USS Enterprise Takes Its Final Voyage

westlake writes "The AP is reporting that the world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Enterprise, is to be retired after fifty years of active service — the longest of any warship in U.S. naval history. Its final deployment will take it to the Middle East and last for seven months. The big ship has become notoriously difficult to keep in repair. As an old ship and the only one in its class, breakdowns have become frequent and replacement parts often have to be custom made. Despite its place in naval history and popular culture, Enterprise will meet its end at the scrap yard rather than being preserved at a museum. This is expected to happen in 2015, after the nuclear fuel has been removed."

Comments

That's odd

[koan]

Final voyage to the Middle East for an old hard to maintain ship, one wonders if something will befall the ship while there since it is apparently "expendable".

Re:That's odd

[daveschroeder]

...ahh, you're one of those who buys into the "Enterprise false flag" conspiracy theories? That Enterprise will be sunk, and that Iran will be blamed as an "excuse" to attack it?

Figured some loons would post on this article, but didn't expect it to be the FIRST post. Bravo.

Re:That's odd

[Kjuib]

When one Enterprise falls.. they just rebuild it and and a new letter to the end. This one will be 'B', I think.

Re:That's odd

[koan]

Wait... there's already a ""Enterprise false flag"" conspiracy theory?

Re:That's odd

[vlm]

Got it totally wrong... Didn't you ever see episode 19? Off the coast of either Manhattan or Somalia (both hotbeds of Ferengi activity), the Ferengi will take control of the Enterprise until the high tech redneck saves them all...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acquisition_(Star_Trek:_Enterprise)

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the Maine!

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm no conspiritorist but if you think someone might try to sink one of your aircraft carriers, it makes sense to put the one with the least value in that theater of operations.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, the US Navy doesn't do that, otherwise THIS Enterprise would be H, or at least, F.

Not that this is "falling" so much as being removed since upkeep is getting excessive.

Re:That's odd

[Hognoxious]

It's a false Enterprise false flag conspiracy theory.

Re:That's odd

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Figured some loons would post on this article, but didn't expect it to be the FIRST post. Bravo.

Yeah, because it's so 100% certainly impossible that it is already drafted and would happen... again.

The actual loons are those like you - living in permanent denial in fucking spite of all evidence.

Re:That's odd

[Hognoxious]

Two words (well one is an anagram, or something like that): HMS Hood.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Lt-cmdr Data will come up with a solution 43 minutes into the crisis.

Re:That's odd

[Compaqt]

Well, there's a "post stuff about ""Enterprise false flag" conspiracy theory" on Slashdot conspiracy".

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, idiot. We *try* to have intelligent conversation here, but some jackass has to go off-topic and post shit.

This isn't a article about the threat of what could happen, what did happen, or what might. It's an article about the decommissioning of a ship, nothing more. Stay on topic, or get out.

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

Wait... there's already a ""Enterprise false flag"" conspiracy theory?

You're talking about the same type of people who really believe the planes that hit the World Trade Center didn't hit the World Trade Center, or if they hit the World Trade Center they didn't have people on them, or if they had people on them they were controlled by robotic pods. And that this was just to somehow cover the REAL method of destruction which was extensive demolition charges in the buildings that no one ever noticed, because flying a plane into a building somehow wouldn't be enough to destroy it so there needed to be a REAL method of destruction that the planes somehow didn't provide. You're talking about the same people who really believe the people trapped above the impact floors weren't trapped, that the photos of them were falsified and took place on a set because the window sizes don't look right - which had nothing to do with the fact any first year photography or film student could tell you that zooming from 1/4 of a mile away will distort perspective.

It's a pathological desire to undermine anything that is believed by anyone. It's not healthy distrust, it's a creepy, nonsensical obsession with being the one, unique snowflake who sees things how they "really are".

Every little bit of information presented to them is disputed due to "inconsistencies" but their basic theories are routinely rewritten over the course of an argument. Their own truth isn't even stable, because they're not stable. Being in opposition to commonly-held beliefs is the only thing that sustains them, and they define themselves and reality solely based on that stance. Nothing else.

Re:That's odd

[gman003]

It also makes sense to put the best one there, since it would be best equipped to fight back.

Or, if you have the resources, put the weakest one closest, with as many other better ones nearby as possible, so you can take the first hit (and thus be "justified", whatever that means) and then immediately fight back hard.

And indeed, that's likely the case. CVN-70 Carl Vinson and CVN-72 Abraham Lincoln are currently in the Gulf as well. And CVN-68 Nimitz is under way to relieve Lincoln - if the timing is right, both will be in the Gulf when the shit hits the fan, meaning four aircraft carriers (nearly 360 aircraft) plus the accompanying ships (four cruisers, eight destroyers, four attack submarines and various supply ships).

Re:That's odd

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Given that aircraft carriers are there to carry aircraft which(along with crew) are Very. Much. Not. Cheap. I'd be inclined to check the allocation of those two things for the cruise. If normal, there's a bloody fortune in men and hardware loaded in the thing, even if it is an obsolete tub. If it mysteriously ends up being composed of all the EOL aircraft and enlisted na'er-do-wells, you might want to bring a life jacket...

That said, though, given the rather low standard of evidence required for questionably sensible invasions of dusty countries, the notion that 'They' would need to false-flag an entire aircraft carrier seems a bit curious. It would also be a slightly curious choice because aircraft carriers are the absolute finest in highly-visible nationalist force projection, and losing one would be terrible PR.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

daveschroeder, do you believe that the US government is honest and righteous? Because only someone with a quasi-religious affiliation for a very large organisation would mock someone for simply contemplating the potential for it to abuse its power.

Looked at another way, let's say you were living in Berlin on 28 February 1933. You take your morning stroll and something smells funny. "Dude!" you exclaim, echoing the future of American culture, "The Nazis could totally garner sufficient sympathy to pass an Enabling Act now."

"LOON!" shouts a smart black-shirted gentleman from across the street.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you're talking about people who know history. It's full of documented false flag events, that's primarily how war is waged to gain public support, because generally most people are against going to war. Considering how much talk there is of an enterprise false flag operation, if it was ever intended it probably won't happen because of all the talk about it.

Re:That's odd

[Forty Two Tenfold]

It's a pathological desire to undermine anything that is believed by anyone. It's not healthy distrust, it's a creepy, nonsensical obsession with being the one, unique snowflake who sees things how they "really are".

What you've written is the nonsensical psychobabble trying to support the morbid obsession of trusting the people who'd proven time and again that they are constantly scheming to keep getting richer. FYI "coming up with <<conspiracy theories>>" is one of the tasks at the CIA (see WMDs in Iraq, Naiyrah testimony, etc, etc.) and for an outsider, the awareness of being lied to by the gubermint is no more thrilling than the possibility that there really is "terrorism."

Re:That's odd

[segedunum]

You're talking about the same type of people who really believe the planes that hit the World Trade Center didn't hit the World Trade Center, or if they hit the World Trade Center they didn't have people on them, or if they had people on them they were controlled by robotic pods. And that this was just to somehow cover the REAL method of destruction which was extensive demolition charges in the buildings that no one ever noticed, because flying a plane into a building somehow wouldn't be enough to destroy it so there needed to be a REAL method of destruction that the planes somehow didn't provide.....

I think you're taking conspiracy theory 'debunking' a little too seriously, and doing it in a rather creep and non-sensical fashion............. While many people have some problems with the way the buildings collapsed I have never heard this stuff.

Re:That's odd

[grumling]

I love their reactions to me presenting them with the following facts about WTC:

1) It was built on a shoestring budget
2) In the 1970s.
3) Using mob-connected contractors
4) By the (at the time bankrupt) City of New York.
5) Using an untested "open floorplan" design, with over 90% of the building hollow.
6) And some of the first recycled steel.

It's a wonder the damn things stood up at all.

But no, it's much easier to believe they were built to outlast the pyramids and a bunch of CIA types planted detcord throughout.

Re:That's odd

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If you look at the current aircraft carrier deployment, you'll notice that 'hanging around the middle east' is a very popular activity among aircraft carriers, with 'maintenance' the runner up.

Further, given that it was CNV-72, the very much not obsolete yet, Abraham Lincoln that had the dubious honor of passing through the Strait of Hormuz(ie. within range of practically anything not classified as a 'small arm', the Enterprise certainly hasn't been obviously singled out as the sitting duck.

Re:That's odd

[koan]

It doesn't have to be destroyed.

this is all it took for Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

Re:That's odd

[grumling]

Involving using the main deflector dish to generate a tachyon field, of course.

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

I think you're taking conspiracy theory 'debunking' a little too seriously, and doing it in a rather creep and non-sensical fashion............. While many people have some problems with the way the buildings collapsed I have never heard this stuff.

Um... you haven't spent much time on the internet, have you? Or noticed that it was enough to prompt a Popular Mechanics cover story.

Re:That's odd

[couchslug]

The systems and aircraft which will NOT be scrapped with the hull are far from expendable. Loss of face would also be a factor.

Re:That's odd

[couchslug]

"It's a pathological desire to undermine anything that is believed by anyone. It's not healthy distrust, it's a creepy, nonsensical obsession with being the one, unique snowflake who sees things how they "really are"."

This also explains religion, where one is exalted by special insight.
Of course both are absurd, with WTC conspiracy theories being far more plausible than Sky Fairies.

Re:That's odd

[Yvan256]

Unless Janeway is the captain, in which case the ship will be lost in the bermuda triangle and re-appear somewhere in the antarctic.

Re:That's odd

[cold fjord]

Sadly, these links never go out of style.

Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report
Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation
World Trade Center Disaster Study

Re:That's odd

[PPH]

If the entire crew is wearing red shirts, I'd worry.

Re:That's odd

[BudAaron]

I'm actually 84 and an ex Navy Electronics Technician who served on a few of these carriers when they were steam driven LOL. I really hate it when "experts" like yourself imply that a gentleman like me (with an IQ of 146 FWIW) is somehow stupid to at least question various findings by "high govenment officials" and others. Let me present this scenario - the steel in those building was being painted just before 9/11. Nano thermites can be applied as paint. No one would EVER suspect. My son and I actually visited the World Trade Center when it was still standing. I've thought back about this experience and find it incredibally hard to believe that a little (relatively) passenger plane could bring one of these buildings down without outside help.Do a little investigating on your own. You might find reason to questions the "expert findings" in this case.,

Re:That's odd

[vikingpower]

Mod parent up into the sky. I am out of mod points at the moment, alas, for I sure would. Finally a voice of sanity.

Re:That's odd

[ClioCJS]

False flag attacks, in general, are most certainly not conspiracy theory.

Re:That's odd

[khallow]

It's worth noting that the King David Hotel bombing (third link) was a straightforward attack on British command and intelligence, not a false flag operation. Not much to separate it from the many other bombings that have happened since, aside from its relatively high effectiveness. And the first link is to something that didn't happen.

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

And sadly, the facts aren't even an issue for them. They define themselves based on their opposition to what's accepted. It's solely a case of being "special" enough to see the "truth", while the rest of us are "sheep".

That's what it's about. They'll create, and continue to create vast conspiracy theories that don't even match the last theory they said was the absolute truth. Their theories clash with their own theories. It's just about being different, and elevating your own worth above that of other people who are seen as dumber than you and need to be saved from themselves.

9/11 isn't even really the issue, it's merely a symptom of their own malignancy.

Re:That's odd

[ScuzzMonkey]

"Considering how much talk there is of an enterprise false flag operation, if it was ever intended it probably won't happen because of all the talk about it."

That's just what they want you to think!

Re:That's odd

[schnikies79]

Watch out everyone! We have a badass over here!

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

So Koan, in the fall can we all group together and laugh at your crazy ass?

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

"Nano-thermites"?

"Little passenger plane"?

You're talking nonsense. It's not even an argument against what I said, it's merely words that have no real connection with reality being written down for the sake of opposing what I said.

Which is at the core of the 9/11 Truther M.O.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a conspiracy conspiracy conspiracy? Watch out, folks! Segedunum doesn't know about it so it must be a conspiracy to create conspiracies about the obvious, and very much real, conspiracies.*

*All of which he knows of.

Re:That's odd

[PPH]

The USS Maine wasn't available?

Re:That's odd

[hairyfeet]

So if it happens its just an Enterprise false flag then? remember we've already had feds admit to running a false flag with fast & furious, and considering you have a trifecta of the MIC, the neocons, and AIPAC all pushing for a war with Iran a "remember the Maine" moment must seem pretty inviting right about now. After all they don't have to sink it, just have a nice cheap speedboat attack. Considering the size of the big E an attack like what happened to the Cole probably wouldn't even slow its top speed.

Re:That's odd

[MightyMartian]

I think at the core of conspiracy theorism is the need for self-importance, to be a member of an elite group that knows the truth. I mean, who would David Icke be if not for the Illuminati?

Re:That's odd

[MightyMartian]

I've been on the Internet since the early 1990s and whenever someone claims they have an IQ of 146, they're usually some nose-picking fucktard sitting in their mom's basement trying to beat down anyone who dares question their brilliance.

Re:That's odd

[EvilSS]

So..... all conspiracy theories are part of some CIA conspiracy? So I guess that makes you a CIA operative?

Re:That's odd

[mschuyler]

Umm, even the newest carrier in the fleet is "steam driven." The only difference is how they make the steam. Obviously, they never let you in the engine room.

Re:That's odd

[ericloewe]

He's being ironic. I hope...

Re:That's odd

[Forty Two Tenfold]

all conspiracy theories are part of some CIA conspiracy

How did you infer that, o one of rational mind?

Re:That's odd

[Martin Blank]

For your information, carriers are still steam-driven. The reactors heat the water and the steam is sent into steam turbines.

But then, with such a high IQ and a propensity to do your own research, you knew that already.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice analysis of what drives the conspiracy obsessive.

Re:That's odd

[Forty Two Tenfold]

something that didn't happen

But it was planned, which the anchor stated unambiguaously.

Re:That's odd

[lennier]

...ahh, you're one of those who buys into the "Enterprise false flag" conspiracy theories?

Bah, everyone knows it's the Reliant which is the real false flag.

What's actually going to happen is that Admiral Greenert is going to "borrow" the Enterprise so he can take it to Genesis Island to retrieve the body of Admiral Rickover and reunite it with his katra, which is temporarily stored within the mind of ex-President George W Bush.

Re:That's odd

[drooling-dog]

I guess it's one straw man against the other here. Either all of the wacky conspiracy theories are credible - despite their incompatibilities - or the Official Version of events is gospel truth (at least for the 30 or 40 years that the truth still matters).

But if you're in power and need to bend recent history for some purpose - like starting a war - your best move is to get as many nut-job theories into circulation as you can. That way the real truth gets lost in the circus and yours is the only one left standing.

Re:That's odd

[DesScorp]

If the entire crew is wearing red shirts, I'd worry.

I was in the ordinance section ("G" section) on Big E. Aviation ops staff... ordinance, flight deck ops, fuel, safety, etc... all wear color coded shirts. The fuel guys wear purple shirts. Safety guys white, flight deck guys blue, plane captains brown, etc. Ordinance wore red shirts. So yeah, I was a redshirt on the Enterprise, and lived to tell about it :P

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

I thought the whole thing was a cover to destroy WTC7. There was something in some archive that was damaging to someone, so the whole thing was staged by the CIA to destroy WTC 7 in a manner nobody would notice or care about.

Re:That's odd

[Runaway1956]

Lemme just ask some retarded questions. I'm terribly stupid, naive, uninformed, ignorant, and whole bunch of other horse shit. Oh yeah, can't forget batshit crazy.

With that out of the way - just how large an aircraft do you think would be required to destroy your home, if it were to crash into your home? Alright - how large a plane would be required to destroy your city hall? Your high school? Come on - THINK about it. Have you ever seen a mere 5-gallon can full of nothing but gasoline vapors explode? It's fucking DESTRUCTIVE, man! It will tear your goddamned HEAD OFF!

Now, imagine the explosive power in an automobile's gas tank - 10, 14, maybe 20 gallons of gasoline. Put that in your house. Ignite. Add a bottle or two of pure oxygen - remember, those high altitude aircraft come equipped with an oxygen source, large enough to supply all the people aboard, just in case.

Have you absorbed that yet? Fine - let's move on. How many gallons of aviation fuel did those jetliners carry? I don't even know - but I know damned well that even almost empty, they held more fuel than your family car - or an 18-wheeler.

Pull our heads out of our asses? No - I suggest you study physics.

Skyscrapers aren't exactly "stationary" to start with. They sway. They bend, They stretch. Just like Romper Room, "Bend, and stretch, reach for the stars!"

Impact one side, at a predetermined elevation, in the process destroying some structural elements, and delivering an explosive charge along with some nice long lasting flammables. You don't NEED to bring the building down. All you need do is to destroy SOME structural members, weaken some more - and wait for the building to bring itself down.

And THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT WE SAW ON 9/11/01 ! ! ! ! !

