Thanks for the link, Alex. But, sorry, I found the assertions about the tower collapse essentially flimsy and unconvincing. I would have expected some discussion of the physics involved, not merely "Expert A says it would happen like this."

In fact, and though not conclusive to me either, slow-motion video of the collapse makes it appear as though it is decidedly NOT happening the way the article states it does.


Oh well, I'm not losing any sleep over it.

Did you see the Nova episode "Why the towers fell?" I thought it was an excellent analysis from an engineering perspective.

I don't see how you could fail to lose sleep over it if you are giving serious contemplation to the idea that our government blew up the World Trade Center. I know if I thought that, I'd feel pretty compelled to move to a safer country pretty much immediately.

Would you have understood the physics involved if instead of "Expert A says.." they essentially provided "Expert A says and here's the math"? Regardless, that is just the starting point, if you want the physics of it all, follow up on the experts and reports the PM article references.

Though I'm not sure what is unconvincing about "steel gets hot, hot steel loses integrity long before it is actually melting, so building falls down." And even if that is hard to believe what is the alternative explanation that is easier to believe?

Nope, still say they never got to the moon the first time. Did MB debunk the powdery dust remaining underneath the capsule on takeoff / landing ?

First off, I don't give serious contemplation to the idea that our government blew up the Towers. I just find several things about the collapse visually nconsistent with expert explanations. That doesn't mean the experts aren't right, or that I don't believe them. Just that it's one of those oddities (and there are many) where things don't appear as perhaps they should if what's happening is in fact what's happening.

Do they cover the moon landing in schools there? I met some people from Australia a few months ago and they also believed the moon landing was staged/hoax. These guys were in their mid 20s.

Their main points were the flag waving (which MB just took care of), shadows where there shouldn't have been and that they could see "strings" as if there were puppeteers controlling the moves.

GD, that is exciting.
:)

Not in schools (far as I can tell) but I've always wondered why none of that fine dust at the base of the lunar lander blew around on landing or takeoff ?

I find it so interesting to get other perspectives on it. I never really heard of people who thought the moon landing was a hoax until I was an adult. I never met anyone who thought that until I met those guys from Oz.

First, people generally overestimate how powerful those thrusters were. Considerably less power is needed to reach orbit from the moon than from the earth (notice how the lander essentially just self launched back up into orbit rather than requiring a giant-ass three-stage rocket with hundreds of thousands of pounds of fuel).

Second, this is particularly true for the landing. You don't need to apply full thrust at the moment of impact and the Apollo astronauts weren't, they used maximum thrust at deorbit and a much smaller thrust at landing. By the time they landed they only had about 3,000 pounds of thrust going, which works out to just 1.5 pounds per square inch. Which is not much at all.

Third, dust was displaced by the landing and take off, and can be seen in the pictures and videos (and also there is more in the lift off than in the landing, just as you'd expect since more thrust is used at the moment of lift off then at landing). It just isn't as much as much as most people expect. This is both because the thrust power isn't as much as people expect and also because in the absence of an atmosphere the only dust displaced will the dust directly hit by the thrust exhaust, there will be no secondary wind as on earth. And finally, there simply isn't much dust to be blown around; scientists weren't sure how deep the moon dust would be, turns out it is only a couple inches.