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« Faster, Cheaper... | Main | The Elephant In The Room »

This Can't Possibly Be True

That well-known metallurgist and structural engineer, Rosie O'Donnell, told us that fire can't melt steel. It's never happened before in history. Well, I guess that there's got to be a first (or second) time for everything:

Heat from the tanker explosion on the westbound 580 melted the upper roadway of the MacArthur Maze. The fire was intense enough to cause the tanker truck to basically melt away, according to crews on the scene.

I think that we need to investigate this. Were there charges planted in the bridge to make it collapse at an opportune time? Were there Enron and Halliburton financial records in a truck driving below? Were the Jews warned to stay off it? And where was Dick Cheney?

More grounds for impeachment, I'd say.

[Via emailer Mike Puckett]

Posted by Rand Simberg at April 29, 2007 10:02 AM
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Comments

Noooooo.....the huge manatee.......Charlie Sheen's credibility.......he will never again make enough loose change to pay for his hookers n' blow!

Pic of Huge Manatee (Rosie) and her credibility in flames:

http://homepage.mac.com/barthold.van.acker/realbasic/ohthehumanity.jpg

Posted by Mike Puckett at April 29, 2007 10:45 AM

Hmmmm. No Jews here either. what are the odds?

http://digg.com/world_news/White_hot_molten_steel_spills_and_kills_32_Chinese_workers

Posted by howard at April 29, 2007 11:12 AM

In 1976 there was a steel truss bridge near my house that dropped into a river when a tanker truck jackknifed and caught on fire. Guess what, it took about 1.5 hours to accomplish.

Posted by Dennis Wingo at April 29, 2007 11:27 AM

"In 1976 there was a steel truss bridge near my house that dropped into a river when a tanker truck jackknifed and caught on fire. Guess what, it took about 1.5 hours to accomplish."

See - they were already testing out their nefarious plans even back then. This goes deeper than anyone realizes.

The truth is out there.

Posted by Mulder at April 29, 2007 11:33 AM

Obviously Rosie's a moron, but what I found even more disturbing was the eruption of applause fromt he audience. I know viewers of Oprah/View aren't the sharpest tacks in the box, but come on.

Posted by Kewtr at April 29, 2007 11:35 AM

Melting iron is a very very high tech process that is impossible to do without very advanced facilities and a PhD level grasp of metallurgy.

Posted by TJIC at April 29, 2007 11:56 AM

"Obviously Rosie's a moron, but what I found even more disturbing was the eruption of applause from the audience."

I hear ya. But many of those audience memebrs, if you questioned them closely, are responding to her entertainment quotient, not her grasp of facts. When it comes time to build a bridge or lead a nation out of crisis, no one's rushing to Rosie. It's show biz, nothing more. But I can identify, certainly one wishes it wasn't happening this way.

Posted by Mister Snitch! at April 29, 2007 12:10 PM

Forget it...

Go read the former DCI's book. NOthing Rosie says will matter.

The credibility of this administration is going up in fires so fierce that depleted uranium could burn.


Robert

Posted by Robert G. Oler at April 29, 2007 12:17 PM

"Melting iron is a very very high tech process that is impossible to do without very advanced facilities and a PhD level grasp of metallurgy."

Good thing we're talking about STEEL here. Also, I don't need a PhD to melt steel, I just need a lot of heat and a little bit of force at 850 degrees Celcius and that steel will bend like a twizzler.

Posted by Light at April 29, 2007 12:18 PM

Hey Light - go to the link. It shows a very 3rd world picture with a furnace for iron. No, not perfectly on topic but still funny.
Mark

Posted by Mark at April 29, 2007 12:41 PM

Light, did you click the link I provided?

(a) I was being sarcastic, because the link I gave is to a documentary on how African tribespeople smelt iron in small backyard kilns made out of dirt.

(b) pig iron is usually loaded with carbon. Steel is just a word for a iron with carbon impurities higher than elemental iron, but lower than pig iron. The melting points for iron ore, various steel alloys, etc., are all clustered pretty tightly. What's true for iron is true for steel.

Posted by TJIC at April 29, 2007 12:42 PM

When it comes time to build a bridge or lead a nation out of crisis, no one's rushing to Rosie.

When they're ready to stop following her, let me know.

Posted by Hank Rearden at April 29, 2007 01:00 PM

Facts like these will cause a controlled demolition of moonbat heads.