Those buildings stood for quite a long while after the impacts. It took TIME for them to finish destroying themselves. But, once those impacts, explosions, and fires were started, it was only a matter of time until they fell.

Pull our heads out of our asses, indeed.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Another corollary to Rule 34. Rule 34.12: There exists a conspiracy theory of it.

Re:That's odd

[khallow]

It was a proposal not a plan. Yes, any proposal that cynical, illegal, and serious (and desperate!) which manages to find its way to a US president's desk does mean there is something deeply wrong. The proposal may well have reflected existing plans and/or scenario building for false flag operations in the US, but it doesn't prove they existed then or now.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because everything is exactly, precisely what CNN and the NYT tell us it is. Define "conspiracy theory please".

You can't. You won't.

Loon.

Re:That's odd

[Runaway1956]

Salutes, old Salt.

I'm a little younger than you. By the time I joined the fleet, I'm pretty certain that all carriers except the Forrestal were nuclear powered. Hell, the last of the diesel boats was retired shortly after I joined the Navy, and all submarines were nuclear.

We took on fuel and potable water from the Enterprise in the North Atlantic. We were bobbing up and down on our tin can, and the Enterprise just held steady as a rock. Freaking awesome! An aircraft carrier has to be one of the world's wonders.

Re:That's odd

[mschuyler]

Both the Vinson and the Lincoln just got there in January. It won't take the Enterprise that long to get there, nor the Nimitz (I thought it was on sea trials) so that poses an interesting question. Most deployments are 7 months. By the time these two other carriers get there the two there will have been deployed for four months. So either they are on short deployments or we will have 4 carriers there at once.

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

It's the issue of people trusting "common sense" above everything else. "common sense" says they stated they built the buildings to wiithstand this event, and nothing has ever been shown that discredits this (as, if the building standards were wrong and it was a valid requirement, why aren't 90% of tall buildings in the US condemned for not meeting safety requirements at the time they were built?). So, it "should" have survived. That it didn't in reality was because the steel "melted" (melted as in got sufficiently weak through heating and expansion from heat, not turned to liquid), and that happened because the design was to withstand a plane crash, and to survive burning fuel, but not to survive a plane crash with burning fuel. How stupid would one have to be not combine the two? Ask the "tsunami or earthquake, but not tsunami and earthquake" power plant.

The core of all "truthers" is wrong common sense being elevated above all else.

Re:That's odd

[quantic_oscillation7]

9/11: A Conspiracy Theory - Everything you ever wanted to know about the 9/11 in under 5 min http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThLaswlmDSQ&html5=True

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe people have been fed so much bullshit from their governments and the mega-corps that it is a first and safe defence to not believe *anything* those lying liars lie to them about? I don't wear a tinfoil hat but I certainly do not believe everything I hear.

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

Which parts are lies is hard to determine, but the official story clearly contains lots of lies,

I've never seen one probably false statement in the "official story." I'm a fireman, so we are taught to never say anything to anyone for that exact reason. The "official story" is the one published on paper from the commission, not any verbal statements made by any "official" or anything else like that. So, what's the lie?

Here's an exercise in futility: review the data and evidence surrounding 9/11 in an open and honest way. You will probably reach the conclusion that there was some sort of inside job,

I have. You are wrong. What now?

Re:That's odd

[misexistentialist]

It's solely a case of being "special" enough to see the "truth", while the rest of us are "sheep".

To be fair, most people don't even bother to have a theory. They haven't heard of WTC 7 (unless a crackpot brought it to their attention).

Conspiracy theory: Conspiracy theories get press in order to distract the public from embarrassing information about the FBI's ineptitude or origin of the hijackers.

Re:That's odd

[mschuyler]

Confirmed. The Nimitz is now in home port Everett, Washington after a week or so of sea trials. It may very well be scheduled to relieve the Lincoln eventually, but they haven't left yet. Also, they just got to Everett. They have been at PSNS Bremerton for the last 15 months undergoing maintenance.

Re:That's odd

[J'raxis]

Not that I've heard of, either. (I came in here to post essentially what you said in the OP.) But perhaps the people who enjoy remaining blissfully ignorant as to what their government is up to want to get a head-start on dismissing theories that make them uncomfortable.

Re:That's odd

[BeerCat]

Thinking about it ( I know, it's probably only feeding some "there must be a consipracy" troll, but I'll press on), in addition to your points, by the 1970s was the first time that skyscrapers were replacing skyscrapers, rather than replacing old, low-rise buildings. So, what if someone thought "wow, these things are really hard to demolish. Since we know this building will be replaced in - call it 50 years - why don't we build in the holes ready to take the demolition charges?" at which point someone then countered with "but why don't we save some effort, and put the charges in now, so we don't have to waste time partially dismantling it to load up the pre-drilled holes with explosive? I mean, what could possibly go wrong? Aircraft crashing into it? Not an issue - a B-25 crashed into the Empire State Building, and it's still standing!" (of course it wasn't built to a budget, and to a new design by a bankrupt city)

In other words, if (and I stress that it is a big, big, "if") someone had thought along those lines, it would be another triumph of stupidity over conspiracy.

Re:That's odd

[Anthony Mouse]

No, you're talking about people who know history. It's full of documented false flag events, that's primarily how war is waged to gain public support, because generally most people are against going to war.

I've come to a conclusion about conspiracy theories: They don't matter. They don't matter if they're true, they don't matter if they're false, they don't matter if the aliens abducted you and changed the bits in your brain to make you think they're true or false. They don't matter.

Because it doesn't change anything. You're not going to convince anyone one way or the other. The conspiracy theorists will just make rationalizations and the government is never going to admit to a false flag operation until well after it stops mattering whether it was or not.

The problem is not false flag operations. The problem is that we're all so stupid that we allow ourselves to get manipulated into spending trillions of dollars on bombs and coffins as a result of bullshit propaganda. The War on Terrorism is a stupid failure of an idea. The War in Iraq is a stupid failure of a war. These facts do not depend on how the towers fell. The problem is not false flag operations, it is irrational overreactions to malicious instigators.

The next time some stupid halfwits manage to kill a large number of people in the same place, stop thinking about revenge, and never again say "Something Must Be Done." Just prosecute as many of them as are still alive and then get on with life. Because any other response is letting the terrorists win, whether the terrorists work for the government or not.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

You took every theory you half remembered, mashed them together into a mindless, meaningless mess, larded it with sarcasm and ridicule, and then shit it all over the page.

Straw men, bullshit, ridicule, vs facts and logical argument.

Who did you say was stupid and deluded again?

Re:That's odd

[UnknowingFool]

No what was unanticipated was that the fire would be burning so long. Disaster planning did not anticipate this scenario as most probably thought the fire would be put out right away. That might have saved the building. At Fukushima, there was a sea wall for tsunamis and there was a disaster plan for earthquakes. When the earthquake hit, the reactors shut down and emergency diesel generators kicked in. The 25ft sea wall wasn't enough for the 40ft wave. No one anticipated that they would lose power completely.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah so you have citations then? Actual scientists who have studied the matter at hand. Not people who have looked at blurry pixels and said 'must be true'. Do you have that? Every published and peer reviewed study has backed up the govs story.

Take the 'story' of world trade center 7. Having seen many fire structural collapses it looks like one (go on youtube find your local fireman etc etc etc). Due to having a large building crashing into it and starting lots of small electrical fires and catching on fire all the paper inside it (an office building with paper in it must be a conspiracy). Which were not put out and burning all day. Due to the large portions of the fire department being killed a few hours earlier. The automatic sprinkler systems not getting enough water. Due to 2 large building falling on the water mains 1-2 blocks over. Yet it was a 'conspiracy' that it fell. The only conspiracy was probably the fire chief saying 'let it burn I dont have the crew to put it out and I am not putting anyone else in harms way for a building i cant put out'. Believe it or not there are many buildings where the fire dept shows up and watches it burn. Unlike in the movies where they always go in. They show up and keep it from spreading and keep it in the building.

If you want to 'pull your head out of your ass', look up structural fatigue. It is a commonly used idea to collapse buildings. However, fire, explosions, and other things can cause it.

Honestly that the destruction wasnt larger surprised me. I had to go back and rethink what I knew about demolition. I had been playing to many video games with 'weak' gravity and had changed my world view (even after studding it in school for a few years).

Almost every single conspiracy theory around 9/11 can be debunked with a bit of logic. Sometimes you *might* have to use a bit of science. Why does this work? Because most of these theories are just that, theories. They do not hold up because they are not based on rational thought but an underlying desire to do 2 things. One prove that they are 'special' and understand the world better than others. Two to back up their being 'special' they think the gov is out to get everyone somehow. You have been watching too many movies if you think the gov is out to get you personally. Movies are the worst way to build your worldview. They make things up for the convenience of plot and to speed the plot along. If they showed how the gov worked in real life in movies you would submit a form and the guy who got back from lunch at 3 might look at it and give it to the next guy who needs to look at it (too look at next week when he gets back from vacation).

There have been many groups over the years who like to think 'they know how it is and the rest are sheep'. From the top of my head I can think of beatniks, hippies, metalheads, punks, goths, cybergoth, emo, and hipsters. Just different names for the same group of people. Many of the ideas they come up with are the same. Somehow they have it figured out and the world is out to get them. Then as they grow up they realize the world is not out to get them. Life sucks and I need to do something to make it better. Depending on how lazy depends on what you will do about it. Best thing I saw the other day was about that warlord "liking a status does not make you a freedom fighter". It comes down to this life sucks, what are you going to do about it?

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and this proves what?

Re:That's odd

[koan]

Personally I hope I'm wrong, don't want anyone getting hurt.

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

Well yeah. When you are committing a terrorist act or act of war, would you want them coming after you, or would you rather they go after your enemy? There's a difference between "false flag" and "misdirection" in the context of "false flag" as used today. Technically, dressing up as a policeman to get by security is a "false flag" operation (as you falsely assume the identity of someone else for a tactical advantage), but today, "false flag" generally means someone attacking an enemy of an enemy and blaming it on their enemy (blame being placed through planted evidence in many cases). Often that means attacking yourself. Deliberately sinking your own ship and then blaming the enemy is not a false flag operation. It would be a false flag operation if a US force commendeered an enemy vessel and used that (and their inside knowledge) to destroy the Enterprise. But it meets none of the explicit or implied definitions of "false flag" to scuttle your own ship intentionally and blaming it on others. That's a simple disinformation/propaganda operation.

You can't false-flag yourself when you are in on it.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. People really did die on the planes and in the buildings. That still doesn't mean that it wasn't engineered by the government as an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to steal oil and install a government that would kowtow to US whims.

Sorry to break this to you, but your government is evil. Probably the most evil government in the entire world. Trust them if you want, but any sane person will at least question their part.

Re:That's odd

[Forty Two Tenfold]

Yeah... and hackers are really crackers, but the commonly accepted meaning of the word hacker is "a cracker." And saboteurs are now called terrorists, and pirates are called emperors and copying is called stealing and bacteria multiply by division. In other words, you've written an analysis that's completely irrelevant to everyone except very few linguists maybe.

Re:That's odd

[Vladius]

Uh-huh.....they're going to sink a nuclear powered carrier in the middle of one of the most strategic waterways in the world....not to mention one of the most shallow.

Re:That's odd

[mikelieman]

Considering that the Citicorp tower almost fell down all by itself, I'm still going with "I'm amazed it stayed up as long as it did in the first place"...

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I love their reactions to me presenting them with the following facts about WTC:

1) It was built on a shoestring budget
2) In the 1970s.
3) Using mob-connected contractors
4) By the (at the time bankrupt) City of New York.
5) Using an untested "open floorplan" design, with over 90% of the building hollow.
6) And some of the first recycled steel.

It's a wonder the damn things stood up at all.

But no, it's much easier to believe they were built to outlast the pyramids and a bunch of CIA types planted detcord throughout.

The World Trade Center was built by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), not the City of New York.

The WTC used a Framed Tube design, and it was not the first to do so.

Around the time of WTC construction, 60% of steel in the US was recycled.
____________________________________________________

I'd say 3 out of six ain't bad, but your other three "facts" aren't completely accurate either.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. Somebody is a fucking looney ANTI-conspiracy nutjob. I guess it takes all types.

Believe what you want to believe. Because YOU know exactly what happened, because you saw it on TV. Plus you expend quite some energy spouting off in a non-related thread YOUR theories about people and how THEY are crazy for questioning certain facts. Because EVERYONE who questions ANYTHING believes the ENTIRE strawman you have put up in order to blast down with your "data".

Fucking crazy people, you are certainly entertaining.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Being in opposition to commonly-held beliefs is the only thing that sustains them, and they define themselves and reality solely based on that stance. Nothing else.

This is actually a beneficial trait - to come up with an insane theory, and fixate on it regardless of what anyone else says. Sure, 99.9% of the time it reduces your evolutionary fitness by making you a useless raving loonie - but when, by sheer chance, you're right, the payoff can be huge.

Re:That's odd

[Gonoff]

That's an old theory.

The idea is that if there are enough bogative theories around a couple of genuaine ones won't be noticed.

Re:That's odd

[Holi]

I was a red shirt, but I was in Damage Control. Yeah we were expendable.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

So kiss him then.

Re:That's odd

[ukemike]

Calm down dude, and explain why WTC7 came down.

Re:That's odd

[PopeRatzo]

The problem is that we're all so stupid that we allow ourselves to get manipulated into spending trillions of dollars on bombs and coffins as a result of bullshit propaganda.

Boy, ain't that the truth.

Even worse, the people who profit from war know exactly which notes to hit to get everyone to stand up and march around and DEMAND WAR. It's as if the run-up to the Iraq War never happened, when you think about Iran. The same people, saying exactly the same thing, about going to war in the same region, for the same reasons. In five years, we'll be hearing, "Well, everyone agreed at the time that Iran's nuclear weapon program had to be stopped, so you can't really blame anyone for deciding to get involved in a costly, unnecessary war".

The amazing thing is how they've got this formula down to an exact science. The same faces on my TV: Michael Ledeen, Paul Wolfowitz. John fucking Bolton. All looking grave and serious. "We have to stop Iran or it's curtains", they say. Somebody writes an op-ed in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal questioning the rush to war and BOOM! "He's not patriotic", they say, "He's anti-American". The next thing you know the guy who wrote the op-ed finds his entire life under attack. Maybe his wife loses her job. He's collateral damage. And still, in five years, they'll say, "Everybody thought for SURE that Iran was building a bomb", and they'll forget all about Joe Op-Ed Writer.

The other night I heard some guy who teaches at the Naval War College. He wrote a book called "Rush to Judgement" about how someday historians will all agree that George W Bush was our greatest president and how absolutely necessary the Iraq War really was. It was on some right-wing talk show that just a little earlier had Victor Davis Hansen, and (guess who!) Michael Ledeen talking about how weak little Israel is totally going to bravely take out Iran's burgeoning nuclear arsenal and how Israel is the only thing standing between the world and total nuclear winter because of Iran's thousands of nuclear weapons, which they will absolutely have next week unless the feckless islamo-fascist in the White House finally wakes up and immediately starts playing Driving Miss Daisy with Bibi Netanyahu playing the role of Miss Daisy. Oh, and then that Kenyan pretender steps aside to let a real man, oh, I don't know...maybe somebody like Mitt Romney, run WWIII because everyone knows a Democrat can't win a war. And Romney is a job creator and a venture capitalist and so he is totally the kind of guy you want leading the troops into battle with his years of military experience as a Mormon missionary in third-world countries like France. In fact, he's just like Patton when you think about it. Sort of a cross between John Galt and Winston Churchill with better hair.

It's nauseating how predictable it all is. And it's terrifying how they can just get away with it again and again. But I guess when you've got major media networks owned by military contractors, it shouldn't be a surprise that the media is so willing to let this predictable scenario play out. But fucking hell, I'm weary of it.

Re:That's odd

[cold fjord]

Calm down dude, and explain why WTC7 came down.

I can help you with that.

Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation
World Trade Center Disaster Study
Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

Re:That's odd

[PPH]

Are there any jokes onboard about ordnance guys being expendable? I wonder if this is where they (Star Trek writers) got the idea for color coded shirts. And to make the expendable ones red.

Re:That's odd

[Alex Belits]

The next time some stupid halfwits manage to kill a large number of people in the same place, stop thinking about revenge, and never again say "Something Must Be Done." Just prosecute as many of them as are still alive and then get on with life.

That really does not help if people are convinced that all people with brown skin are associated with terrorists.

Re:That's odd

[Deadstick]

I was in the ordinance section

I'm a little dubious about anyone who can't spell what he works on...

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be much, much easier to scuttle the ship than to have it properly decommissioned. Not to mention far cheaper and with a lot less due care to the environment. The US has such a boner for military prestige that I find it hard to believe the Enterprise wouldn't become a floating museum unless there's a far greater purpose for it, and if that reason so happens to be a web of lies and deceit to pave the way for military force against the Iranians I truly will not be surprised.

I may even have to say 'I told you so.'

