as does the main body tanks.
A lot of fuel.
Which is a liquid, which should flow to the centre of earth, caused by the force of gravity.

About 40 % of the take-off fuel load remained in the tanks, and we don't know for sure if the "pilots" were balancing fuel loads during flight, so how full the wing tanks were at impact.

I have found out already quite short after 9/11, that all the elevator shafts were constructed in a kind of stepped system.
You had to change personnel elevators at certain levels.
The top of those shafts at those floors extended a few feet above floor level, and were capped off with airtight roofs.

So there was no possibility of massive amounts of jet fuel to stream down, into nearly all the elevator shafts, except two freight elevator shafts which ran from basements to top floor.

Many people have tried to convince us from day one, that lots of jet fuel ran down shafts, so also maintenance shafts (for cables, IT stuff, water and drainage pipes, etc), and caused local fires and explosions up to the basements.

I do not believe that at all.
Since we see not one sign of a fire in all video material posted, through windows at floors below impact levels.
All the fires proceeded upwards.
So either the lock-off features in place in the towers functioned perfectly, or all of the jet fuel burned away outside and inside rather quickly.
As NIST told us so, in a few minutes.

But when we observe other high rise fires, we consistently see a spread of normal office furniture fed fires, also to lower floors.
And there was no jet fuel involved, and still the fires went also downwards.

But not at the WTC twin towers.

When the collapses started, we saw a lot of died down fires, or no fires at all at impact floors levels, and a few raging fires far above.
And still the buckling initiated at already cooled down impact floors.

This can only be explained when a substantial ( f.ex. 1 meter) length of all core columns were suddenly missing, and caused the top parts of those columns to fall down, pulling ALL the floors plus trusses also down for a few meters, originating at the centre of the tower, and thus initiating the inward buckling observed.

Then the cascading events of the collapses proceeded.
What caused those, is for other threads here.

Edit : CO, that was not an extremely simple example, it was an inappropriate and misleading example, which should never have been allowed to appear at all.

The top 10% did not act as a massive block, we may assume that failure would occur after such a massive plane impact at localized failure points, and not at the core as a whole, let it be the outer wall as a whole neither.


[edit on 25/10/07 by LaBTop]

Originally posted by LaBTop
Griff :
""Hope that makes sense?""

Frankly said, no.
Please include pictures of those angle plates.
I understand the 45 degrees subject, but who else does?

Here you go.

Originally posted by LaBTop
This can only be explained when a substantial ( f.ex. 1 meter) length of all core columns were suddenly missing, and caused the top parts of those columns to fall down, pulling ALL the floors plus trusses also down for a few meters, originating at the centre of the tower, and thus initiating the inward buckling observed.

You've explained my theory to a T. What caused a length of the core columns to suddenly become missing? I can think of only a few things that could do that. And since it didn't happen directly after impact, we can conclude that it wasn't the plane impact. Although some core columns could have been severed then.

To be a little more clear Labtop, I have drawn floors sagging in blue. I have also drawn the original vertical forces of the floors in red. There is also a vector diagram in red showing what I mean about where the horizontal force would equal the vertical force. For those of you who know vectors and such, I don't mean that the two vertical forces at that connection (where I show the vector diagram) would be added, I just added the vectors later and don't know how to undo in paint without doing it all over again, so disregard the original force.

I hope this helps clear up what I was saying a bit more.



[edit on 10/25/2007 by Griff]

Originally posted by CaptainObviousTo date, he has yet been shown anything that shows he is in error. He appears not to have a problem discussing the NIST report either.

CO, either you have no idea what any of us here are talking about, or you don't care, probably both. You're a cheerleader. How things "appear" to you is hardly relevant to anyone else.

[edit on 25-10-2007 by bsbray11]

reply to post by bsbray11


First of all. This thread is for questions that are pertaining to Mr. Mackey's white paper. The link was provided. Mr. Mackey has also answered questions in regards to the NIST report. This thread was not designed to continue the endless debate of a CD vs. NIST's . ATS has at least 50 threads like that and I do not want this thread to digress into that.