Posted by BDavis at April 29, 2007 01:02 PM

When Bigmouth Rosie first made that idiotic statement, I wanted so badly to ask her how she thinks steel is made in the first place. Alas, she is well protected from the likes of me.

Posted by RebeccaH at April 29, 2007 01:46 PM

First there was the impact of the plane traveling at several hundred mph and the explosive detonation of the fuel, likened I seem to recall it being said to be about 1/20 the force of the hiroshima bomb. The steel skeleton of the buildings obviously weakened by that. Second even if the fire temp. was below the melting point of steel, what is the support strenght of steel at say 1200F? Doubt very much if it is the same as room temp. At some point the structures would collapse under their on weight, even if the steel wasn't at the melting point.

Posted by Tim at April 29, 2007 02:17 PM

More grounds for impeachment, I'd say.

Obviously it's easier to ridicule Rosie O'Donnell than William Odom. Which one did the Democrats pick for their weekly address?

Posted by at April 29, 2007 02:28 PM

Rosie may be a moonbat, but we have plenty of ignorance here. I saw the pictures of the bridge and there is no indication of any melting. There is bending, but that is different. (For those who have trouble with the difference between melting and bending, consider a paper clip. Can you bend it? Is that the same as melting? It is made of soft steel.)

If you look at this page http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html for example, you find that while steel melts at 1100-1600 (depending on alloy mix, typical is 1500) it weakens at 200 and loses half of its strength at 500. It starts to bend under its own weight at 500.

Typical petroleum product fires are about 800 (unless specially assisted with things like pre-heating, as in iron smelting). They do not melt steel. Steel will bend and fall because it is tremendously weakened at those temperatures.

Posted by rjh at April 29, 2007 02:29 PM

In 1967, McCormack Place, a large Chicago convention hall burned down. Actually, it melted. The building was said to be fireproof, and it was. But the displays at a convention caught on fire and the heat melted the steel beams and collapsed the buidling.

Rosie -- Google it.

Posted by Linda Quinn at April 29, 2007 02:29 PM

"Typical petroleum product fires are about 800 (unless specially assisted with things like pre-heating, as in iron smelting). They do not melt steel. Steel will bend and fall because it is tremendously weakened at those temperatures."


Yep, like the WTC's did. Yes, we get it RJH. We are making fun of an idiotic quote from Rosie O'Dumbass, we get a bit of artistic liscense.

Posted by Mike Puckett at April 29, 2007 02:39 PM

"More grounds for impeachment, I'd say.

Obviously it's easier to ridicule Rosie O'Donnell than William Odom. Which one did the Democrats pick for their weekly address?"

When your side is losing, change the subject.
Bact on topic: What are your thoughts on the impossibility of fire aiding the collapse of the WTC and the looney left supporting that position?

Posted by Mike Puckett at April 29, 2007 02:42 PM

Posted by Tim at April 29, 2007 02:17 PM

Not so much...

The fuel did not "explosive detonate"....that would have been something that the buildings might have sustained.

Instead a classic case of plastic deformation started and eventually the wings spilled onto the surfaces made hot by impact and vaporized starting combustion. That was the end of it. the center tank fuel remained more or less intact as the rest of the airplane burned (that is where the spars are and they are quite strong...feeding the fire

The bad guys knew what they were doing. Had the Boeings not contained center tank fuel it is quite possible that the buildings would have survived...the main problem is that there was no way really to "slosh" the remaining fuel away from teh fire...the fire suppression systems were ripped out.

The USN experienced something quite similar when the Forest Fire (aka the Forrestal caught on fire). Since then the fire fighting equipement and techniques have changed tremendously...the Forest Fire was in danger of sinking...as her deck imploded right over the hanger deck which was full of strike loaded planes.

Rosie Chung Chung chang OD doesnt have a clue what she is talking about.

Robert

Posted by Robert G. Oler at April 29, 2007 02:42 PM

This just shows that Bus was worried about the truth coming out. When Rosie told the truth, people listened. Evil Bush Co went out and set more explosives and staged a crash to give you wingnuts an opportunity to trash the truth teller.

Just look at the sixth picture on this page. http://news.yahoo.com/photos/sm/events/us/042907baybridgefire/p:6

Melted steel is no where is sight. The bridge was obviously blown off its stands. There are the black marks from the explosion on the pillar.