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

yes. and both 1, 2, and 7 all collapsed NEATLY IN THEIR OWN FOOTPRINTS. Exactly like all those videos of controlled demolition. Them's gamblin' odds if you ask me!

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, the PopMech piece on this has been so thoroughly debunked already I'm surprised you're bothering to link to it. But you'll believe anything with a big enough budget, yeah?

And the NIST studies?? You're really going to trust the government to tell you the government had no involvement in any conspiracy? That's like believing McDonalds when they say their buns don't contain the same fluffing agent used in your highschool gym mats.

Re:That's odd

[Suiggy]

And you're doing the exact same thing, attempting to elevate yourself as having a superior intellectual position using the same techniques and ad hominin generalizations while ignoring any contradictory evidence which actually is objective and factual.

The only difference between people like yourself and so called "conspiracy theorists" is the amount of trust or distrust one assigns to certains collections or groups of people such as corporations, governments, and nations.

It all stems from group dynamics and evolutionary psychology and it is ingrained into the human condition. No human can escape it, not you, not me, no one.

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

No, I was pointing out that it was incorrect with both definitions, not just the "accurate" one (as when I point out the common use proves them wrong, they always point to the dictionary, so I showed the use was wrong for both. It's just easier to discuss the linguistic definition, as that's provable. For the common use, it's the "I have heard it used this way" argument, which isn't testable.

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

They did not intend for the fire to be caused by an impact that could damage insulation. The building was never designed to withstand indefinite fire, otherwise insulation is useless (it delays transfer of heat, but long-term heat will make it through any insulation). It was designed to survive long enough to evacuate. But the stairs and such didn't survive acts it was supposed to be designed to survive.

There has never been a similar act, ever. And people are applying "common sense" to a unique act. That simply does not work.

No one anticipated that they would lose power completely.

That's what amazes me. It was designed such that complete loss of mains power (and generator failure) would result in an unpreventable meltdown, and the generators were vulnerable to risks it was supposed to endure. Very minor changes, and then there'd have been no problems at all. I think it's similar oversights in the WTC design/construction, but the people in the commission and such don't want to make it that plain, otherwise every high rise in the country would be condemned, as none of them would survive what they are purported to be able to survive.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Give Iran the reactor and fuel. Saves having the taxpayer footing the bill for its decommissioning and cleanup.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

...which is temporarily stored within the mind of ex-President George W Bush.

Well, something has to be stored in there.

Re:That's odd

[tragedy]

On the one hand, I know that there are plenty of evil conspiracies that governments engage in to further their goals. The Nazi's burned the Reichstag to gain popular support. Some factions in the CIA conspired to fake and/or actually commit terrorist attacks on US citizens and blame them on Cuba to start a war with Cuba (the Northwoods documents are real, but they were never green lighted by the President, but the CIA agents behind it still planned it and sought approval to do it and even specifically talked about manufacturing another "remember the Maine" incident). The FBI under Hoover pulled off a huge list of dirty tricks including COINTELPRO... Governements, including the US government, pull off all kinds of dirty tricks. It frankly wouldn't surprise me if there's a few proposals floating around for all kinds of false flag operations they can pull off to justify a war with Iran (it wouldn't even surprise me if sinking a ship such as the Enterprise were in one of those proposals).

Conspiracies are real things. They happen in real life. The events of 9/11, for example, are proven to be a conspiracy... by a group of mostly Saudi terrorists. Whether there was actually any US government participation in it is another story. I think it's quite likely that there was some, but probably not in the grandiose secret hidden demolition charges way most of the conspiracy theorists seem to think. Just like the first World Trade Center Bombing, various intelligence and law enforcement agencies seem to have had their eye on the people who did it, but still let them go about their business and possibly even provided some material support here and there. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies do this a lot. They monitor and sometimes infiltrate criminal and terrorist organizations and cultivate "informants" and double-agents. They let small crimes (and sometimes big ones) get by in order to build up for really big takedowns. Consider FBI informants "Whitey" Bulger and Stephen "the rifleman" Flemmi who were getting away with murder and eliminating the competition with FBI protection. Let's face it, sometimes they commit out and out entrapment and manufacture crimes. Some may argue that the ends justify the means and maybe they're right, but they seem pretty hard to justify to me. So, maybe some in the US government actually did give the 9/11 terrorists a pass, or even provide them assistance just to see what they would do or to give them a chance to commit a terrorist act (which they could swoop in and heroically prevent). I'll even concede that I wouldn't put it past some of the kinds of people in these positions to allow a terrorist attack to occur just to have an excuse for a war. That, sadly, does not stretch credibility to the breaking point.

Having said all that, most of the conspiracy theories around this stuff are nuts. For example, your nano thermite paint idea. Why, exactly would that be necessary? How would it even be practical since a layer of thermite paint couldn't produce enough heat to do much more than slightly warm the very thick steel we're talking about? Why would it even be necessary given the damage from the collision and the furnace from the burning jet fuel (and everything else flammable in the building)? Has anyone claiming it's what happened bothered doing any research or experimentation? Most of the really vocal conspiracy theorists seem to be really bad at the physics of the real world and to be terrible at logic. Like the ones who insist that the Pentagon was hit by a missile because the hole in the wall wasn't the same size and shape as the front profile of the plane that hit it and don't understand that: A. a jet plane is a flying, hollow, aluminium can and the Pentagon is a re-enforced concrete fortress and B. it would require the people behind the conspiracy to simultaneously be brilliant enough to pull off the elaborate conspiracy, but stupid enough to use a real plane in three other places, but use a missile in a fourth.

Then there's the moon hoax conspiracy idiots who consiste

Re:That's odd

[Rakarra]

Very very easy: The building was damaged by debris from the collapse of the WTC 1&2 towers, and fires burned for hours on the lower floors without any available fire suppression. The sprinkler system was poorly designed (requiring manual intervention), required electrical power, and were underserved by low water pressure. A few points of failure were taken out by the twin tower collapses, and firefighters had no way of putting out the fires in the building. Three hours before the building collapsed, firefighters noticed a bulge on an outer wall, a sign that structural integrity was failing, and they were evacuated.

If fires burn unchecked through a building for hours, then yes, that building will go down regardless of its construction.

Re:That's odd

[Rakarra]

I thought the whole thing was a cover to destroy WTC7. There was something in some archive that was damaging to someone, so the whole thing was staged by the CIA to destroy WTC 7 in a manner nobody would notice or care about.

IE, the entire plot to the 1998 X-Files movie.

Re:That's odd

[Rakarra]

In the parent's defense, the conspiracy theorists have absolutely no facts and certainly nothing resembling logical argument on their side either.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

> Now, imagine the explosive power in an automobile's gas tan

Jets don't burn gasoline.

Re:That's odd

[Dave Emami]

You're talking about the same type of people who really believe the planes that hit the World Trade Center didn't hit the World Trade Center, or if they hit the World Trade Center they didn't have people on them, or if they had people on them they were controlled by robotic pods.

"Quite simple to pull off really. All I had to do was have explosives planted in the base of the towers, then on 9/11 we pretended like four planes were being hijacked when really we just rerouted them to Pennsylvania then flew two military jets into the World Trade Center filled with more explosives then shot down all the witnesses of Flight 93 with an F-15 after blowing up the Pentagon with a cruise missile. It was only the world's most intricate and flawlessly executed plan, ever, ever."

Re:That's odd

[siddesu]

While I have my own doubts about who contributed what to 9/11, two things I'm quite sure about is that buildings did not fall neatly in their own footprints and that the collapses looked nothing like a controlled demolitions. You know how? I watched the videos on the internets carefully.

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

yes. and both 1, 2, and 7 all collapsed NEATLY IN THEIR OWN FOOTPRINTS. Exactly like all those videos of controlled demolition. Them's gamblin' odds if you ask me!

I've seen this cited by people attempting to be serious, and it never fails to make me laugh... a bit sadly.

Physics dictates that a building "wants" to fall straight down. Moving that much mass off-center is really fucking difficult, and why even failed professional demolitions usually end up with incomplete collapse, rather than some old structure tipping over.

Re:That's odd

[Dantoo]

Seriously, that's the best rant I've seen in a week.Cheered me up immensely. Kudos sir!

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that aircraft carriers are there to carry aircraft which(along with crew) are Very. Much. Not. Cheap. I'd be inclined to check the allocation of those two things for the cruise. If normal, there's a bloody fortune in men and hardware loaded in the thing, even if it is an obsolete tub. If it mysteriously ends up being composed of all the EOL aircraft and enlisted na'er-do-wells, you might want to bring a life jacket...

That said, though, given the rather low standard of evidence required for questionably sensible invasions of dusty countries, the notion that 'They' would need to false-flag an entire aircraft carrier seems a bit curious. It would also be a slightly curious choice because aircraft carriers are the absolute finest in highly-visible nationalist force projection, and losing one would be terrible PR.

EOL aircraft maybe. Enlisted na'er-do-wells? please the navy doesn't discriminate based on performance. All enlisted are worthless pawns to be used up.

Re:That's odd

[steve.cri]

with over 90% of the building hollow

That holds for most buildings in the world except some military bunkers

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me clear a few misconceptions.

"maybe 20 gallons of gasoline."

Jets use fuel that is essentially kerosene, not gasoline.
You can not compare kerosene vapour to gasoline vapour. It is closer to diesel.

"Add a bottle or two of pure oxygen - remember, those high altitude aircraft come equipped with an oxygen source, large enough to supply all the people aboard, just in case."

Commercial jets carry no oxygen on board (except small amounts for passengers with medical requirements, and typically, only when those people are flying).

The oxygen for in flight emergencies is generated using chemical oxygen generators, which produce small amounts at a relatively slow rate, and only when required.

No explosion was necessary to destroy the buildings. Just a sustained fire from the large amounts of jet fuel. Eventually it weakened structural beams, and then the building failed under its own weight.

The same thing would have happened without an impact. It just needed large amounts of fuel on fire for a sustained period.

Re:That's odd

[CohibaVancouver]

It's a pathological desire to undermine anything that is believed by anyone. It's not healthy distrust, it's a creepy, nonsensical obsession with being the one, unique snowflake who sees things how they "really are".

Saw a good program on (PBS?) a few years ago about conspiracy theorists, particularly the wingnuttish ones. One thing that is common amongst them is they tend to have a lot of disorder in their own lives - Marital /familial disorder, financial disorder, emotional disorder - Or a combination thereof. Conspiracy theories help them cope with the disorder in their own lives by allowing them to realize disorder elsewhere - They're 'searching for meaning' to help justify their own ragged lives

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Psychological_origins

...because it is more consoling to think that complications and upheavals in human affairs are created by human beings rather than factors beyond human control. Belief in such a cabal is a device for reassuring oneself that certain occurrences are not random, but ordered by a human intelligence. This renders such occurrences comprehensible and potentially controllable. If a cabal can be implicated in a sequence of events, there is always the hope, however tenuous, of being able to break the cabal's power â" or joining it and exercising some of that power oneself. Finally, belief in the power of such a cabal is an implicit assertion of human dignity â" an often unconscious but necessary affirmation that man is not totally helpless, but is responsible, at least in some measure, for his own destiny..

Re:That's odd

[smash]

To be fair, it wouldn't be the first "false flag" op the US has done by a long shot.

Re:That's odd

[cold fjord]

Or do they?

Re:That's odd

[smash]

So why are the twin towers the first buildings in history to fall down that were struck by airliners? They were by no means the first airliners to crash into tall buildings.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

It would only be a conspiracy theory if Admiral William Shatner used the Enterprise as his flagship. If Captain George Takei were in command then I'd be really suspicious something was up.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

A B-25 is dwarfed by the 767 which struck the towers. The 767 is at least 10 times more massive.

Max take-off weight:
        B-25: 35,000 lbs
        767-223ER: 395,000 lbs

Fuel capacity:
        B-25: 670 US Gals
        767-223ER: 24,100 US Gals

I doubt seriously the Empire State building could withstand the impact of a fully loaded 767.

Re:That's odd

[FrootLoops]

"No human can escape it, not you, not me, no one" -- what is "it" here? Attempting to be intellectually superior by ignoring inconvenient truths (like the inhomogeneity of large groups) or misrepresenting the certainty of data?

Certainly brain dead humans can avoid those issues. A few hyper-rational people might also be able to; there are probably a few other edge cases. It's telling that you fell prey to the same thing you're complaining about so quickly. I imagine your statement is much more true than false--"most" people in my experience do those things, though I haven't read or conducted a scientific study on the topic.

Re:That's odd

[murdocj]

Yes, yes, of course, they'll probably fly the Enterprise into Golden Gate Bridge in order to declare war on Irag.

Good lord, man, how do you keep yourself in tin foil?

Re:That's odd

[J'raxis]

When theorizing about the treachery of the government, one is very rarely wrong.

Re:That's odd

[LWATCDR]

Might I introduce you to your new best friend? Please say hello to Chlorpromazine.

Re:That's odd

[murdocj]

I watch the X-Files, what more do I need?

Re:That's odd

[jalefkowit]

The Nazi's burned the Reichstag to gain popular support

Most historians today believe that the Reichstag fire was actually set by the Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe as an act of protest against the Nazis; what debate remains centers around whether he acted alone or had ideologically-aligned accomplices. It's generally felt that the Nazis had no involvement in setting the fire and were just very aggressive and clever at using the unforeseen-by-them event to push forward their agenda.

Re:That's odd

[swalve]

They didn't fall because of the airliners, they fell because of the fire that weakened the remaining steel supports enough that the tops couldn't be held up any longer. Evidenced by the fact that the one where the plane crashed lower fell first.

Re:That's odd

[swalve]

Gravity is a thing, and buildings are heavy. Want to make a scale representation? Build a 20 foot tower with spaghetti.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

these are the same criminals who refuse to release de-classified documents regarding the bay of pigs` because "the facts will only confuse the people"

Re:That's odd

[swalve]

It wasn't the planes, it was the fire ignited by the 200,000 gallons of fuel they carried + all the stuff in the building + the structural damage caused by the holes in the buildings.

Re:That's odd

[swalve]

Hey, I took the OK Cupid test 100 times until I got an IQ of 298, so suck it, mortal.

Re:That's odd

[swalve]

I'm not up on my conspiracies... what was in WTC7 that needed such a spectacular destruction?

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Add a bottle or two of pure oxygen - remember, those high altitude aircraft come equipped with an oxygen source, large enough to supply all the people aboard, just in case.

Nope. They have oxygen generators, not oxygen bottles.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, even if it was explained ( as you did), it will not be believed.
Thats the nature of conspiracy theories, they are un-falsifiable

Any evidence against the conspiracy is part of the conspiracy.

Re:That's odd

[ThePeices]

I have done the research to answer those questions. And I found no reason to question the results of the investigation by the 'experts'.

No conspiracy is required to explain what happened on 9/11, only science and engineering.

Re:That's odd

[tragedy]

There's a lot of argument about it. Most historians do seem to think that he set the fire, but not necessarily just against the Nazis. The description of him in the article you link kind of has patsy written all over it. He may well have simply acted alone with no input from anyone, or he may have been a useful idiot for someone, whether they were on the side of the Nazis or against them.

In any case, I probably shouldn't have used it as an example, since it's certainly not a settled matter. Of course, whether or not the Nazis set the fire or not, there clearly was a real-life conspiracy among them to use the event to sweep away their political opposition. I just wanted to include a non-US example in there. How about I instead substitute the French bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, which they tried to blame on terrorists? Not a great example, but I'm just thinking off the top of my head.

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

There were some CIA offices in there I think. What was in them could have been anything the CIA's ever been accused of knowing. The most common I've heard is the circular "it was the proof the CIA commissioned 9/11" was the reason they committed 9/11.

Re:That's odd

[Tastecicles]

...and the point where you used several exclamation marks consecutively was the point where the last lingering threat of credibility in your argument disappeared in a puff of smoke.

As a matter of historical fact, no other glass and steel building, in the entire history of glass and steel highrise construction, has ever collapsed (on its own footprint for that matter) as a result of fire or aircraft impact.

The towers stood for nearly an hour after impact. This tells me that the impacts DID NOT CAUSE THE COLLAPSE.

If kerosene was able to melt steel or titanium, we would not have either material INSIDE JET ENGINES. Construction steel melts at 825C. Kerosene DOES NOT burn this hot, even in the presence of a pure oxygen source. This tells me that kerosene fires did not cause the collapse.

I don't swallow the official lines because they are bullshit. I have my own theories on what happened, and no my source is not the BBC. Look over Jane Standley's left shoulder, that's the roof of WTC7 still 47 stories up and not collapsed. Oh yeah, millions of people watched that broadcast live - I was one of 'em.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

"The purpose of the term 'Conspiracy Theory' is to discourage institutional analysis." -Noam Chomsky

Think about it.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, sometimes buildings just fall over, without any need for demolition: http://online.wsj.com/media/shbuilding_E_20100211045212.jpg (More complete explanation here)

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. And if there was no past history of Governments making, err, mistatements about events then such theory about a future conspiracy would not exist.