I would appreciate it if you would please respect that.

Bsbray, I am not going to respond to any of your posts in here unless they are questions addressed to the white paper or the NIST report that yo uwould like me to forward to Mr. Mackey.

If you have, please submit your white paper here, and I will once again be sure to pass it along to Mr. Mackey for him to look at. If you are not interested in his responses, don't ask questions, and please ignore this thread.

Thank you,

C.O.

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
First of all. This thread is for questions that are pertaining to Mr. Mackey's white paper. The link was provided. Mr. Mackey has also answered questions in regards to the NIST report. This thread was not designed to continue the endless debate of a CD vs. NIST's . ATS has at least 50 threads like that and I do not want this thread to digress into that.

Despite a violation of a T&C item (Item 1.d) we've allowed this thread to continue in the interest of academic pursuit of information and answers. Given our tolerance of this, I think it's also fair to tolerate what would certainly be some natural topical drift that results from the discussion within the parameters of this thread.

While this thread is highly commendable on several fronts, I don't think we anticipated a long-term Q-and-A session where someone is feeding a great deal of ongoing content via proxy. While there's no apparent reason to be concerned here, you can imagine that such a procedure can raise aspects of concern over the accuracy of information attributed to the non-member.

With this in mind, as this discussion continues, I would highly recommend that Mr. Mackey consider becoming a member to better facilitate collaborative interaction on this subject matter. There are many ways in which we can facilitate his participation without concern from being overwhelmed with too many member queries.

AMEN!

With that said - once Mackey joins this board - and ONLY AFTER HE JOINS THIS BOARD - my first question to him will be to ask him what his typical defense of NIST will be now that they have published a letter that admits they omitted damage scenarios based on an apriori conclusion that the impact damage and fire damage alone is what brought down the towers.

NO - I refuse to accept the middle-man answer on this. If Mr. Mackey wants to promote his d-ego "Subject Matter Expert" status that he's promulgating he'll have to come here and answer in person.

[edit on 10-26-2007 by Valhall]

I guess you can let the thread die or close it.

For once on ATS, there was a thread with REAL questions and REAL answers. I didn't mind the fact that there was a discussion about the facts. What I DIDN'T like was being called a "cheerleader", and have other CT's brought up in this thread, nor did I want an endless debate to happen with CD vs. NISTS that has already been discussed here 50 times over...It was about Mr. Mackey's white paper and a discussion on that, and him agreeing to answer NIST questions was an added plus. I guess I was wrong in hoping a Q & A thread was possible.

This site is OVERFLOWING with the same old recycled garbage (911 related). I was told by MANY mods here that this was the type of thread needed on this forum. Shame on me.

My understanding is that Mr. Mackey has no intention of becoming a member in here. This is why I offered to be a sort of "middleman" so questions would be forwarded and answered, instead of his e-mail getting flooded with questions about things NOT pertaining to his paper or the NIST report.His e-mail is on his paper that was provided,and he is also a well respected member at the Jref Forum. If you would like to e-mail him directly, please do so.

Thanks again to those that submitted questions. I hope you got the answers you were looking for.
- C.O.


[edit on 26-10-2007 by CaptainObvious]

What a shame, finally a thread on ATS that was full of useful information. No doubt some CT had to start complaining. Thanks Captian Obvious, nice try.

As I mentioned in a U2U to you (just sent), my concern for this thread was not related at all to the content.

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
This site is OVERFLOWING with the same old recycled garbage (911 related). I was told by MANY mods here that this was the type of thread needed on this forum. Shame on me.

Yes... that's true. However, we are the rare destination where we do our best to make sure that all sides of an argument are enthusiastically embraced and supported in an effort to discern the truth. It may not always work as good as it should, but at least the effort is being made.

My understanding is that Mr. Mackey has no intention of becoming a member in here. This is why I offered to be a sort of "middleman" so questions would be forwarded and answered, instead of his e-mail getting flooded with questions about things NOT pertaining to his paper or the NIST report.