/scarcasm

Posted by Model Moonbat at April 29, 2007 03:00 PM

"They do not melt steel."

Under normal circumstances (out in the open), no. But, the fire was inside a building. Heat was not escaping. Add an air draft and you get -- a blast furnace. Propane's combustion temp is 920-1029°F, and yet, when you enclose and draft it, you can melt steel.

The buildings collapsed from weak steel, not melted steel though

Posted by Oligonicella at April 29, 2007 03:19 PM

Robert

.. fires so fierce that depleted uranium could burn.

I guess it would be cruel of me to point out that DU is pyrophoric. But thats the kind of guy I am. (Pyrophoric means it is a substance which catches fire spontaneously.)


Posted by James at April 29, 2007 03:39 PM

"Rosie the Rivetter" she aint.

Posted by Daniel at April 29, 2007 04:07 PM

RebeccaH

When Bigmouth Rosie first made that idiotic statement, I wanted so badly to ask her how she thinks steel is made in the first place. Alas, she is well protected from the likes of me.

While fire cannot melt steel, fire easily melts lead. What they do in steel mills is pour molten lead into molds and then have alchemists transmute it into steel. This is similar to the process by which gold is manufactured.

Posted by Mark in Texas at April 29, 2007 04:15 PM

You don’t even have to be an Engineer or Metallurgist - try Archaeology or Anthropology.


  • The age of copper: from 7000 BC - melts in a camp fire

  • The age of bronze: from 2800 BC

  • The age of iron: from 1500 BC

  • The discovery of steel: 11th century BC - By the 11th century BC it has been discovered that iron can be much improved. If it is reheated in a furnace with charcoal (containing carbon), some of the carbon is transferred to the iron. This process hardens the metal; and the effect is considerably greater if the hot metal is rapidly reduced in temperature, usually achieved by quenching it in water.

  • Cast iron in the east: 513 BC - Thus far in the story iron has been heated and hammered, but never melted. Its melting point (1528°C) is too high for primitive furnaces, which can reach about 1300°C and are adequate for copper (melting at 1083°C). This limitation is overcome when the Chinese develop a furnace hot enough to melt iron, enabling them to produce the world’s first cast iron - an event traditionally dated in the Chinese histories to 513 BC.

Posted by JGsez at April 29, 2007 04:23 PM

OK, lets say the conspiracy nuts are correct. Lets say a bomb(s) took the buildings down.
We know that the men who hijacked the 3 planes and rammed the buildings were Islamics. Lets say the buildings could not have been taken down by the planes; that it is necessary to explode the buildings.
Why wouldn't it be more logical to presume it was the same group who hijacked the planes, that set the bombs??
I just cannot see George Bush crawling around the buildings wiring it up.

Posted by lana at April 29, 2007 04:43 PM

OK, lets say the conspiracy nuts are correct. Lets say a bomb(s) took the buildings down.
We know that the men who hijacked the 3 planes and rammed the buildings were Islamics. Lets say the buildings could not have been taken down by the planes; that it is necessary to explode the buildings.
Why wouldn't it be more logical to presume it was the same group who hijacked the planes, that set the bombs??
I just cannot see George Bush crawling around the buildings wiring it up.

Posted by lana at April 29, 2007 04:43 PM

"Go read the former DCI's book. NOthing Rosie says will matter."


My God man, that was the weakest attempt at a threadjack I have EVER seen.

Turn in your Troll credentials immediately

Posted by TomB at April 29, 2007 05:07 PM

In 2004 a girl , I mean the evil Bush admin, caused a truck to burn down a steel bridge on I-95. Obviously the bridge didn't melt, steel can't melt, I think it was C-4.

Posted by David at April 29, 2007 05:13 PM

I just need a lot of heat and a little bit of force at 850 degrees Celcius and that steel will bend like a twizzler.

With sufficient force, steel starts getting easier to bend not much over 850 degrees Farenheit. I made my living for over twenty years at a company whose primary business was heating alloy steel bars to around 1600F, well within the reach of jet fuel, and bending it.

Posted by triticale at April 29, 2007 05:15 PM

Aha, a bridge in 1976, that's why Bush needed to get out of TANG.

Posted by David at April 29, 2007 05:16 PM

From the news stories I've read, Tenet's book is full of revelations. They aren't true but hey, it's the narrative, man.