If the ship ends up as a reef in the Middle East it won't matter WHAT the truth actually is, a %age of people will think it was a 'false flag', a %age will rally about the US flag, and there will be a %age who'll point at the USS Liberty and claim it was Isreal.

Re:That's odd

[Ihmhi]

I'm just as quick to dismiss people who shout "false flag, false flag!" reflexively, but our government has done false flags before. Iran has also been in the news an awful lot - the media seems to be trying to paint them as a horrible villain that we should be afraid of. While I think it is unlikely, considering the age of the ship it would be a hell of a thing if it got sunk (even with no loss of life) by an "Iranian attack".

They keep pushing for Iran Iran Iran, but we're not biting. Not after Iraq and Afghanistan bit us in the ass so hard. It wouldn't be entirely insane to assume that our government (or some element in our government) feels one big news story will be all the justification they need to push public opinion in favor of attacking Iran.

Re:That's odd

[Runaway1956]

Those planes didn't fly into the bottom of the towers, nor did they fly into the tops of the towers. Remember that OBL was something of a construction expert. They guy knew buildings. He also had people who know buildings. They calculated where the planes should hit to maximize the destructive potential.

And, these planes did not simply crash into the towers. They were driven into them, under power, at speed. There's a big difference between a simple crash, and a suicide attack run.

Re:That's odd

[Runaway1956]

The punctuation invalidates my post? Cool.

Re:That's odd

[dbIII]

6) And some of the first recycled steel

The "Liberty Ships" and a pile of far more successful things from WWII (and I'm sure WWI) got there earlier.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the point where you used several exclamation marks consecutively was the point where the last lingering threat of credibility in your argument disappeared in a puff of smoke

Please read the "official" NIST reports on all incidents. The information is avaliable to you at no cost.
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/

Construction steel melts at 825C. Kerosene DOES NOT burn this hot, even in the presence of a pure oxygen source. This tells me that kerosene fires did not cause the collapse.

You don't have to melt steel to weaken it enough for it to become useless. Had you read the goddamn report you would have understood this.

I don't swallow the official lines because they are bullshit. I have my own theories on what happened.

One is always able to manage to find evidence that fits their narrative. The question is what next? Claim victory and turn off your brain or expend some critical attention to try and discredit your own ideas and conclusions? Crackpots are crackpots because they lack necessary discipline and vigor to question their own feelings.

Look over Jane Standley's left shoulder, that's the roof of WTC7 still 47 stories up and not collapsed

WTC7 was on fire and all fire control efforts had been pulled from that building. It was not worth risking more lives to try and save it... the assumption was for quite some time it was going to burn down.

  Read the final WTC7 report... took them long enough..There are plenty of pictures of the damage with eloborate time lines on what happened when.

BTW in the 911 commission report Cheney reported it was his understanding planes had already been shot down when in fact none had. We had the VP of the country with wrong information so before we rev up the conspiracy machine against BBC bumbling facts might I suggest we should at least be willing to accept the idea this sort of thing is not unprecidented.

Re:That's odd

[cold fjord]

There is a critical piece of information that I think you are missing, as do most 9/11 "Truthers". It is true that the many thousands of gallons aviation fuel carried by the airliners into the World Trade Center didn't burn hot enough to melt the steel. That also happens to be irrelevant. Steel loses a large proportion of its structural strength long before it reaches its melting point. Combine the structural damage done by 80 tons of airliner smashing into the building, thousands of gallons of aviation fuel burning and progressive weakening the beams - rendering them malleable, and the enormous mass of the building above the floor pressing down on the beams, and the outcome shouldn't surprise anyone.

Most metals, including steel, lose strength and become malleable long before they melt. Blacksmiths know this. Truthers don't. Fundamentally, "Truthers" are baffled by things that blacksmiths know. (Watch a video of a blacksmith in action on Youtube sometime. They actually bend heated metal - no actual melting necessary.)

Re:That's odd

[dbIII]

There are people that think it is a self evident truth that the US government is so powerful that it can only be harmed or halted by itself. That's the reason we get the unshakable "inside job" viewpoint like the one above. They don't understand that portions of government can be as competant or incompetant as any other large group.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on dude, stop with that propaganda, you shill.

It is a known fact that 2 planes hit 2 WTC towers, but the problem arises when the third tower, WTC 7 collapsed at almost free fall speed and was hit by nothin'

Re:That's odd

[rtb61]

There was also a report about the 4 hour fire protection coating that was meant to be applied to the structural steel as not only being much thinner than it was meant to be but completely absent in many areas, with video recordings of inspections made. Any fire in those buildings would have been extremely dangerous.

Re:That's odd

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

Even worse, the people who profit from war know exactly which notes to hit to get everyone to stand up and march around and DEMAND WAR.

You're of course aware of Göring's thoughts on the issue, but for those that aren't:

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

-- In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)

and

After the United States gobbled up California and half of Mexico, and we were stripped down to nothing, territorial expansion suddenly becomes a crime. It's been going on for centuries, and it will still go on.

-- At lunch during the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal (11 December 1945); Nuremberg Diary p.66, 1947 edition.

Re:That's odd

[master_p]

Denying that the skyscrapers were brought down by the airliners is stupid, but it is not stupid to think that the event was helped, if not directly organized, by the industrial and military complex in order to create a new enemy to help boost the business and American dominance over the globe.

Do you know the 'Project For New American Century'? it is a right-wing think tank where its central idea in the year 2000 was that America needed a new Perl Harbor event to use as the basis for expanding its military presence worldwide. A year after that, kaboom, America has its 2nd Perl Harbor, and right after that, some major war campaigns.

Now that is a possible consipracy, isn't?

Re:That's odd

[Chris Mattern]

yes. and both 1, 2, and 7 all collapsed NEATLY IN THEIR OWN FOOTPRINTS. Exactly like all those videos of controlled demolition. Them's gamblin' odds if you ask me!

Because, as we all know, if gravity is left to take its natural course, it pulls a building *sideways*.

Re:That's odd

[Runaway1956]

Ahhhh - the hardest theory to debunk.

Almost everyone is shocked beyond description when it is mentioned that certain persons, corporations, or organizations may have been complicit in the attack. I have little doubt that we know who, when what, and where - but the "why" is still elusive.

And, yes I'm familiar with the New American Century. I despise them. They would indeed tear the hearts out of their own mothers and grandmothers bodies if the profit were deemed to be high enough. We see them doing almost that, as they continue to ship jobs overseas, instead of investing in America.

Re:That's odd

[murdocj]

Well, what if the "false flag" chatter is being created by the Iranians? So when they launch a "true flag" sinking of the Enterprise with a crude nuke delivered via cruise missile, the USA can't respond? Makes EXACTLY as much sense as the USA having "false flag" operation.

When I think about all the 9/11 conspiracy theory stuff, what strikes me is that here we have one of the best documented events in history, and we STILL have people questioning the basic events. If you are going to question 9/11, you might as well not believe anything at all. Basically you have to make a decision as to whether you are going to start with the evidence first, or the conclusion first. If you start with "it's all a CIA plot" conclusion first, you can always explain away the evidence.

Re:That's odd

[UnknowingFool]

Also the structure of WTC7 was a bit unusual. It was built on top of a power station. On top not meaning they removed the station to build WTC7. On top meaning they had to build it with the power station in place. As such some of the floors (I think 3-5) had to take the building's load differently than in a normal building. The fire did affect those floors. In addition to all the water issues, one of the major reasons it was allowed to burn was that the building was thought evacuated so no life was in danger while firefighters were more focused on rescuing any survivors of WTC1 and 2. Personally I don't disagree with that decision.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. Our government would never engage in false flag operations under any circumstances. You are a tinfoil hatter if you think otherwise.

Fuck Obama and his use of drones to execute citizens without due process. I DO NOT trust the government. There is good reason for this, and I'm not a tinfoil hatter.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

No one believes the trade towers were empty. Those were real people that got killed. The conspiracy believes that the flights were loaded with agents and they were landed. Remote controlled planes were flown in their place. Flown into the buildings. False flag requires the murder of your own citizens. Though, they wouldn't be able to get anyone to fly planes into the buildings (hence the remote control).

What you were going on about makes you sound like an idiot. You have absolute trust for your government. You're naive.

Re:That's odd

[Tastecicles]

Please read the "official" NIST reports on all incidents. The information is avaliable to you at no cost.
http://www.nist.gov/el/disasterstudies/wtc/

Erm... no. I do not trust any Government to tell the Truth.

Construction steel melts at 825C. Kerosene DOES NOT burn this hot, even in the presence of a pure oxygen source. This tells me that kerosene fires did not cause the collapse.

You don't have to melt steel to weaken it enough for it to become useless. Had you read the goddamn report you would have understood this.

Read my previous line.

I don't swallow the official lines because they are bullshit. I have my own theories on what happened.

One is always able to manage to find evidence that fits their narrative. The question is what next? Claim victory and turn off your brain or expend some critical attention to try and discredit your own ideas and conclusions? Crackpots are crackpots because they lack necessary discipline and vigor to question their own feelings.

I said THEORIES. I have the discipline and vigour to formulate my own instead of letting someone else do my critical thinking for me.

Try it, you might like it.

Look over Jane Standley's left shoulder, that's the roof of WTC7 still 47 stories up and not collapsed

WTC7 was on fire and all fire control efforts had been pulled from that building. It was not worth risking more lives to try and save it... the assumption was for quite some time it was going to burn down.

WTC7 WAS NOT ON FIRE AT THAT POINT. LOOK AT THE FUCKING VIDEO. ALSO, THE BUILDING WAS EMPTY, AS IT HAD BEEN ALL MORNING.

  Read the final WTC7 report... took them long enough..There are plenty of pictures of the damage with eloborate time lines on what happened when.

BTW in the 911 commission report Cheney reported it was his understanding planes had already been shot down when in fact none had. We had the VP of the country with wrong information so before we rev up the conspiracy machine against BBC bumbling facts might I suggest we should at least be willing to accept the idea this sort of thing is not unprecidented.

WTC7 was PULLED. It was DEMOLISHED.

As for the BBC "bumbling": no, they didn't "bumble". There were TWO newscasters on that live broadcast who BOTH SAID WTC7 HAD COLLAPSED, when it QUITE PLAINLY HAD NOT. THEY EVEN DESCRIBED THE FACT THAT IT HAD 47 FLOORS. THEY WERE LYING.

Re:That's odd

[omnichad]

Actually, the plot of the first episode of The Lone Gunmen (the X-Files spinoff) predicted the WTC disaster:
http://criticalcommons.org/Members/ironman28/clips/lonegunmen911prophesy.mp4/view

The main characters of the show were wild conspiracy theorists themselves, and this pilot episode aired just months before the WTC fell.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Its worth noting that independant tests have shown that jet fuel can burn significantly hotter than many "experts" have cited. Turns out that its generally a media screwup. The experts typically cited the lowest reasonable temps which were likely and media reported it as, "up to." Plus, areodynmic study of the buildings indicate that large areas of the structure also allows the vertical shafts to function like a bellows for a blacksmith meaning the temps in some areas were likely far, far hotter than anyone can guess. Then when you add that some supports were torn away, many were in need to new fire retardant material, and the impact shedded a lot of that material in the first place. Lastly, steel need not melt to fail like that. It need only weaken. Consistently, temps have show to easily exceed the require temperatures for the steel to fail. And is a fact that with that type of failure, you see it accordian exactly like what everyone observed.

The only conspiracy is those who perpetuate the 9/11 conspiracy.

Re:That's odd

[omnichad]

By the way, when I watched this episode it really freaked me out!!! I watched it years after it aired, but I had to do a double take and scrambled to look up when it aired.

Re:That's odd

[RobertLTux]

not sure of the numbers but i think they could have gotten a good "tip over" if one of the planes was a fully loaded C-5 and it hit about a third of the way from the bottom.

(exactly how a Whackadoodle could get his hands on a fully loaded C-5 and fly it to the target is an exercise left to the student)

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh boy. Like it or not, you're actually the classic profile for conspiracy nutters. High IQ is common.

Many tests have been done. Its impossible to hold enough energy in a layer of paint. Its a fact of physics. Its impossible. So we can reasonably and accurately state, that never happened.

Secondly, demolition of a building is a major project. For a building that size would be, at a minimum, of 6-8 months or prep, which would include cutting all the structures on every floor, cutting water pipes, cutting electrical lines, so on and so on. It would literally be impossible to pull that feat off in a functioning building.

Do a little investigating on your own.

I have. I'm spent an embarassing amount of time investigating. The fact you're citing these things wonderfully prove you've spent absolutely no time researching and immediately placed your tin foil hat atop your head without doing what you're asking others to do. Honestly I can tell you, based on your own assertions, its very clear you've hardly done any investigation into the subject - which is typical of conspiracy people. They typically only do enough to confirm their conspiracy for themselves and no more.

Honestly, from my own investigations, there are typically two categories of people. One, people who understand what happened (who take the official account OR did their own research) and the conspiracy people who did little to no research and yet beg people to do the same amount of innept and igonrant research they did.

Its also a fact of physics that the heat available was more than ample to cause the superstructure to fail - exactly as was observed.

Re:That's odd

[GameboyRMH]

A building pre-rigged with explosives would be a deathtrap in a fire, and the explosives have a limited shelf life anyways. Also the holes where demolition charges are planted structurally weaken the building. There's a reason why access to demolition-prepped buildings is carefully controlled.

Re:That's odd

[X0563511]

We want them to know that we know that they know that we know that they know that we know that they know that we know that they know that we know that they know that we know......

My head just 'asploded.

Re:That's odd

[koan]

The only way you will remember this in the fall is if it actually happens, hopefully it won't because that means people get hurt.

One other thing, it may not be the Iranians that start something there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
Like all crimes simple look for the ones that profit or get what they were after.

Re:That's odd

[GameboyRMH]

LOL, I also like how flying airliners into buildings is easier than running the documents through a good shredding process.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm dumber for having clicked on that link. That site is a factless conspiracy nutter's site. I encourage you to go learn more about physics and the facts surrounding the event rather than the insane ramplings of other conspiracy nutters. Once you've honestly done that, you'll wonder what the hell happened to you to ever believe those crackpots. And if you're a crackpot too, you'll just dismiss my post outright.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn something of physics. You sound like an raging loon. It doesn't need to melt it, it only needs to weaken it. Steel can be compromised by 80% at relatively low temps.

As for jet engines, please let how they work. Also, steel is not steel. They create specific alloys for specific uses. High temp is absolutely not an issue for steel used in buildings. Obviously its a first order concern for something like a jet engine. Also, jet engines REQUIRE airflow to protect the metal from melting. Go look up a "hot start" for jet engines. If you createa hot start, chances are engine needs to be replaced because you just melted the hell out of it.

Its been tested and tested again, jet fuel EASILY gets hot enough to cause steel to lose 80% of its strength. You're also ignoring that the areodynmics of the building likely made the fuel burn far, far hotter than was initially released. But the damage can easily be done even WITHOUT this bellow effect within the building. Also, as the building heats and warps irregularly, it places additional forces on the steel making it easier to fail.

Long story short, anyone how thinks the official story is impossible is either retarded or completely ignorant of the world of physics.

Re:That's odd

[tehcyder]

Right, so your theory is that they stuffed a brand new building full of explosives to save a bit of time when it came to demolition in fifty years? And no one ever mentioned it, even after the events of 9/11?

It doesn't appear to violate any of the laws of physics, and at least there are no time-travelling Nazis involved, so I suppose it's not impossible.

Re:That's odd

[tehcyder]

(exactly how a Whackadoodle could get his hands on a fully loaded C-5 and fly it to the target is an exercise left to the student)

I'm a bit concerned about the syllabus at your school.

Re:That's odd

[tehcyder]

There were some CIA offices in there I think. What was in them could have been anything the CIA's ever been accused of knowing. The most common I've heard is the circular "it was the proof the CIA commissioned 9/11" was the reason they committed 9/11.

I prefer the time-travelling paradox of "it was the proof that the CIA had actually carried out 9/11" that was the reason they carried out 9/11.

Sometimes, you need to go full retard.

Re:That's odd

[tehcyder]

Clearly the CIA offices were the site of an inter-dimensional FTL womhole transport. They had to destroy it to stop terrorists from the future coming back and crashing planes into the WTC and killing thousands of people. Oh, wait...

Re:That's odd

[Stargoat]

Never! It would be impossible for a group of ancient terrorists to take over a modern Federation Cruiser. It's just the war-mongers at Star Fleet Command trying to explain away their blatant attack on the Klingon Nation! Look who's involved. The known racist Kirk and the Federation's puppet Vulcan Spock. And the nonsense about Spock's katra and the whales. A cover for Genesis Mark II device that the Federation tested on Earth and used as a justification for illegal time-travel activity, likely again aimed at provoking war with the Klingons. (Honestly, with these people, if it isn't the Klingons, it's the Romulans. We have always been at war with Eastasia.) The Federation Council must step in and put an end to this blatant subversion!

