My Response to"An Open Letter"

November 15, 2006
Jim,
A few things need to be straightened out first.

1. Is the directed-beams hypothesis a SCIENTIFIC hypothesis?
Let the proponents delineate crucial experiments which will permit testing the hypothesis, and which have the potential of proving the hypothesis wrong. If an hypothesis is not falsifiable by experiments, it is not scientific.

2. Judy Wood and Morgan R have made unsubstantiated statements which need to be supported with facts or withdrawn before a civilized discourse could take place.

For example, Morgan Reynolds wrote on 8/24/06:

"The SJ-phenom kept building and building but it was headed for a big crash because of its obvious infirmities. Some argue that this behavior can be traced to the perps. Regardless, on hindsight it would have been better to have taken out this bilge months ago, Judy has been trying for six months in private. But SJ is incorrigible and a serial liar. We've got to clean up our own backyard mess before his implosion takes nearly all 9/11 skeptics down with him." (Morgan Reynolds)

Please then substantiate this claim that "SJ is incorrigible and a serial liar" with delineated facts (Morgan should do this). Also, explain how Morgan R. and Judy W. plan to take "out this bilge", so that we may be assured that no foul play is planned for the proposed debate.

Sincerely,

Steven Jones"

Nov. 18, 2006
Jim,

It's about 2 am, but I woke up and care about you sufficiently to endeavor to reason with you.

I believe you have accepted and are presented arguments which are not only ill-founded, they are embarassingly wrong. (Tucson lecture http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=646337772656177512&q=Jim+Fetzer)
And I'd like to reason with you, Jim. Let's reason between ourselves, shall we?

1. You start out with the grand piano falling in over 30 seconds, from the height of a Tower. This is wrong. I teach the physics of air drag forces and concomitant terminal velocity -- and the terminal velocity depends very much on the mass (or weight/g) of the object.

Ask Judy to provide her calculation in writing, showing the area she has assumed and the mass, the density of air and the terminal velocity she calculates. Then let me or an independent physicist if you wish check this for you.

Consider a small parachute the size/area of a grand piano, with a man on it. He would fall quite fast. Now replace his mass with that of a grand piano (but in a ball of say lead). Surely you have enough horse-sense to see that the latter case will fall MUCH faster. And that's what the equations say also. A parachute the size of a grand piano acting on a large mass just doesn't slow it much. But let her show her calculations!!
Added: As Alfons showed on the Forum, the terminal velocity can be calculated with the help of a NASA web-site:
http://exploration.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/termvr.html . Alfons used a Yamaha grand piano,
o Length: 161cm (5'3")
o Width: 149cm -
o Height: 101cm
o Weight: 628 pounds (m = 285kg)
The drag coefficient depends on the attitude of the piano to the velocity vector as it falls; we take a maximum-drag orientation and therefore take a large drag coeff;

Mass = 285 kg
Cross Section = 2.3989 sq. meters
Drag Coefficient = 1.28 (Flat Object CD = 1.28
exploration.grc.nasa.gov/...aped.html)
Altitude = 417 meters = 1368 ft
Terminal Velocity = 40 m per second
Then the total fall time is 11 seconds (+or-). Which is just about the time the Towers took to collapse! Your example in your Tucson talk backfires on you... gives ammo to those who would debunk everything you say.

Jim, ask Judy to give you the equations, her calculations -- with numbers. And lets check her work.

2. You and Judy say that the bathtub was not damaged. Have you checked this out? I just wish you would read the research offered freely on our Forum. but let me quote from there, which in turn is quoting from an engineering journal:

"Half of WTC 'Bathtub' Basement Damaged By Twin Towers' Fall

(enr.com 10/8/01)

"Visual surveys indicate roughly 50% of the seven-level basement structure of the World Trade Center is now rubble as a result of the impact of the collapse of the twin 110-story towers. Outside the tower footprints, the section of greatest concern within the so-called 1,000 x 500-ft bathtub is along its south side. There, a 200 x 30-ft hole from 40 to 70 ft deep sits between the tub's perimeter slurry wall and the remains of Two WTC.

"A significant part of the south tower fell in and collapsed everything," says Joel L. Volterra, an engineer with Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers, the city's local engineer on the bathtub.

"Engineers are busy drawing up emergency tieback, bracing and shoring schemes so that contractors can start mobilizing tieback rigs this week or next to anchor the south perimeter of the 70-ft-deep slurry wall.

"Roughly 40% of the bathtub's reinforced concrete diaphragm slabs and steel columns are in "pretty good shape," says George J. Tamaro, the Mueser Rutledge engineer leading the foundation repair team."

SO -- the engineers say only about 40% of the bathtub was in pretty good shape, the rest being significantly damaged. Water was only about 1 foot below the damaged area, in another report -- and pumps were brought in. The report does not say whether the pumps were needed or not, but that doesn't matter does it? The damage to the bathtub in PUBLISHED engineering reports says the damage to the bathtub was extensive.

Jim, someone is giving you erroneous information -- and you're swallowing it. Read the engineering reports for yourself.

3. I'm NOT seeking to wrest control of st911 -- but I do hope that you will listen to the MEMBERS about how they want the web site handled. We're hoping for ideas on how to handle the website, as many of us are not satisfied. Will you listen to the voice of the members, or is such a vote -taking idea just futile? You should read the discussion on the forum to know where I and others stand -- not just a few extracted and out of context quotes of me or others. I DO NOT seek power here, but a better web-site. Indeed, I've said that I want to end my co-chair status after one year, after we decide what to do about the web site, which is losing visitors the data clearly show.
We need to do something...

4. The generators in WTC 7 -- how many gallons of diesel fuel do you suppose they might burn in 10 seconds (Tower fall time, approx)?
Perhaps 20-30 gallons in 10 seconds? That would be 120-180 gallons
per minute -- and that seems high to me. I'm here paraphrasing an
argument by a PhD chemist on the Forum -- the power which the WTC 7 generators can deliver in 10 seconds is NOWHERE NEAR enough to vaporize steel and pulverize concrete. We know that explosives (like superthermite and RDX explosives) can do the pulverizing, because they store energy in small packages. But diesel fuel running generators (which are not even 50 % efficient ) simply cannot deliver the necessary energy in 10 seconds time. Can you see this? It's a conservation of energy argument which is very strong and I hope easy
to grasp when it is laid out like this. And the steel was thrown out
of the footprint area, much of it -- but not vaporized.

5. An energy beam with enough energy to pulverize concrete and vaporize steel -- what would this do to human flesh, Jim? Wouldn't flesh be charred? If not, why not? Yet body pieces -- not charred - were found all over GZ.

Jim, you're being sold a bill of goods by these people and I beg of you to consider sound arguments instead. It's now nearly 3 am and I'm going back to bed, sleep I hope. It really concerns me that you are being so easily led by the nose my friend by these ideas of Judy's or whoever. Ask for numbers, calculations. Insist on these so you can do some checking before you go telling people that a grand piano takes 21 seconds over the time of the tower's fall. What a bunch of obvious garbage, Jim. You're going to be laughed at by anyone who knows how to calculate terminal velocity, which is mass-dependent!

Will you listen to reason?

Steve