Posted by Bill Maron at April 29, 2007 05:22 PM

"From the news stories I've read, Tenet's book is full of revelations. They aren't true but hey, it's the narrative, man."

Since when does the truth matter to the reality-based community.

All he has to say is that he got his info from a Kinkos in Abeliene.

Posted by TomB at April 29, 2007 06:01 PM

What are your thoughts on the impossibility of fire aiding the collapse of the WTC and the looney left supporting that position?

Well, it is looney. Of course fire can melt steel because, duh, that's how you make steel. All I can say is that Rosie O'Donnell doesn't speak for me. Which is what Rand said about Ann Coulter. Except that I don't think that Rosie O'Donnell deserves to be on the Supreme Court, or even to have a TV show.

Besides the looney left, there is also the sober "left", or I would say, the sober left, right, and center. Odom also says that what Bush has done is impeachable, and it has nothing to do with whether fire can melt steel. The real argument is that the invasion of Iraq is making America lose a larger war that it should be winning, the war on terrorism. I'm not saying that there should be an impeachment campaign, but if it were practical, I would be in favor.

Posted by at April 29, 2007 08:35 PM

"Go read the former DCI's book. NOthing Rosie says will matter.

The credibility of this administration is going up in fires so fierce that depleted uranium could burn."

Alas for Oler, Tenet's credibility is a lot like his--nonexistent. For instance, he makes up out of whole cloth a meeting with Richard Pearle post 9/11 that never happened.

I will conceed that the White House made one mistake which was not firing this turkey as soon as it could.

Posted by MarkWhittington at April 29, 2007 09:00 PM

I will conceed that the White House made one mistake which was not firing this turkey as soon as it could.

If I had any doubts on that score, Tenet's Perle "meeting" fantasy would have laid them to rest.

BTW, I'm getting an Instalanche echo from this post. I imagine everyone else on Rand's blogroll is too.

Posted by McGehee at April 29, 2007 09:19 PM

Rove, you magnificent bastard!

Posted by bchan at April 29, 2007 10:54 PM

"The real argument is that the invasion of Iraq is making America lose a larger war that it should be winning, the war on terrorism. I'm not saying that there should be an impeachment campaign, but if it were practical, I would be in favor."

If large segments of the media didn't provide incredibly biased and often fawning coverage of al Qaeda actions, and give opportunitic politicians a free pass to try and rewrite history for domestic political gain, then we'd be DONE there by now. I'm talking about a never ending series of "stories" that turn out to be bogus and lies by omission that, if there are any corrections at all, are buried on page Z23 2 weeks later. I'm also talking about politicians who hop on TV to spout whatever is convenient at the moment, and to hell with what they said in 1995, 2000, or 2003.

The entire AQ and Iranian supported campaigns in Iraq are geared towards convincing the US public that we've lost through a steady drumbeat of bad news. (AQ in particular looks back to their involvement in the Somalia debacle, and according to captured documents they view it as a turning point in their operations and a model to try and repeat)

Posted by Tim in PA at April 29, 2007 11:51 PM

Melting iron is a very very high tech process that is impossible to do without very advanced facilities and a PhD level grasp of metallurgy.

Exactly:

Wootz is a steel characterized by a pattern of bands or sheets of micro carbides within a tempered martensite or pearlite matrix. It was developed in India around 300 BCE[1]. The word wootz may have been a mistranscription of wook, an anglicised version of ukku, the word for steel in many south Indian languages.

Wootz steel was widely exported throughout the region, and became particularly famous in the Middle East, where it became known as Damascus steel after being locally processed.[citation needed] The critical characteristic of wootz steel is the abundant ultrahard metallic carbides in the steel matrix precipitating out in bands, making wootz steel display a characteristic banding on its surface. Wootz swords, especially damascus blades, were renowned for their sharpness and toughness.

But anyone who's red Von Daniken can probably come up with an explanation for that, and I suspect Rosie has at least scanned the Cliff notes.

Posted by Slartibartfast at April 30, 2007 04:44 AM

I will conceed that the White House made one mistake which was not firing this turkey as soon as it could.

Indeed. This (oh, and this) makes interesting reading, for instance. Tenet should have been fired by Clinton; certainly Bush should have shown him the door first thing.

Posted by at April 30, 2007 04:51 AM

PFLAFFPHARGGGLENARG! WIGGLEFIGBOOMAGATEN NARGGLEBLOGSOFT!