Re:That's odd

[tehcyder]

The events of 9/11, for example, are proven to be a conspiracy... by a group of mostly Saudi terrorists.

Indeed, hence the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and soon Iran.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought using mob-connected contractors was the only way to actually build something in NYC.

Re:That's odd

[bill_mcgonigle]

Have you read the whole NIST report? I have.

Their model has a support column about 2/5 of the way in from the edge of the building failing due to fire.

I can buy that.

Which then caused the building to collapse into itself around that point of failure.

I can buy that.

Which caused the entire building to collapse into its footprint in a manner seemingly indistinguishable from a controlled demolition (as seen on BBC TV).

Wait, what?

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh, its a joke dude.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

You're talking about the same type of people who really believe the planes that hit the World Trade Center didn't hit the World Trade Center, or if they hit the World Trade Center they didn't have people on them, or if they had people on them they were controlled by robotic pods. And that this was just to somehow cover the REAL method of destruction which was extensive demolition charges in the buildings that no one ever noticed, because flying a plane into a building somehow wouldn't be enough to destroy it so there needed to be a REAL method of destruction that the planes somehow didn't provide.

Actually, flying a plane into a building is not enough to destroy it. Know how I know? There have been quite a number of incidents of planes crashing into buildings, and none of them have collapsed; except for on 9/11. There have been local collapses from aircraft damage, but not a complete, global, all-the-way-to-the-ground collapse. How exactly the Twin towers collapsed is not known, because the report from the NIST only analyzed what led up to the collapse, not the collapse itself. That is to say they explained what led to the collapse (inward bowing of exterior support columns), but not what caused the top ~20% of the building to crush the remaining ~80% all the way to the ground.

You're talking about the same people who really believe the people trapped above the impact floors weren't trapped, that the photos of them were falsified and took place on a set because the window sizes don't look right - which had nothing to do with the fact any first year photography or film student could tell you that zooming from 1/4 of a mile away will distort perspective.

Actually, there were a number of people who were above the impact floors who were not trapped. Apparently there was one emergency staircase, on the opposite side of the building from the impact, that was not blocked. They were able to walk down. I have seen them interviewed on TV. I'd pull up a citation, but it's hardly worth the effort, as you already know all you need to know.

It's a pathological desire to undermine anything that is believed by anyone. It's not healthy distrust, it's a creepy, nonsensical obsession with being the one, unique snowflake who sees things how they "really are".

Every little bit of information presented to them is disputed due to "inconsistencies" but their basic theories are routinely rewritten over the course of an argument. Their own truth isn't even stable, because they're not stable. Being in opposition to commonly-held beliefs is the only thing that sustains them, and they define themselves and reality solely based on that stance. Nothing else.

So, inconsistencies in the official account do not bother you, but inconsistent arguments from disparate Internet posters do? I can dig the latter. But shouldn't it matter that the NIST claim that WTC Building 7 experienced free-fall acceleration? How does the top of a building free-fall when there is a building under it? Or that the columns of the WTC could not have melted, and yet there were pools of molten metal under the rubble that burned for months after the attacks? See, for a theory to have credibility, it must match all the known facts and evidence. I can understand your not believing Internet posters when they are inconsistent. But what's your reasoning for believing the government when it is inconsistent?

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

...just how large an aircraft do you think would be required to destroy your home, if it were to crash into your home? Alright - how large a plane would be required to destroy your city hall? Your high school? Come on - THINK about it. Have you ever seen a mere 5-gallon can full of nothing but gasoline vapors explode? It's fucking DESTRUCTIVE, man! It will tear your goddamned HEAD OFF!

Now, imagine the explosive power in an automobile's gas tank - 10, 14, maybe 20 gallons of gasoline. Put that in your house. Ignite. Add a bottle or two of pure oxygen - remember, those high altitude aircraft come equipped with an oxygen source, large enough to supply all the people aboard, just in case.

Have you absorbed that yet? Fine - let's move on. How many gallons of aviation fuel did those jetliners carry? I don't even know - but I know damned well that even almost empty, they held more fuel than your family car - or an 18-wheeler.

Gosh, that all sounds pretty powerful. Since there is always the risk of a plane hitting the tallest buildings in a city, it seems it would have been prudent of the architects and engineers that designed the building to design it in such a way that it could withstand such an impact. I mean, that's the responsible thing to do.

Oh wait, they did do that! In fact, their design (tube within a tube) was so impressive, it was used on many other buildings after that. So your position is that the engineering on those buildings was so wrong that not only did the buildings not withstand the impacts, but they suffered complete collapse, falling all the way to the ground. Is that right? Can you back that up at all, or are you just speculating? I mean, if that could be demonstrated the NIST report probably would have included it. But it didn't.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

If fires burn unchecked through a building for hours, then yes, that building will go down regardless of its construction.

That's not even close to correct. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windsor_Tower_(Madrid) The Windsor tower in Madrid burned for 24 hours across a good portion of the building, and it suffered only minor local collapses. The building remained standing.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

While I have my own doubts about who contributed what to 9/11, two things I'm quite sure about is that buildings did not fall neatly in their own footprints and that the collapses looked nothing like a controlled demolitions. You know how? I watched the videos on the internets carefully.

I'll agree for WTC 1 & 2. But WTC 7 looks exactly like a controlled demolition. It really did just fall straight down.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

There's one big problem with conspiracy theories: it requires large numbers of purple to keep their mouth shut.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

Physics dictates that a building "wants" to fall straight down. Moving that much mass off-center is really fucking difficult, and why even failed professional demolitions usually end up with incomplete collapse, rather than some old structure tipping over.

Physics also dictates that if something is in the way, an object cannot fall straight down, and cannot free-fall. In the case of Building 7, the building was in the way and yet it fell straight down and achieved free-fall speed (i.e. there was no more resistance than air). If someone can explain to me how a building provides no more resistance than air, I'm interested.

The only way a building can fall straight down is if support is removed from the bottom. This is why a demolition industry exists. Getting a building to not fall on surrounding buildings is very difficult, requiring months of planning and calculation. Before 9/11/01 this was common knowledge.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

No what was unanticipated was that the fire would be burning so long. Disaster planning did not anticipate this scenario as most probably thought the fire would be put out right away. That might have saved the building.

Wait, so it was the duration of the fire, not the fire itself? Why can't these people who spout the official line get their stories straight? There are so many inconsistencies, how can they be trusted?

Am I doing this right?

Re:That's odd

[Runaway1956]

"a risk of a plane hitting" a building implies an accident, in which the pilot is at least TRYING to veer off. Implying, an indirect impact.

What did you see as you watched those aircraft impact the twin towers? Did you see a bumbling fool accidentally impact the buildings, or did you see two massive missiles aimed at the hearts of the buildings?

Speaking of engineering - bullet proof vests and body armor are engineered to save the life of the guy wearing them. Yet - people die frequently when hit by bullets while wearing body armor. Can you explain that?

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

...the design was to withstand a plane crash, and to survive burning fuel, but not to survive a plane crash with burning fuel.

Wait, what?

Re:That's odd

[UnknowingFool]

Please read up on and understand basic metallurgy. Heat softens steel. Prolonged heat and higher temperatures softens steel more.

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

Take a moment to consider what would be necessary to shift that much mass off-center to a degree that would cause it to stray from its footprint.

We're talking a huge amount of lateral force. Also consider your only other point of reference for large buildings coming down is videos of controlled demolitions. Of course it's going to look like something you've seen before, because that's the only other thing you've seen before.

Re:That's odd

[AK Marc]

The incident that made this requirement was a bomber flying into the side of the Empire State Building in WWII. It was flying back from Europe, and was empty of fuel, so the events weren't combined. So they made a requirement for tall buildings that they be able to handle a plane strike. Then someone said "what about fuel" so that requirement was added as well. But they never, as far as I know, modeled a plane full of fuel hitting a building (or, in WTC7's case, a large number of unconnected fires burning out of control for hours).

Re:That's odd

[psydeshow]

Considering that the Citicorp tower almost fell down all by itself, I'm still going with "I'm amazed it stayed up as long as it did in the first place"...

Exactly.

For those who don't know, the Citicorp tower in midtown Manhattan was discovered to be especially prone to winds from a direction that was not anticipated by the architects. They spent years doing a massive secret retrofit to stiffen the building before a) it fell over in a Nor'easter or b) the public found out and everyone moved out. Fascinating story.

Re:That's odd

[sean.peters]

How stupid would one have to be not combine the two? Ask the "tsunami or earthquake, but not tsunami and earthquake" power plant.

It's all becoming clear to me now - the Fukushima disaster was part of the conspiracy too!!!1!!!one!

Re:That's odd

[Savantissimo]

The one written by DHS secretary Chertoff's cousin? The one with all the straw man arguments? Of course those are easy to refute, that's their whole purpose. It's like refuting the idea that things fall down ("Og's theory of gravity") by digging up some nut who believes that things fall because of the wind from invisible space elves flapping their ears. Things still fall, and much of the official 9/11 story still does not add up, or adds up to something different than the official account. Evidence which should exist either does not (black boxes, FAA tapes, steel recycled with unseemly haste) or has been suppressed for no obvious reason (e.g. surveillance tapes of the gas station and the hotel that recorded the Pentagon crash - my theory is that suppression was specifically to set off crazy theories.)

What about the 9/11 commission, the ostensible source of the official narrative? A real investigation would have happened sooner, with better funding, fewer dependable political hacks appointed, Bush and Cheney testifying publicly and under oath, and a report actually written by the commission members, rather than a political partisan with orders from the White House. That it was done in the way it was suggests that getting at the truth was seen as beside the point, at best, and it doesn't seem to me to be crazy to wonder if they were actually trying to cover certain things up, and if so, what?

Re:That's odd

[Savantissimo]

What of those who refuse to even entertain the possibility that powerful people and organizations sometimes work together for criminal ends? That's all "conspiracy theory" really means, anyway. It's particularly telling when the "conspiracy theory" epithet is used with regard to 9/11 as a synonym for "crazy theory", since the official theory is a conspiracy theory. Really we're just arguing about which conspiracy theory we prefer to believe. Those who would rather not question the official story versus those who would prefer to let the evidence lead where it may. The former group seems to be made up of frightened, submissive types with a Stockholm-syndrome like set of symptoms that leads them to lash out at anyone who questions their masters' lies, while the latter is made up of people who think for themselves.

Re:That's odd

[CohibaVancouver]

What of those who refuse to even entertain the possibility that powerful people and organizations sometimes work together for criminal ends?

Of course that sometimes happens - But for any given scenario you've always first and foremost got to apply the the law of parsimony.

Re:That's odd

[Savantissimo]

Um... leaving aside the totally batshit "crude nuke delivered via cruise missile" idea (Iran does not have nukes, there is no evidence that hasn't been thoroughly debunked that it is seeking nukes, nor would a crude one fit on any sort of missile, nor would a cruise missile have much chance of hitting a well-defended ship like the Enterprise) ...

so you're hypothesizing the Iranians would think they have sufficient influence on the US media to get that false false-flag story widely accepted? That the "USA can't respond" when every political candidate is making pilgrimages to Israel and constantly emitting the dog-whistle phase "all options are on the table", meaning nuclear first-strikes? And the advantage to the Iranians of this tricky plan would be worth the near 100% risk of precipitating a war that will leave their country devastated?

Whereas the US (or at least its leading politicians) wants to go to war, could use a more photogenic and sensational causus belli than they currently have, would not mind if this carrier were sunk, saving billions in decommissioning costs and attracting hundreds of billions more in war funding.

Do you think all of our dozens of intelligence agencies do nothing but sit on their thumbs, or that they obey the laws the rest of us do? That psy-ops is a myth or limited to leaflets? This sort of operation isn't at all beyond the realm of possibility, and given that the theorists have predicted this one, I'd say in the event of Iran supposedly attacking the Enterprise, it'll at least be worth examining the evidence very closely.

Re:That's odd

[siddesu]

Maybe, I haven't seen a good video of it falling. It is hard to tell anything about the fall from what's available on the intertubes. So I choose to apply Beckham's scissors and assume it is unlikely a better video would have shown anything different than the twin towers' fall.

Re:That's odd

[BeerCat]

Right, so your theory is that they stuffed a brand new building full of explosives to save a bit of time when it came to demolition in fifty years? And no one ever mentioned it, even after the events of 9/11?

  It doesn't appear to violate any of the laws of physics, and at least there are no time-travelling Nazis involved, so I suppose it's not impossible.

Possible - yes
Probable - humankind has made some truly dumb decisions made over the years, but in this case on balance, probably not

Re:That's odd

[bill_mcgonigle]

I wouldn't expect it to stray much from its footprint (it did spill over a little bit) - but given the NIST conclusion, I would expect it to collapse the way buildings do in earthquakes (of which countless examples are available) where a structural members fails, causing the rest of the building structure to take too much stress and ultimately fail. These are usually poorly-built buildings though.

Let's say you drew a 10x10 grid on top of Building 7. All 100 points start going down at the same time in the Building 7 collapse. If the failure happens at (4,6), one would expect the initial collapse to start there, and then the other points to slump into it (like happens in earthquakes).

In an actual controlled demo, the worst thing that can happen is that all but a few of the main supports get severed. A few main supports can still support most buildings, and it's extremely dangerous to go inside because a subsequent collapse will happen minutes to months later and if that's .

Yet, here we have a modern building, built to high standards, that completely collapses all at once while NIST says that it's because of the failure of a single member. I never say anything is impossible, but the report didn't give an engineering reason for why this building should behave in this manner when other buildings haven't (except to say it did). Remember, there's no airplane full of Jet-A here, just an uncontrolled office fire (Enron might have been a hot news story, but the Enron case files burn like normal paper). NIST also ruled out seismic damage from the collapse of the North and South towers.

Re:That's odd

[ukemike]

Sorry dude, but I've read those. The popular mechanics article was just a series of strawman attacks. They chose the most absurd and laughable of the 9/11 theories, and shot those down. I did read the NIST report on WTC7, believe it or not, in its entirety. I am a registered mechanical engineer in the state of california, and I have to say the the NIST report was poor science. What they did was build a computer model of the building (which they will not share) and the fiddled with the inputs until the model showed the beginning of a collapse. They also fail to share all the inputs that they used. In other words their explanation was a black box with unknown inputs, and they expect people to accept the results. That works for people who haven't read it, and it works for people without the training to see what shoddy work they did. But I've found that when real engineers and real architects actually confront the facts they join the chorus demanding a real investigation. I don't know what actually happened that day, but the NIST report on WTC7 isn't worth the paper it is printed on.

I would suggest that people who don't get all foaming at the mouth when the official story is questions, check this out:

ae911truth.org

Re:That's odd

[Rakarra]

Hmmm, true, it was a mistake to include the clause "regardless of its construction." That was just asking for a refutation. >_>

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

Yet, here we have a modern building, built to high standards, that completely collapses all at once while NIST says that it's because of the failure of a single member. I never say anything is impossible, but the report didn't give an engineering reason for why this building should behave in this manner when other buildings haven't (except to say it did). Remember, there's no airplane full of Jet-A here, just an uncontrolled office fire (Enron might have been a hot news story, but the Enron case files burn like normal paper). NIST also ruled out seismic damage from the collapse of the North and South towers.

Really, it comes down to spaghetti. Bear with me here.

WTC7 had fireproofing with a 2 hour rating on beams, and 3 hour rating on columns. Keep in mind the building burned for about 7 hours before it fell.

Much like in WTC1 and 2, smaller beams with less mass than the core columns were exposed to fire for long periods of time. Even with intact fire insulation, it was only a matter of time before they began to heat-up. The collapse of the Twins had left the sprinklers and standpipes dry, so there was nothing to be done. And by that point, who was going to give a shit about fighting a fire in an evacuated, battered high rise with no water when 220 floors, thousands of people and hundreds of firefighters had just been lost across the damn street? The fire crews were pulled from the scene and told it was a lost cause. I mean, what would you do?

As the beams got hotter, they lost strength. Structural steel loses about 50% of its strength hundreds of degrees below the melting point. This is not a bit of secret, esoteric news. As others have said, that's the whole idea behind blacksmithing.

So after hours and hours of uncontrolled heating weakened steel beams began to sag, and collapse. Specifically those on floors 8 to 14 (where fires had been observed for some time). The core columns were suddenly dealing with fewer lateral connections across nine whole floors, which meant less lateral stability. To make matters worse, the core columns were getting hotter too.

To understand the physics a bit better, take a piece of dry spaghetti, stand it up straight, and gently pinch it halfway down, then lay a finger on the top. The spaghetti is a vertical column, the hand pinching the spaghetti is a floor beam, and your finger on top is the weight of the building above.

Stop pinching the spaghetti.

Core column 79 had to do its part to hold up the building, and the mechanical penthouse loaded with equipment on one side of the roof. With nine floors of reenforcement gone, it began to bow and give way. The mechanical penthouse developed a visible kink, and eventually column 79 snapped. Just like the spaghetti.