That's fine... and there are still ways in which we can facilitate his ability to respond to some of the questions and concerns of ATS members. And to be clear, I wasn't applying an "iron fist" no-more rule in my post, only raising up a caution that if we're going to tolerate a post-by-proxy, it's only fair to anticipate a need to tolerate some other aspects of thread drift or participant frustration.

But you mentioned he's a member of another online forum... if so, then I'm unclear as to why he would be hesitant to become involved here? He would certainly be familiar with how to post and the flow of discussion threads.

Originally posted by wsamplet
No doubt some CT had to start complaining.

Uh...

I never said the discussion should end.

And also to be clear... there are no specific complaints (that I'm aware of) about the nature of this thread. Not long after it began, I had assumed that there might just be one or two rounds of questions, not an ongoing dialogue through a middleman.

Now that it's clear Mr. Mackey is active on at least one online forum, I'm confused as to why we need a middleman.

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
Bsbray, I am not going to respond to any of your posts in here unless they are questions addressed to the white paper or the NIST report that yo uwould like me to forward to Mr. Mackey.

That's your decision, but you not posting anything substantial and relevant is what has me thinking that you don't know what we're talking about in the first place.

Originally posted by CaptainObvious
I guess you can let the thread die or close it.

Or we can continue to post as per moderation, because you do not own the threads you create.

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
Despite a violation of a T&C item (Item 1.d) we've allowed this thread to continue in the interest of academic pursuit of information and answers. Given our tolerance of this, I think it's also fair to tolerate what would certainly be some natural topical drift that results from the discussion within the parameters of this thread.

Not only that, but I don't revere this man's opinion. I have no reason to believe he's any more of an expert than Griff or Val. Anyone in engineering knows that engineering degrees can plant you in all sorts of jobs, some that require more thinking, some that are more trivial and do not. NASA also probably hires CAD people that just draw on computers, people just sitting around watching rooms over servers, etc., and they all probably have a degree in some field of engineering. Anyone can also write a paper, and it's very easy to be published when you aren't controversial and don't have your head too terribly far up your ass (and only if you really want to write a paper, of course). I just think it's a pity that CO has no idea what he's posting from this man and yet expects everyone to not only kiss this man's ass, but respect his own requests as to what we can or cannot post here or what gets responded to and what doesn't. None of this has to do with Mr. Mackey, though, no particular problems with him.

and he is also a well respected member at the Jref Forum

The JREF forum has no respect outside of itself. It's all a bunch of ego-heads. It's where they get together and collectively insult anyone who isn't of a cynical outlook on life, and make each other feel better by their own company. You'll hear this from anyone who isn't already such a cynic. Not a single thread there where insults and sarcasm and cynicism won't fly rampantly; it's apparently almost all that they know there. Classic case of human behavior in a group that happens to heavily reinforce a particular characteristic in the individuals.

Put short, the posting behavior there isn't up to the same standards as ATS, and I don't think many people will be making much effort to have a legitimate discussion with Mr. Mackey there.

Greening still makes atrociously inaccurate models, so does Bazant continue to generalize and make assumptions that have not been rigorously shown, etc. These guys aren't experts over anyone else that's had the material and knows how Western reasoning works, but how do you communicate this to a hard-headed cynic who doesn't understand it all him/herself, and doesn't particularly even want to? Or only wants to understand things that are already in sync with their current beliefs?

[edit on 26-10-2007 by bsbray11]

Originally posted by bsbray11
That's your decision, but you not posting anything substantial and relevant is what has me thinking that you don't know what we're talking about in the first place.

I have not at anytime claimed to have an abundance of knowledge in engineering nor have I asked anyone to kiss ANYONES ass.

(Snip)
My attempt was NOT to kiss anyone ass, it was to act as a conduit to somone with an abundance of knowledge. Bsbray is trying to discredit me for no reason what so ever.



Mod Edit: Announcement: Civility & Decorum are Expected -- Please Review



[edit on 26-10-2007 by chissler]

[edit on 26-10-2007 by CaptainObvious]

Whoa! Easy There!

Please, try to relax and not let any of this get under your skin.