Posted by Rosie O! at April 30, 2007 07:20 AM

You have to wonder how Rosie thinks. If steel can't be melted they must have found girder shaped deposits in the ground.

Posted by rjschwarz at April 30, 2007 10:29 AM

Freeways are jacketed in Asphalt, The asphalt melted, The steel did not melt.

Besides that freeway rests on some of the most unstable ground in America, I'm not suprised a gasoline fire brought it down.

Posted by Mdej at May 1, 2007 02:12 AM

Mdej,

The bridge supoorts the asphalt. The asphalt is a burden and not in any way an element of structural support.

Concrete and Steel are what holds up bridges, not asphalt. I hope you were trying to be funny. If not, you would serve yourself well to have a at least a minimal microscopic amount of knowledge on a subject you chose to post about.

As for the unstable ground, was there a quake reported at the same time or are you just adding your ignorance of geology to the mix as well? Since when do gasoline fires start quakes?

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 1, 2007 12:23 PM

Since commenting on this in another thread, I'v since learned that Rosie is still whining about the relatively neat 'within its own footprint' manner that World Trate Seven went down.

Perhaps she should talk, not only to people who really know something about the way metal structrual elements behave in an indoor fire, but to people who do explosive demolition for a living, and how difficult it is to make it happen neatly (you often have to not only detonate charges in specific places, in a specific order, but there are often cables arranged to insure certain beams give way first...all of this requiring open access to an empty building, and not something that lends itself to speed or secrecy)

Sometimes a straight-down collapse is just luck (if you want to call it that, in this sort of situation.)and perhaps indicative of a building that's almost as wide as tall, and if the Big Bad Government(tm) was behind it, why would they *care* if a building fell over like a tree onto others...?

Posted by Frank Glover at May 1, 2007 02:55 PM

As the FEMA report explains in detail, almost all of the JP-4 jet fuel
(essentially highly refined kerosene) from the two planes was consumed in the first 5-10 minutes
after impact, both in the initial fireballs and in fires on the floors near the impact points. This means
that the jet fuel had disappeared as a heat source long before the collapses, and cannot have been
an important influence beyond helping to ignite the office contents, which would have had to supply
the lion's share of the energy needed to raise the temperature of the core columns.

Posted by Kristin at May 2, 2007 06:49 AM

As the FEMA report explains in detail, almost all of the JP-4 jet fuel
(essentially highly refined kerosene) from the two planes was consumed in the first 5-10 minutes
after impact, both in the initial fireballs and in fires on the floors near the impact points. This means
that the jet fuel had disappeared as a heat source long before the collapses, and cannot have been
an important influence beyond helping to ignite the office contents, which would have had to supply
the lion's share of the energy needed to raise the temperature of the core columns.

Posted by Kristin at May 2, 2007 06:49 AM

As the FEMA report explains in detail, almost all of the JP-4 jet fuel
(essentially highly refined kerosene) from the two planes was consumed in the first 5-10 minutes
after impact, both in the initial fireballs and in fires on the floors near the impact points. This means
that the jet fuel had disappeared as a heat source long before the collapses, and cannot have been
an important influence beyond helping to ignite the office contents, which would have had to supply
the lion's share of the energy needed to raise the temperature of the core columns.

Posted by Kristin at May 2, 2007 06:49 AM

"But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down.""

Kristin, once things get in that range of temps, stuff like aluminum starts to burn. Things considered normally non-flammible readily burn.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 4, 2007 10:14 PM

if you watch some of the video clips it shows the 30 stories or so above where the plane hit starting to fall sideways towards the streets below when it becomes pulverized into dust. how could the top section dissappear. and why did the streams and rivers of new york have 6 inches of debree dust on the surface during the weeks after?? because the concrete was pulverized and a huge dust storm of exploded concrete floated into the rivers...

Posted by scott at May 6, 2007 12:09 PM

if you throw an extra log into the fireplace it does not increase the temperature, it only makes the fire last twice as long... so curtains, rugs, and furniture would not effect the steel, especially in less than 2 hours.

Posted by scott at May 6, 2007 12:13 PM

how are the steel beams formed?
i guess their born that way since they have no melting point.

i bet rosie's twat smell could melt steel.

Posted by rosies girl at May 10, 2007 04:49 PM


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