The mechanical penthouse shot down through the roof, and took out floors from the top-down, while the collapsing column pulled the remaining, weakened floor sections down with it. The rest of the structure was irrevocably compromised.

And then there was no WTC7 anymore.

Re:That's odd

[bill_mcgonigle]

Thanks for the explanation. I'm trying to follow. I'm good up 'till here:

The mechanical penthouse shot down through the roof, and took out floors from the top-down, while the collapsing column pulled the remaining, weakened floor sections down with it. The rest of the structure was irrevocably compromised.

then I get confused ... to restate my understanding:

I'm looking to understand how 'column 79' took down the structure with all horizontal points being affected simultaneously.

I understand how superheated beams would be considerably weakened and prone to failure. No confusion there.

So, then the weight of the penthouse became too much for the column to withstand and the column snapped. This seems reasonable - the videos show the penthouse going down first.

So then the part I'm stuck on is how that force got translated to the rest of the building simultaneously (even the farthest corners).

The beams were all weakened by fire, right? If column 79 is going down, why wouldn't its weakened beam attachments fail? I'm struggling with how these heat-weakened beams throughout the building are both strong enough to translate that much force across the entirety of the building (apparently breaking every single other column in the building) but at the same time too weak to resist the collapse of the single column at all, causing the total simultaneous collapse.

In the model you're describing, does the weight of the penthouse first impact the top floor, send that energy out across the floor, destroy all the other columns in the building at least down to the next floor, then causes that level of floor to collapse into the next one, upon which the process repeats?

Or, does all that energy get reflected around the columns and pulverize them with shockwaves?

To me it wouldn't seem strange at all, if the penthouse fell through, took out a vertical column of building structure, pulling in nearby building as it went (to the extent that the beams resisted the collapse until they snapped), and WTC7 was left as a mangled mess of walls and columns all twisted, gnarled, and collapsed inward like a bad souffle, with debris everywhere. Which, of course, didn't happen.

Perhaps you could elaborate on how all the columns get destroyed at roughly the same time - I think that's the part I'm missing.

Re:That's odd

[Y-Crate]

The beams were all weakened by fire, right? If column 79 is going down, why wouldn't its weakened beam attachments fail?

That's exactly what happened.

Instead of drawing on memory, I'll just quote the damn engineers who know a hell of a lot more about this than I do. I don't need someone screaming at me that I misremembered some detail and I'm obviously a shill for the CIA.

Fire-induced thermal expansion of the floor system surrounding Column 79 led to the collapse of Floor 13, which triggered a cascade of floor failures. In this case, the floor beams on the east side of the building expanded enough that they pushed the girder spanning between Columns 79 and 44 to the west on the 13th floor. (See Figure 1–5 for column numbering and the locations of girders and beams.) This movement was enough for the girder to walk off of its support at Column 79.

The unsupported girder and other local fire-induced damage caused Floor 13 to collapse, beginning a cascade of floor failures down to the 5th floor (which, as noted in Section 1.2.3, was much thicker and stronger). Many of these floors had already been at least partially weakened by the fires in the vicinity of Column 79. This left Column 79 with insufficient lateral support, and as a consequence, the column buckled eastward, becoming the initial local failure for collapse initiation.

Due to the buckling of Column 79 between Floors 5 and 14, the upper section of Column 79 began to descend. The downward movement of Column 79 led to the observed kink in the east penthouse, and its subsequent descent. The cascading failures of the lower floors surrounding Column 79 led to increased unsupported length in, falling debris impact on, and loads being re-distributed to adjacent columns; and Column 80 and then Column 81 buckled as well. All the floor connections to these three columns, as well as to the exterior columns, failed, and the floors fell on the east side of the building. The exterior façade on the east quarter of the building was just a hollow shell.

The failure of the interior columns then proceeded toward the west. Truss 2 (Figure 1–6) failed, hit by the debris from the falling floors. This caused Column 77 and Column 78 to fail, followed shortly by Column 76. Each north-south line of three core columns then buckled in succession from east to west, due to loss of lateral support from floor system failures, to the forces exerted by falling debris, which tended to push the columns westward, and to the loads redistributed to them from the buckled columns. Within seconds, the entire building core was buckling.

The global collapse of WTC 7 was underway. The shell of exterior columns buckled between the 7th and 14th floors, as loads were redistributed to these columns due to the downward movement of the building core and the floors. The entire building above the buckled-column region then moved downward as a single unit, completing the global collapse sequence.

Re:That's odd

[bill_mcgonigle]

OK, thanks - I think I understand a bit better now what's being claimed here. I'm seeing there is some ambiguous wording that can be open to multiple interpretations (e.g. "The unsupported girder and other local fire-induced damage caused Floor 13 to collapse" could mean the whole floor or just the area around the column) and there are some points that are really glossed over (e.g. "All the floor connections ... to the exterior columns, failed") without a proposed mechanism.

The time scale is also a bit surprising:

The downward movement of Column 79 led to the observed kink in the east penthouse, and its subsequent descent. ... Within seconds, the entire building core was buckling. ... The entire building above the buckled-column region then moved downward as a single unit, completing the global collapse sequence.

There's a heck of a lot going on there that the videos show as all happening within a few seconds. There's no time for any steel to bend - thousands of steel members and brackets have to all shatter along with the columns buckling, each event within milliseconds of each other. I can scarcely imagine the required energies.

I've made homework for myself to figure out:

1) what NIST's proposed time scale is
2) if there is video of the lower part of WTC7 collapsing
3) what the time scales on the seismograph look like

These would help close some holes in my mental model.

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet they filled the Enterprise full of Tide detergent, so when it sinks it will make the Persian Gulf all shiny.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/03/12/police-take-on-rising-wave-tide-detergent-theft/

Re:That's odd

[Chris Mattern]

Physics also dictates that if something is in the way, an object cannot fall straight down,

Sure it can, and it *will*, if the "something in the way" is evenly distributed.

In the case of Building 7, the building was in the way and yet it fell straight down and achieved free-fall speed (i.e. there was no more resistance than air).

Evidence on the free-fall speed assertion, please.

The only way a building can fall straight down is if support is removed from the bottom. This is why a demolition industry exists. Getting a building to not fall on surrounding buildings is very difficult, requiring months of planning and calculation.

Getting a *small* building to not fall on surrounding buildilngs can be difficult. The bigger a building is, the more it weighs, *and* the greater the load on the supports (square-cube law), and greater the tendency for it to fall straight down (and the faster it will so fall, as well).

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

...ahh, you're one of those who buys into the "Enterprise false flag" conspiracy theories? That Enterprise will be sunk, and that Iran will be blamed as an "excuse" to attack it?

Figured some loons would post on this article, but didn't expect it to be the FIRST post. Bravo.

And your one of these narrow minded 1 dimensional people reared and conditioned by old media who can't see the writing on the wall. Bravo on your unearned righteous indignation.
Here is a reading list for you.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukden_incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleiwitz_incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassa_attack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War

Re:That's odd

[Anonymous Coward]

It easy to cherry pick conspiracy theories in an effort to belittle views of recent history that run counter to the establishment line. But the long view of History is replete with conspiracies and false flags. The idea that planes did not hit the building at all is not a serious theory its a red hearing for those who even if sub consciously would rather believe a safe lie than a dangerous truth.

Do you know the history of the 97 WTC bombing are you willing to just ignore prior knowledge of 911 and the anthrax attack, or that Vice President Cheney had effectively been put in charge of NORAD and the exercises that gave cover for the incompetent air defense on that day, or obvious insider trading done through channels used by the CIA and black projects.

I am pretty sure that you feel safe in your view of things I on the other hand am scared by my own views and have no doubt that I or my family could wind up paying the price for them.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

Sure it can, and it *will*, if the "something in the way" is evenly distributed.

I think we can agree that the only way for a building to fall straight down is if all of its support is removed simultaneously. If one section goes before another, it should topple. no?

Evidence on the free-fall speed assertion, please.

It's in the NIST report. http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861610 See page 45 of the linked PDF.

Getting a *small* building to not fall on surrounding buildilngs can be difficult. The bigger a building is, the more it weighs, *and* the greater the load on the supports (square-cube law), and greater the tendency for it to fall straight down (and the faster it will so fall, as well).

I will agree with that. But a tendency is not the same as did-it-three-times-in-one-day. If all that is required to get a tall building to fall straight down is damage it and set it on fire, the demo industry should look a lot different.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

"a risk of a plane hitting" a building implies an accident, in which the pilot is at least TRYING to veer off. Implying, an indirect impact.

What did you see as you watched those aircraft impact the twin towers? Did you see a bumbling fool accidentally impact the buildings, or did you see two massive missiles aimed at the hearts of the buildings?

I see. So you think the engineers only planned for a glancing blow but not a direct hit? Yeah, I'm sure that's it.

Speaking of engineering - bullet proof vests and body armor are engineered to save the life of the guy wearing them. Yet - people die frequently when hit by bullets while wearing body armor. Can you explain that?

Taking the WTC collapses as my guide, I'd say they died because when the bullet hit the vest, the vest just turned to dust and fell off the victim.

Re:That's odd

[Chris Mattern]

I think we can agree that the only way for a building to fall straight down is if all of its support is removed simultaneously. If one section goes before another, it should topple. no?

Or if all of its support is *weakened* simultaneously. The fire had spread throughout the entirety of the floor and was weakening all of the supports at the same time.

It's in the NIST report. http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=861610 See page 45 of the linked PDF.

I read it. Apparently you didn't. "The average time for the upper 18 stories to collapse, based on video evidence, was approximately 40 percent longer than the computer free fall time." After that, yes, it reached close to free-fall acceleration, because at that point the structure could no longer maintain any meaningful resistance to the massive force of the already collapsed floors smashing down on it.

I will agree with that. But a tendency is not the same as did-it-three-times-in-one-day. If all that is required to get a tall building to fall straight down is damage it and set it on fire, the demo industry should look a lot different.

The demo industry looks as it does because it has to get fall-straight-down *all the time* and not just *almost all the time*.

Re:That's odd

[kilfarsnar]

Or if all of its support is *weakened* simultaneously. The fire had spread throughout the entirety of the floor and was weakening all of the supports at the same time

Do you have a citation for that? The NIST report says essentially that a single column lost support across multiple floors and pulled the rest of the building down with it. There is no mention that I have seen of fire spreading across an entire floor and somehow uniformly weakening the supports, causing them all to fail simultaneously. Though it seems we do agree that that is what had to have happened; that all the supports let go at once.

I read it. Apparently you didn't. "The average time for the upper 18 stories to collapse, based on video evidence, was approximately 40 percent longer than the computer free fall time." After that, yes, it reached close to free-fall acceleration, because at that point the structure could no longer maintain any meaningful resistance to the massive force of the already collapsed floors smashing down on it.

Yes, I read it too. I find it funny that I had to bring it to your attention, and yet you accuse me of not having read the report. Regardless, it does not say "close to free-fall" it says gravitational acceleration, or actual free-fall. This necessitates that the building provided no more resistance than air for the cited 105 feet. Can you explain (and I mean really explain, not just assert) how 8 stories of concrete and steel provided no resistance to the falling mass above? The NIST report doesn't explain it. They merely say that it's consistent with their analysis. However, they have been asked and have refused to release the models used in that analysis. So no one can check their work.

It is interesting to note that in the NIST's initial draft, free fall was denied. So their initial computer analysis apparently did not indicate free-fall. Yet, when it was pointed out to them that a free-fall condition was indeed present, that apparently was also consistent with their analysis. I think it calls into question the accuracy of their analysis.

Why not just add a couple warp nacelles?

[fdrebin]

Not that it would make maintenance any cheaper...

Re:Why not just add a couple warp nacelles?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or retrofit a couple of hot new Thorium reactors and see how well they perform in the wild.

Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[daveschroeder]

...but the USS Constitution is the "world's oldest commissioned warship afloat", having been launched 21 October 1797.

As for the USS Enterprise (CVN 65), some video memories:

USS Enterprise at Sea
USS Enterprise Flight Operations

"Fate protects fools, little children, and ships named Enterprise."

Fair winds and following seas.

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[Anonymous Coward]

They did say the longest in "active service", not by commissioned date.

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the Constitution a myth that got replaced by corporate money?

Wow. Captcha is 'bribery'

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically the USS Constitution is in the active fleet, never having been decommissioned and stuck-off.

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[gman003]

However, the USS Constitution hasn't really been a "war"ship since before the Civil War. It's mainly been a training or museum ship. The last time it was used as an active-duty combat vessel (as far as I can tell) was 1855, which would give it a 58-year combat life.

Which still beats the Enterprise's 51-year service, I guess. Point conceded.

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[realityimpaired]

The constitution was in active service for longer than the Enterprise, but it's no longer in active service. It's been a museum for 100 years.

Very nice ship, if you like tall ships. They don't make them like that any more. A shame that Enterprise won't be turned into a museum as well, but the last thing I really want is another reminder of a movie made by Tom Crazy.... ;)

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[navyjeff]

The USS Constitution wasn't continuously in service. There were several breaks, including a few years between the Barbary Wars and the War of 1812.

Ref. 1
Ref. 2

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[westlake]

The constitution was in active service for longer than the Enterprise, but it's no longer in active service. It's been a museum for 100 years.

How much of the an original wooden vessel survives after ten years, thirty years, 100 years is a very interesting question. In the end, you are always looking at a restoration or re-construction.

Wood rots. Hemp rots. Canvas rots.

Rumors had circulated for half a century that the Constellation was not what its promoters claimed it to be, and [Dana] Wegner's report confirmed them. Investigators from the Navy discovered that the supposed Revolutionary War-era frigate in Baltimore Harbor was actually a Civil War era sloop that had been built in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1854. All it shared with the frigate built in Baltimore in the eighteenth century was its name. It resembled a Revolutionary War-era frigate because during early renovations, some of the ship's admirers had "restored" the Constellation to appear to be almost 60 years older than it was; for example, they added a second gun deck and made other alterations. For most of its tenure in Baltimore, the Constellation was living a lie.
[This] distortion of history came at the expense of the Constellation's own very interesting history. It was, for example, the last and largest all sail-powered sloop commissioned by the U.S. Navy, and while it did not engage in a famous sea battle, as did its predecessor, it did work to interdict the slave trade during the mid-1800s.

Archival Authenticity in a Digital Age

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the Constitution a myth that got replaced by corporate money?

No, the Constitution is the law of the land that the Islamists want to replace with Sharia or they will keep trying to kill us.

Read Bin Laden's letter to America.

First demand - Convert to Islam. After that, replace the Constitution with Sharia.

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[peragrin]

Actually the constitution still has a bunch of surviving bulkhead pieces from the original. Yes Huge chucks have been replaced, but wood left in water and well cared for will last for decades and decades between replacements.

it is the well cared for part that is always causing problems.

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[DerekLyons]

How much of the an original wooden vessel survives after ten years, thirty years, 100 years is a very interesting question. In the end, you are always looking at a restoration or re-construction.
 
Wood rots. Hemp rots. Canvas rots.

Sure, if you wait long enough, everything rots. But I've held two hundred year old books in my hands. Just because it eventually rots doesn't mean it can't last a very long time indeed.

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[ddd0004]

Thanks Kanye. Now, can the Enterprise have the microphone back?

Re:Not to take anything away from the Big E...

[residieu]

Isn't the Constitution a myth that got replaced by corporate money?

No, the Constitution is the law of the land that the Islamists want to replace with Sharia or they will keep trying to kill us.

And the Fundamentalist Christians want to replace it with the Bible. And one of these groups is far more likely to get their way.

Causality Failure...

[Salgak1]

But how will Kirk and the crew save the Whales and get back to the 23rd Century without that "nuclear wessel"? (evil grin)

Re:Causality Failure...

[hawguy]

But how will Kirk and the crew save the Whales and get back to the 23rd Century without that "nuclear wessel"? (evil grin)

They went back in time to 1986, so retiring the ship now won't affect the whale recovery. Geeze, what are they teaching kids in school today? Apparently not Starfleet future history.

Re:Causality Failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

But that timeline no longer exists, so maybe the probe won't cause such trouble in this timeline.

Re:Causality Failure...

[dkleinsc]

Well, if you're so smart, when did Khan Noonien Singh show up?

Re:Causality Failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Eugenic Wars were obviously covered up by the governments of the world and made to look like a series of natural disasters...

As for the Botany Bay... Those genetically engineered guys were really smart and built it themselves, then destroyed all knowledge of it on Earth so we couldn't steal the tech ;)

Re:Causality Failure...

[ravenspear]

KHAAAAAAAAAAN!

Re:Causality Failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

1996. But don't believe that hippie Federation propoganda crap, his rule was kind and rather pleasant.

Re:Causality Failure...

[MorePower]

He showed up during the Eugenics Wars, which didn't get much press coverage because they happened at the same time as the O.J. Simpson trial.

Re:Causality Failure...

