Skygate 911

[William Seger]

4. Here's some content:

Most of the video is recycled horseshit that's been addressed elsewhere, but in this video, Balsamo talks about how all the 9/11 planes exceeded their Vd velocities, which I had never heard of. No thanks to the video, I now know it means "design dive velocity," which is the shallow-dive velocity the engineers assumed when they calculated the forces the plane's structure needed to withstand. It definitely does NOT mean the velocity at which the plane would fall apart, as Balsamo claims (so that he can claim that they must not have been 757s and 767s). The way the engineers assured the planes could fly at their Vd velocities WITHOUT falling apart is by adding a 50% margin of safety. The only way to know the actual maximum velocity a 757 or 767 can fly without falling apart would be to put one in a dive and speed up until it did. Nobody does that intentionally, nor do they need to.

It reminds me of the time Balsamo was on the old September 11 board here, making an argument based on a faulty definition of Mcrit, the "critical Mach" velocity. He claimed that planes could not fly faster than that without suffering instability and loss of control. Actually, planes at high altitudes typically fly faster than their Mcrit because it's more fuel-efficient.

Balsamo presents himself as an expert and then, time after time, he either doesn't know or deliberately distorts technical details.