Remember, it's just us here, and there's no reason we can't be friends.

Just sayin'

I feel the need to delve a tad bit deeper into the first post at this page 7 of this thread.

Griff, top page 7 :
""Now, the core is a different story all together. I haven't seen where NIST says that the core failed first. If so, I have just overlooked it. But, then, they need to explain what caused the core to fail first.""

As you understood already, the subject of core failure is the most challenging one in the NIST reports, and idem for all of us, from day one after 9/11. I found most of the latests relevant answers to our enquiries here, in the Appeal to the Response of NIST to the Request for Correction from April 12, 2007 :

911blogger.com...
I will start with page 6 of those 16 pages, and will try to make it a bit more readable for the casual reader.

NIST should explain to us, how "significant core weakening" was “necessary to initiate building collapse” in light of their WTC Report’s finding that “no columns buckled in either Case C or Case D” for the South Tower, a.k.a. WTC2.
(See NCSTAR 1-6 p.192 and p.322)

NIST’s stated elsewhere in their WTC Report that “no visible information could be obtained for the extent of damage to the interior of the towers, including the structural system (floors and core columns), partition walls, and interior building contents.”
(See NCSTAR 1-2 (pp iv, xxxix))

In page 4 + 5 the writers try to explain to the general public, and NIST, that NIST excluded a lot of less severe and base damage models from their computerized models, and raised the impression that all these excluded models did also lead to a global collapse of both towers.
This is pertinently untrue, most of the modest models did not lead to any form of collapse, and not even to a form of core column buckling at all.
NIST introduced even a 1000 % strain rate instead of a 190 % strain rate (190 %, as would be expected in relation to the varying of other factors (See NCSTAR 1-2B, pp 178-180)) on hit columns by eventual jet motor parts, that's a 10 time increase instead of a 1.9 time increase, to reach out to a level of destruction which would at last initiate a form of computerized virtual collapse, and still not even a following virtual global collapse.

I advice to read point D., Floor sagging, and the connected subject of fireproofing, starting at the bottom of page 6, and page 7 of the pdf file, since it is explained fairly readable for the casual readers.
The conclusion can be summarized as follows: Why did NIST perform the floor tests if the results were, by design, not going to be used in the subsequent analysis? Why did NIST officials pay Underwriters Laboratories (UL) approximately $250,000 of the American public’s tax dollars to perform these tests? Will UL or NIST be refunding this money to the taxpayers since the factors NIST claims make these results unusable were knowable beforehand?

Why did NIST use far too thin fireproofing thicknesses of 0.5 to 0.75 inches in there fire tests, instead of the known actual WTC towers fireproofing thicknesses of 3.25 inches at the points of plane impacts? And even one test with no fireproofing at all, while NIST was advocating at the time of writing of that report, that lack of, or too little of fireproofing was the main cause of the global collapses caused by impact damage and following fires.
( 3.25 inches, as reported in NCSTAR 1-6A, figure A-60, p 241.)

The most interesting remarks for Griffs angle plate remarks from her/his above post can be read at pdf page 8 :

Fifth, the visual data, which NIST used to confirm their assumption of floor sagging, is not valid for that purpose. NCSTAR 1-6, p 312, shows an example of the visual data NIST claims in support of floor sagging. If these photographs do, in fact, show floor sagging, they simultaneously repudiate the idea of floor sagging as a mechanism for pulling exterior columns inward, which is the main aspect of NIST’s collapse initiation scenario. To pull these columns inward, the sagging must curve inward, along the length of the floor panels, and the floor panels must remain connected to the exterior walls. However, the photos indicated show what would be sagging along the face of the building, requiring coordinated disconnection of the floors from the exterior wall panels, resulting in a highly unlikely continuous curve of sagging across many independent floor panels and connections. Such along-the-face sagging would not provide an inward pull force to the exterior columns.