[afabbro]

He already has. (Novel's premise is that the Eugenics Wars have already come and gone - they just weren't the big military conflicts people expected.)

Re:Causality Failure...

[matunos]

They didn't go back in time. What are you talking about? The crew couldn't have hidden out on planet Vulcan with their stolen Klingon bird-of-prey because THERE WAS NO PLANET VULCAN! Joss Whedon blew it up!

Re:Causality Failure...

[matunos]

And he blew up Sybok too!

Re:Causality Failure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't matter anyway - Spock went back in time and f***ed it all up after banging Uhura. Damn green-blooded Vulcan...

Re:Causality Failure...

[Tastecicles]

1993-1996. Khan (according to the Blish novelisation) escaped aboard the Botany bay in 1997.

Safety First!

[Rotworm]

The big ship has become notoriously difficult to keep in repair.

For instance, the holodeck safety protocols continually go offline.

Re:Safety First!

[owlnation]

When did the holodeck ever work as planned? I assume its software was designed by the great, great, great, great, great grandson of the guy who thought IE6 was a good idea.

Seriously, no-one thought of sandboxing the holodeck? Even after the first 10 times the ship got pwned by it?

Re:Safety First!

[Anonymous Coward]

The holodeck - the last invention of mankind. Not to mention that productivity on the ship would probably be higher if they handed out crack cocaine with every meal.

Re:Safety First!

[EdIII]

When did the holodeck ever work as planned? I assume its software was designed by the great, great, great, great, great grandson of the guy who thought IE6 was a good idea.

Seriously, no-one thought of sandboxing the holodeck? Even after the first 10 times the ship got pwned by it?

Seriously, no-one thought of sandboxing the holodeck? Even after the first 10 times the ship got pwned by it?

Of course they thought about it. They even tried it a couple of times, but it interfered with downloading porn programs off questionable subspace connections.

While Engineering strongly objected to the lack of security (because they had their own secret holodeck with dedicated processing and comms), the commanding officers and security decided it was in the best interests of "ship morale" to allow the holodecks unfettered communications with the rest of the ships systems to continue.

Re:Safety First!

[lennier]

Seriously, no-one thought of sandboxing the holodeck? Even after the first 10 times the ship got pwned by it?

In the 1980s, it seemed totally unbelievable that every passing alien ship could drive-by root their holodeck.

The sad thing is, the older I get and the more I experience real Internet security, the more depressingly probable that scenario seems.

Re:Safety First!

[allroy63]

Seriously, no-one thought of sandboxing the holodeck? Even after the first 10 times the ship got pwned by it?

Moriarty: first to successfully virtualize the Holodeck. (Granted, he also had root on the holodeck, and the Enterprise computer). Point is, someone *thought* of it, and the first "person" to do so was a Holodeck program, and the ugly bags of mostly water couldn't figure it out.

Re:Safety First!

[cold fjord]

In the 1980s, it seemed totally unbelievable that every passing alien ship could drive-by root their holodeck.

The sad thing is, the older I get and the more I experience real Internet security, the more depressingly probable that scenario seems.

Very true. People worry today about polymorphic viruses, but wait till they have to deal with holographic viruses.

Is the program ever complete?

Re:Safety First!

[DaFallus]

For instance, the holodeck safety protocols continually go offline.

Damn! The last time that happened, I got slapped with three paternity suits!

Re:Safety First!

[GameboyRMH]

The warp core's pretty unstable too, seems to be some kind of design flaw, I mean how many times have they had to jettison that?

Re:Safety First!

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the answer is that the holodeck requires such ridiculous amounts of CPU time that it practically takes over the main computer when in use.

Why not...

[Anonymous Coward]

drop the reactor off at Fukushima or Chernobyl?

Good show Big E.

[phrackwulf]

That's a lot of hard work and a huge number of sailors who have sheltered and lived in a small floating city. There's a new world coming though. Submersible carriers protecting the Atlantic Confederated States will be something to see once the Chinese realize they need somewhere to put all those new citizens looking for an exciting new life and a daily wage.

Re:Good show Big E.

[grumling]

How about the Off-World colonies? I hear you can get your own Nexus 5.

Namespace

[Grindalf]

According to my understanding of naval vessel namespace conventions, gleaned entirely from Jean-Luc Picard's office's decorative models, the name U.S.S. Enterprise will now be re-designated to another slightly more powerful machine with better computers. Hmmm ...

Re:Namespace

[Anonymous Coward]

USS today stands for United States Ship. What did it stand for stand for when naming Federation Vessels?

RTFS

[Anonymous Coward]

Enterprise is not being noted as the oldest warship afloat, but the oldest *nuclear* warship afloat

Re:RTFS

[daveschroeder]

No, the summary says:

"[...] the world's first nuclear powered aircraft carrier, U.S.S. Enterprise, is to be retired after fifty years of active service — the longest of any warship in U.S. naval history."

The phrase "the longest of any warship in U.S. naval history" is referential to "is to be retired after fifty years of active service", not anything to do with the nuclear aspect.

Re:RTFS

[Durrik]

I had to reread the sentence in the summary, probably because I was just reading up on the Enterprise recently. But the first time I read the entry I thought it meant the longest of any warship, as in the length of the hull. According to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world's_longest_ships and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercarrier (look at the first picture's caption) the USS Enterprise is still the longest warship in US history (and anyone else's).

So who knows maybe that's what they meant by the longest of any warship after putting in the —

Gulf to Gulf

[some old guy]

The "Big E"'s first combat deployment was in the Gulf of Tonkin, on Yankee Station. As a veteran of TF77 (The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club) I find it appropriate that her last cruise will another Gulf...the Persian. Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R.

Bravo Zulu, CVN-65

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[couchslug]

"Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R."

We once defended people who liked to party and fuck. Now our opponents AND clients are religious fanatics who BOTH hate "freedom".
The military has now also gone "corporate" (and been infested with Bible Thumpers) such that the old "work hard, fight hard, play hard" attitudes are muted.

Maybe letting homosexuals serve openly will chase off some of the religionists. It should improve Sub Sailor recruiting! (I kid! I kid!)

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[khallow]

The military has now also gone "corporate" (and been infested with Bible Thumpers) such that the old "work hard, fight hard, play hard" attitudes are muted.

The "bible thumpers" have been serving in the US military since before there was a US. Show them some respect.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[DesScorp]

"Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R."

We once defended people who liked to party and fuck. Now our opponents AND clients are religious fanatics who BOTH hate "freedom".

I've been to Subic several times. In my younger stupid days, I once drank so much at the Tennessee Club in Olangapo City, that I had alcohol poisoning for three days afterwards.

I also wised up and got out of the regular sailor party haunts and actually saw some of the rest of the PI. And far from being a country where people like to "party and fuck", it's one of the most deeply Catholic countries in the world. Outside of Olangapo, the rest of the PI looked at the areas surrounding the Naval (and Air Force) bases as a kind of Filipino Sodom and Gomorra, a stain on the country and an embarrassment. We weren't all that popular once you got outside those gates. Filipinos were truly grateful for our chasing off the Japanese and rebuilding infrastructure after WWII, but were resentful for our continued presence. And yes, they thought... probably not illogically... that we were a bad influence on their kids. We were essentially kicked out just a few years after my time of service.

I think you'll find that overseas US bases are no different from overseas bases of the British Empire or the Roman Legions. Young horny troops with money to spend will always attract party people, prostitutes, and vice operations eager to take their money. Pretty sure there were Jewish hookers servicing those Roman soldiers in Judea back in the time of Jesus. It surely didn't make Judea a land where people liked to "party and fuck". So I think you're looking at the world in a rather skewed lens.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[DesScorp]

The "Big E"'s first combat deployment was in the Gulf of Tonkin, on Yankee Station. As a veteran of TF77 (The Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club) I find it appropriate that her last cruise will another Gulf...the Persian. Too bad there's nothing to compare to Subic Bay in the Mideast for R n' R.

Bravo Zulu, CVN-65

Late 80's for me. I got to Big E just after Operation Praying Mantis in 88. One of my first duties was to assist senior ordies in building up some Skipper II's in case what remained of Iran's fleet wanted to take another shot at us. Gonna be sad to have a fleet without an Enterprise in it. You thinking about going to her de-commissioning? I am.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[rampant mac]

"The "bible thumpers" have been serving in the US military since before there was a US. Show them some respect."

How can you be serving in the US military before there was a US?

Also, people that like to fuck have been using boats a lot longer than the bible has been around. Show them some respect.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[Holi]

I thought the whole pull for the Navy was you got to travel around the world having sex in every port.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[cold fjord]

The military has now also gone "corporate" (and been infested with Bible Thumpers) such that the old "work hard, fight hard, play hard" attitudes are muted.

I guess you don't keep up with the news: Military Chaplains Mull End of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

I'm pretty sure that "Bible thumpers" weren't involved in the normalization of open homosexuality in the Armed Forces. I think the phrase you are looking for is "political correctness".

Now our opponents AND clients are religious fanatics who BOTH hate "freedom".

Try reading Bin Laden's Letter to America. His demands before his followers would stop trying to slaughter Americans are that Americans convert to Islam, and that the Constitution be replaced by Sharia law. Most Americans would consider forced religious conversion on pain of death, loss of the Bill of Rights, including the 1st Amendment, the treatment of women, the fact that a woman's testimony in court could only be treated as at most half that of a man's, the execution of homosexuals, the prohibition of alcohol in addition to all drugs, and many other consequences of Sharia to be a significant loss of freedom. The Islamists literally do hate American's freedoms as an offence to their values. There is no corresponding movement of any significance to impose that type of law in America by Americans, all fantasies and polemics aside.

Maybe letting homosexuals serve openly will chase off some of the religionists. It should improve Sub Sailor recruiting! (I kid! I kid!)

I'm sure, I'm sure.

Homosexuals constitute approximately 1.7% of the general population. Something like 80-90% of Americans are religious. You would have to work that gay 1.7% pretty hard to make up for any significant loss of religious Americans due to institutional hostility to their faith. But cheer up! I'm sure that the Omama administration finally putting women on nuclear submarines, the navy's diversity policy, and open homosexuality can only combine to make the independant launch capable nuclear submarine force ever more capable and reliable in the hands of its diverse, navy chosen future leadership.
  .

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[couchslug]

I served 1981-2007 and saw the changes first hand. The military will stay full with or without religious fanatics.

I owe no religion respect. I respect willingness to fight, but the military climate before it began to fill with Evangelicals was much more to my liking.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[Rakarra]

We can only hope we get the military from the Starship Troopers movie. >_>

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[Anonymous Coward]

None of the current bible thumpers have done that. I see no reason to respect them for what other bible thumpers before them did. Some basic respect they can have, but as can anybody else.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[LordLimecat]

Shhh, apparently its OK to be hateful-- only so long as its against people with differing RELIGIOUS beliefs.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[khallow]

How can you be serving in the US military before there was a US?

By serving in state militias or the Continental Army during the US's Revolutionary War. Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, and other "bible thumpers" have been around for a long time. As I understand it, a lot of the current evangelist and fundamentalist groups can trace their ideological origins to the Puritans and other pretty hardcore protestant faiths that left for the New World in the 17th through 19th Centuries. And a bunch of those people served in the military.

Also, people that like to fuck have been using boats a lot longer than the bible has been around. Show them some respect.

I sense you think there was a non sequitur here. This is why I quote. My quote from you:

The military has now also gone "corporate" (and been infested with Bible Thumpers) such that the old "work hard, fight hard, play hard" attitudes are muted.

As I noted, the US military has always been infested with the religious. And I see that you mention that you served from 1981-2007. That's includes the transition from a military demoralized by the failures of the Vietnam War (particularly, the nasty combination of fighting a losing war, the Draft, and widespread drug use) as well as what I consider poorly thought out reforms from the Bush administration and Rumsfeld in particular.

So yes, it looks different and frankly more professional despite recent issues. As to the US military's "corporate" nature, it's worth noting that the private world does have logistics and procurement down pretty cold. And some of them have a pretty well set up management structure too. There are good models out there.

As I see it, the primary problem for the US military and indeed the US government as a whole is institutionalized parasites. We can thank the Republican and Democrat corporations for that.

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[khallow]

None of the current bible thumpers have done that.

Except the original poster was complaining about "bible thumpers" in the military. Meaning they are currently serving as well as serving in the past.

Imagine if you will, that I complain that there's all these anonymous people in Slashdot posting all sorts of crap. It's really gone downhill. Wah wah wah.

As you roll your eyes, you might be tempted, just a little, to post that all those ACs were around in 2001 just as they are now, doing then what they're doing now. Or maybe you'll just post, anonymously of course, "You must be new here."

Re:Gulf to Gulf

[Anonymous Coward]

We weren't all that popular once you got outside those gates? What planet are you from? The Filipino people are extremely warm and hospitable almost everywhere.

"We were essentially kicked out" - Myth of the century. The Philippine government wanted more money for a continued lease and that was the long and short of it. The United States was on the verge of paying for another 20 years, but then Mount Pinatubo erupted and destroyed Clarke Air Force base and did significant damage to Subic Bay Naval Station, and the whole deal went South from there.

Fast forward and you have filipinos running around saying they kicked America out, but that's just not what happened.

Big E

[UGAVI]

I thought the Enterprise went down in the Mutara Sector and was replaced by the Enterprise-A.

Re:Big E

[vikingpower]

No. That was in 2961 CE. You are referring to the old infra-galactic cruiser named "Enterprise". TFA is on about the hocuspocus-core-powered battleship of the same name, commissioned by the Human Inter-Star Council in 3028 and now, finally, after half a century of service, sent to Olympus Mons back in Sol System to be scrapyarded.

Re:Big E

[UGAVI]

Oh. Yeah. How could I have forgotten?

Re:Big E

[vikingpower]

You may be one of the poor blokes on board of the fusion-drive destroyer "Dilbert", the one that flew through that blue giant's corona and had its entire crew irradiated with mind-waves, there ?

Re:Big E

[UGAVI]

That's possible, but I thought someone would have told me.

A little trivia

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Did you guys know that the Enterprise is the United States' only nuclear wessel?

Oh noes

[Anonymous Coward]

Captain Picard will be quite pissed. ._.

It has to be scrapped

[Animats]

Sadly, it has to be scrapped. Removing the reactors requires cutting out decks from the flight deck down to all eight nuclear reactor compartments. The hull gets towed to Bremerton, WA for disposal. The reactors, less fuel, go to a trench in Hanford, Washington.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[NEDHead]

I always thought that I knew that the Enterprise had hatches below each reactor so they could be dumped in the event of a bad problem ("eject warp core", just to save other posters the time). Perhaps I am wrong - wouldn't be the first time...

Re:It has to be scrapped

[couchslug]

They'd greatly weaken the hull just where you wouldn't want a torpedo hit.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[some old guy]

Enterprise, like my ship the Long Beach, had "Top Hat Areas" immediately above the RC's where access cuts were made and re-sealed folllowing refuelling or repairs, much like the standard pressure hull cuts made in submarines under overhaul. Source: NavNuPwrSchMareIs Class 73-06 :)

Re:It has to be scrapped

[Anonymous Coward]

what I don't get is why the ship couldn't be tied up in some city and the reactors hooked up to the electric grid. The ship is preserved as museum and the municipality hires nuclear engineers and has public power.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[DerekLyons]

Umm... You've got the idea right, but the details somewhat scrambled. She'll be defueled at Newport News, which requires cutting from the hanger deck, not the flight deck. Then she'll come here to PSNS (in Bremerton) where the reactors will be removed and shipped to Hanford and the balance of the ship scrapped.
 
That being said - she's had such a long service life for two big reasons. First, the conventionally fuelled carriers started getting too expensive to operate. Second, they haven't wanted to tackle removing her reactors.
 
Seriously, removing the reactors from Enterprise along with Long Beach and Triton are all problematical for one reason or another and all three were put off for decades. Triton sat on red lead row for nearly thirty years, and Long Beach for over fifteen, to avoid dealing with them. (Plus, rumor has it that there are contamination issues on Enterprise that will make the job even more challenging.)

Re:It has to be scrapped

[Spy Handler]

well, the fact that it's an old one-of-a-kind reactor that's getting too difficult and expensive to maintain, with parts getting scarce and crews having to manufacture their own, doesn't really change just because you transfer the ownership from the Navy to some municipality.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[Anonymous Coward]

4 reactor compartments. 2 reactors per compartment.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[dbIII]

An old ship is a hole in the ocean to pour money into. Add very old nuclear reactors of a type to damn well work no matter what the costs to multiply the expense.
Los Alamos have designs based on the lessons learnt from running these reactors, and considering after a time a reactor ends up like grandpa's axe (third head and tenth handle but still grandpa's axe), a completely new one isn't such a bad idea. In more technical terms the high pressure, high temperature pipework has a limited life and that gets shortened even more if there is a strong neutron source causing a bit of extra damage. This mode of failure is known as creep creacking.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[drinkypoo]

Not just that but the Enterprise has what, six reactors? eight? While subsequent designs have two, as a cost-saving measure. As it turns out, anything that actually punches enough of a hole in a carrier that it will threaten a reactor is probably going to destroy it anyway, so there was no point in having so much redundancy.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[IwantToKeepAnon]

Sadly, it has to be scrapped. Removing the reactors requires cutting out decks from the flight deck down to all eight nuclear reactor compartments. The hull gets towed to Bremerton, WA for disposal.