Griff, NIST comes with pictures of those hanging lowered ceilings seen through windows near that corner where we all saw the pictures of, of the pouring "thermite" stream of molten "iron".
I said from the beginning that these were not floor plates, since these plates were only a few (2 or 3) windows wide at that point.
See your photo up there.
And sheared-off, disconnection of floor plates from the angle plates welded to the exterior columns would have first caused inwards buckling of the whole exterior wall part involved, according to NIST's own theory.

The rest of the Request subjects the eventual maximum temperatures reached by the steel in the WTC towers.

As I noted already in an earlier posts here, the area of buckling and following collapse initiation was already cooled off increasingly.
A damn good explanation is given as follows :

""Inspection of the temperature charts in NIST NCSTAR 1-5 (p. 112-127) reveals that, for WTC 1, the core areas of stories 92 to 99 (which spans the plane impact area and within which is the presumed collapse initiation region) had cooled down substantially prior to collapse. The core area was hottest at the 30- and 45- minute readings, yet collapse did not occur until 102 minutes had elapsed, by which time the environment of the core had dropped to be mainly in the range 100°C to 600°C.
Roughly half the area is shown in shades of blue, indicating temperatures no higher than 150°C. If the temperature of the columns was still rising at the time of collapse, the column temperature would have been no higher than the environment temperature and the steel would obviously be far too strong to collapse. If the temperature of the columns was falling at the time of collapse, the columns had already survived the period when the steel was hottest. In this case, given that steel regains strength as it cools, it is clear that core collapse due to heat had become impossible.
The charts depicting the temperature of the columns (p. 144-157) confirm that the steel had become too cold to collapse. The highest core column temperatures are shown for stories 95, 96 and 97. On these floors the highest column temperatures were achieved at about 50 minutes and cooling occurred thereafter. We also see the perimeter columns were cool at collapse: most of the perimeter and core columns are depicted in blue and green, indicating temperatures ranging from 150°C to 350°C. At these temperatures the column steel would have from about 80% to 90% of its normal yield strength, according to NIST's chart (NIST NCSTAR 1-3, P. 111). At this strength, given the built in safety factor, approximately every second column could be removed and the tower would still stand.
The hat truss and most of the perimeter, including four corners, were intact, forming a rigid structure, which would prevent the core from leaning, thus all core columns would have to give way simultaneously for collapse to occur. Clearly some additional factor was necessary to bring about collapse.""

Griff, you admitted to the same thoughts about core columns failure as I had.

I have to note however, that when a portion of about 1 meter of ALL core columns suddenly would be missing, and the above parts of those columns would come crashing down 1 meter, with the floors still attached, that in my opinion all 4 exterior walls would start buckling inwards, if all floors held tightly welded to the angle plates welded on the inside of the exterior columns.

To imagine such an event, visualize a cascade of, on top of each other connected, opened up umbrellas, which are suddenly all closed.
The diameter of the exterior of all umbrellas will decrease, the more you close them, and if we imagine some kind of exterior wall was connected to the umbrella's ribs-tops, these ribs will pull that whole outer wall inward, and not just a small part of it. As long as they hold tight to that outer wall and not shear off.

And this is not what we actually saw happened at 9/11.

Only one or two floors at the most, were SLOWLY buckling inwards.
Not the whole exterior wall above was buckling inwards, and not all four walls simultaneous.

So what caused the SLOWLY developing localized buckling over some 20 minutes, as reported by NYPD helicopter pilots, if not caused by sagging floors?

Please remember carefully, the initial first observed descend of the radio tower on top of Tower One, the North tower, when collapse initiated !

That must have meant that part of the hat truss was compromised.
The part where the radio tower was attached to.
Or, the whole hat truss fell INTO the rest of the building.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


Here is one from the cry baby, the mods dont like me or give me enough attention/ complaint thread.

P.S. Griff, I find the thread CaptainObvious has up with Mackey acting as some self-appointed mouthpiece for the NIST's defense team to be much more concerning and problematic for the board's discussions than I do seanm's posts.

In fact, I have a huge personal problem with Mackey being allowed to blather his nonsensical and yet ironically condescending diatribes without having to be here. I do not believe the precedent being set on that thread will be good for the board in the long run.

[edit on 10-24-2007 by Valhall]