But why not sink it for artificial reef / scuba diving? Too big?

Re:It has to be scrapped

[ArsonSmith]

There were reports of a Russian infiltrator that used some type of device to perform a still unknown nefarious deed to the reactor. It was unknown how he escaped. Reports were he just disappeared.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[GameboyRMH]

Aw too bad. My first thought was using the reactors as power plants.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[sean.peters]

What's driving the ship's retirement now is that the nuclear fuel that she received at her last refueling is now running out. A second refueling would not be economically feasible.

Re:It has to be scrapped

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you bother when a meltdown is going to do just that anyway? Seal off the compartments and abandon ship, it's toast regardless.

Thank you...

[JasoninKS]

Thank you "Big E" for your service. You've served your men and your country well.

Efforts towards the next Enterprise

[oracleguy01]

There currently are petitions to name the next unnamed planned Ford-class carrier (CVN-80) Enterprise. I personally hope CVN-80 will be named Enterprise.

See: http://ussenterp.epetitions.net/signatures.php?petition_id=1870 and http://www.petitiononline.com/CVN80ENT/petition.html

Re:Efforts towards the next Enterprise

[M1FCJ]

Since Bush Sr. got his carrier, the next one is bound to be a Clinton but I am afraid of the CVN-81 GWB, it might start bombing some random country and start yet an other war.

Re:Efforts towards the next Enterprise

[mschuyler]

CVN-78 Ford is under construction at Newport News. available in 2015, replaces Enterprise.
CVN-79 Kennedy is under construction at Newport News. Available in 2018, replaces Nimitz
CVN-80 Unnamed, planned, Available 2024, replaces Eisenhower.

Re:Efforts towards the next Enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

Name CVN-80 "U.S.S. The Koran". Iran wouldn't dare shoot a bb-gun at it.

Re:Efforts towards the next Enterprise

[a_hanso]

And on its maiden voyage, it will become trapped in a turbulence, and its captain will be presumed dead until the captain of the Enterprise after the next discovers him chopping wood on an island.

Re:Efforts towards the next Enterprise

[MtViewGuy]

If I remember correctly, CVN-78 will be named "Gerald R. Ford," CVN-79 will be named "John F. Kennedy" (the second carrier to use this name), and CVN-80 has yet to be named. I wouldn't be surprised that CVN-80 is named "Franklin D. Roosevelt," since the CVN-78 class has all been named after former Presidents.

Custom made parts

[damn_registrars]

Aren't most parts for US Navy vessels custom made regardless? I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.

Re:Custom made parts

[Anonymous Coward]

For a newer ship, the Navy is likely to have spares in storage for repairs. With a ship the age of the Enterprise, those spares are likely depleted and the parts have to be custom made.

Re:Custom made parts

[Anonymous Coward]

It's always cheaper to build something even just two or three times.

You get to re-use the jigs from the first item, and you get to use the people who just built the first item. And of course you've got the R&D to make the blueprints and specs from the first one.

Re:Custom made parts

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally navy ships are made in "classes", which are a group of mostly identical ships. Since a class may be built for several decades, often later boats include the latest advancements, but overall a class is all built from the same blueprints. A class is named for the first boat of the class that is built. There are 10 "Nimitz" class aircraft carriers, the first being the USS Nimitz, the rest being very similar. The Nimitz was launched in the late 60's, the last boat of the class was completed just a few years ago. The replacement for the Nimitz boats will be the Ford Class (named after the Gerald R Ford, which will launch within a year or two). Boats are built in classes for all the reasons you would think. Naval ships can hardly be called mass produced, but ordering parts in batches does lower cost, and designing a boat is a decades long process, its simpler to build more than one once you have gone through all the effort.

The Enterprise was her own class for a number of reasons. As the first nuclear aircraft carrier, she was kind of a "testbed" for the technology. Although the Enterprise is her own class, she was loosely based on an earlier oil powered carrier. This imposed some limitations on the platform that later boats would avoid.

Re:Custom made parts

[DesScorp]

Aren't most parts for US Navy vessels custom made regardless? I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.

Most modern US warships of a class are constructed with modern modular techniques, with tooling at the ready to reproduce standard, common parts. The Nimitz class... like all of our other modern warship classes... was basically built in modular parts in an indoor factory, and then put together piece by piece at the yards. You can look up pics of modern carrier construction where they're using cranes to lift factory made sections into the ship, where they're welded and secured into the vessel. The Enterprise... a unique design... was built the old fashioned way, completely (and uniquely) built in the drydock itself from the keel up. So when a major part on a Nimitz needs replacing, they simply tell Newport News Shipbuilding, where machinists simply make one quickly and economically from an existing productions template. The Enterprise's parts have to very much be custom made.

Re:Custom made parts

[FunkDup]

Aren't most parts for US Navy vessels custom made regardless? I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.

They use standard commercial components whenever they can. For example, why would you build your own pressure transmitters when the market is commoditised? Cheap reliable products are available .at short order.

Re:Custom made parts

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't most parts for US Navy vessels custom made regardless? I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.

And since it's a 'one off' 'only one in its class' everything would by definition be custom made. Plus years of naval tradition in making running repairs.

Re:Custom made parts

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.

Most Walmarts are pretty big and many Walmart customers are pretty big.

Perhaps your view of the warship section was inadvertently blocked by one the People of Walmart. You might want to go back when it's a bit less crowded and ask the greeter to steer you to the proper section.

Also, their checkers can be pretty stupid - if you buy three warships, they sometimes screwup and only charge you for two - give it a try.

Re:Custom made parts

[DerekLyons]

Aren't most parts for US Navy vessels custom made regardless? I don't recall seeing a section at WalMart for warship parts.

Yes... and no. Depends on your definition of 'custom'.
 
The parts for the fire control system I worked on were 'custom made for the US Navy' in the sense that nobody but the Navy operated that system. OTOH, there were sixteen more just like it (a total of twelve deployed plus four trainers plus one software testing/validation installation). On top of that there were twelve more (eight deployed, two trainers, one software testing/validation installation, one at the Cape for the shore launch facility) that were about 96% compatible in terms of spare parts. So, the Navy had a whole warehouse full of spares that supported those twenty eight systems.
 
But in the case of Enterprise... many of her systems were 'one of a kind' right out of the building yard, Because of her age, many of the systems that used to be in common with other units no longer are, because those units themselves have gone to the scrapyard. So many of her parts are indeed custom made in the more usual sense - one of a kind.

Renovation Suggestion

[NEDHead]

Can't they just add a third nacelle and give it to some Admiral to use?

Re:Renovation Suggestion

[ehintz]

Better yet, sell it to a fiber optic dude by the name of L. Bob Rife...

warship vs warpship

[Anonymous Coward]

Everytime I go to the museams submarines and destroyers avaliable for tour have all been gutted. No working electronics, comms, ordinance or much of anything of interesting left save the shell of an impressivly massive rusty heap of steel.

Paradoxically if it floats the older it is the more interesting it is to see as less has been removed for display.

You might as well build a replica of the Enterprise and make believe data locked out all controls with one of his infamous fractal encryption algorithms. The kids will love playing in the Jefferies tube.

inb4 armageddon presses Enterprise into service

[Jmanamj]

Why does the volatile nuclear situation in the Middle East and the retirement of an honored old carrier make me think of Battlestar Galactica?

Re:inb4 armageddon presses Enterprise into service

[Tastecicles]

yeah, come to think of it...

someone please tell me Eddie Olmos isn't aboard!

Story is wrong:

[fyngyrz]

...to be retired after fifty years of active service — the longest of any warship in U.S. naval history.

The USS Constitution, launched in 1798, retired from active service in 1856, after 58 years of active service. And after that, she was turned into a school ship, then a whole bunch of that kind of service, and she's still afloat today, the official "symbolic flagship" of the US fleet.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

The story doesn't actually assert that it has the longest length of service. The only time that claim is made is in a direct quote from an Admiral.

Re:Story is wrong:

[vikingpower]

I was a junior Navy officer for some time, in a NATO-member Navy. One of the few things I learned quite thoroughly in that time was: "Never trust what an admiral says. Never. Ever. Find your own facts".

Re:Story is wrong:

[Malc]

Puh: that's nothing. HMS Victory was launched in 1765, and is still in commission. She's even older than the United States! You guys have some catching up to do.

Re:Story is wrong:

[C0R1D4N]

Depressingly the US Navy overtook the Royal Navy sixty some years ago.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Malc]

No need to focus on the negative old chap. Mind you, China will do the same to the US in a few years if they keep things up. Nobody stays on top forever.

Re:Story is wrong:

[DeusExCalamus]

She ain't floating, though ;)

Re:Story is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

USS Constitution is STILL in commission.

USS CONSTITUTION, the world's oldest commissioned warship afloat, promotes the United States Navy and America’s naval heritage through educational outreach, public access and historic demonstrations, in port and underway.

Being assigned to the crew of Constitution is still a very much sought after posting due to the prestige of the posting. Only the very best and brightest ever get such duty.

Re:Story is wrong:

[cold fjord]

Puh: that's nothing. HMS Victory was launched in 1765, and is still in commission. She's even older than the United States!

If the UK doesn't reverse course on defense cuts, there may not be much more than HMS Victory left to protect the British Isles, and the only waves Britsh sailors will be familiar with are these.

Cuts to the Royal Navy
British defence cuts will help make ADF shipshape
Navy chief: Britain cannot keep up its role in Libya air war due to cuts
Big British defense cuts weaken Pentagon's top military partner
Defense Cuts Mean UK Would Lose A New Falklands War, Veteran Claims

Re:Story is wrong:

[gman003]

China's Army and Air Force are doing fine, but their Navy is in relatively poor shape. They're good enough to be a threat to anyone invading them, maybe even a threat to the locals, but even the Royal Navy could take them at this point.

They've got one aircraft carrier. One. Not even a full one. They bought an incomplete and stripped Soviet "carrier-cruiser", and are currently finishing and refurbishing it. It's designed to carry a mere 40 aircraft, mostly helicopters. Compare that to the 90 or so carried on the Enterprise or a Nimitz-class. Now, they somewhat compensate by having quite a few more missiles, including some pretty hefty AA, but they're as outclassed as a PDP11 on the TOP500.

Re:Story is wrong:

[bkmoore]

I wouldn't trust a Czech "Admiral" either.

Re:Story is wrong:

[petsounds]

Maybe, but when Chinese subs can surface within a US carrier group without the US knowing about it, the number of planes the Chinese carrier has becomes less of an issue.

Re:Story is wrong:

[cold fjord]

I believe most people would agree that Austria and Switzerland have the most trustworthy admirals.

Re:Story is wrong:

[fyngyrz]

USS Constitution is STILL in commission.

Actually, she's been de-comissioned and re-comissioned several times. So the "continuous" thing has some holes in it. The stretch I quoted was the longest in-service stretch where she was legitimately a member of the fighting force to be reckoned with.

Being assigned to the crew of Constitution is still a very much sought after posting due to the prestige of the posting. Only the very best and brightest ever get such duty.

Two members of my family have served aboard her; hence my particular interest.

Re:Story is wrong:

[izomiac]

If they keep things up, the gap between the US and Chinese Navies will only widen. Right now, the US has more battle tonnage than the next 13 navies combined, whereas China is still planning to build a blue-water navy. Economically, the US has 43% of the world's military expenditures, $698 billion, whereas China (#2) spends $119 billion, while the UK, France, and Russia each spend ~$60 billion.

I don't think I need to breakdown the fraction spent on Naval power, but I'd imagine it's higher for the US since we don't maintain as large of a land army as China. Plus, China's been trying to reduce costs by buying old Soviet hardware, which is never going to let it surpass the US in naval power. While I agree that the US Navy won't remain the most powerful forever, it will for the foreseeable future and the China of today is no threat to that.

The UK is the only other country even considering building a supercarrier, although France's planned second carrier and China's one or two carriers under construction are close (still about half the displacement of the US supercarriers). The latter should be completed around the same time (2015) as the US's brand new Ford-class supercarrier.

China is a rapidly developing nation, to be sure, but they're not the threat to the US people make them out to be. Here in the states, the military-industrial complex loves to scare people into spending more, so that's one source of that. My guess is that elsewhere, people really want another superpower to rise to keep the US in check, and China's their best hope for that. (IMHO, that's counterproductive wishful thinking as they're making Americans fear for our continuing military supremacy, thus ensuring we spend even more money on it.) For China, I see no real advantage to them building up a large military to threaten the US (e.g. see how that worked for the USSR). Their current relation to the US is mutually beneficial, or perhaps even slanted in their favor, so why would they want to change it?

Re:Story is wrong:

[findoutmoretoday]

Puh: that's nothing. HMS Victory was launched in 1765.

Here we go: 1756 pathetic, the Gokstad ship 890 and still under command of Olaf Geirstad-Alf's spirit. Now I think about it the Egyption death ships ...

Re:Story is wrong:

[RoboRay]

Yeah, but does she FLOAT?

Re:Story is wrong:

[koan]

Or an Italian Captain.

Re:Story is wrong:

[BenJCarter]

I dunno. Whether we still have an Enterprise deployed or not, it's gonna be tough for them to win a war with weapons and armor 'made in China'. Zerg battle tactics will likely fare poorly against beam weapons...

Re:Story is wrong:

[rthille]

The report can probably be taken at face value, but if it would be interesting if the US forces had been tracking the sub all along, but never let on that they knew, so China would be caught "flat footed" in any real conflict.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? You do not think that they navies? They do. And they are no more trustworthy than any other nations.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

Even the royal navy could take them? Because they have only one aircraft carrier? You do realize that the royal navy now has 0 aircraft carriers. But on the main point, yes, it will be decades before China has anything comparable to the US Navy.

Re:Story is wrong:

[WindBourne]

Yes, they have exactly one Aircraft carrier. HOWEVER, they have 4 keels laid already. In addition, it is though that the last one is nuclear powered. Add to that some 20 boomers and 15 attack subs, with 1-2 new booms/1-2 new attack subs going to sea EACH YEAR, well, I doubt that you will consider them piss poor in about 5 years.

What else you are missing is that their space program is part of their military. All of this man flight and their new space station is actually a military base.

Then add to that the fact that they spend more of their GDP on military than does even America and that was 5 years ago. Since that time, the American DOD budget has been steady or dropped, while China's has increased 5-10% EACH year.
Quite honestly, you should consider a bit of humility.

Re:Story is wrong:

[WindBourne]

Oh, I forgot. It appears possible- that China has some 3000 nuke missiles, that they have not admited to.
Seriously, China is not to be taken lightly. The above is probably why they are so edgy about our spying on them. USSR never was that edgy. Nor were we. In fact, we WANTED them to know roughly what we had, just not how to do it. USSR was the same way.
China does not want us to know what they are up to. That is the actions of a nation that is planning a surprise attack.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Marcika]

The Swiss Army has a company-strength "navy" of lake patrol boats (Motorbootkompanie 10). As an army company, it is not led by an admiral.

I know better than to whoosh you, but to be a good pedant, you'd need to be technically correct...

Re:Story is wrong:

[gman003]

Sorry, I still think of the Illustrious as a carrier. And the Brits do have a carrier in production. What with their significantly longer experience running a major navy, I'm willing to bet that they'll have much fewer problems than China.

Re:Story is wrong:

[petsounds]

Anything's possible, but I can't see a US carrier group *purposefully* letting subs from a nation we consider a military threat to come within torpedo range of the carrier. From the analysis I read at the time, most military wonks think the US Navy severely underestimated the stealth capabilities of the newest Song class submarine.

Given how much data the Chinese government is purported to have stolen from military subcontractors and hacking intrusions over the years, it seems plausible to me that the Chinese have the knowledge to develop a stealthy sub. But defeating the US Navy's advanced detection systems? If true, it's akin to a hidden pocket defeating the TSA cancer machines. The worrying difference being, the Navy actually provides security, not just security theatre.

Re:Story is wrong:

[LWATCDR]

Okay it is the longest life of a combate ship built in the last century. It is also the oldest serving carrier.
I really want them to make it a museum ship. The first nuclear powered aircraft carrier does seem worth saving. Of course the other Enterprise CV-6 really should have been saved as well.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Tastecicles]

Or an American sub skip. I remember reading somewhere several years ago about a German navy sub that collided with the coast of Norway, but I'm having trouble finding a link to that one...

Re:Story is wrong:

[Swampash]

This is the 21st century. Aircraft carriers are nothing more than floating coffins. Time after time in war game after war game, modern carriers go straight to the bottom - sunk by everything from 2-man crews in speedboats to ballistic missiles.

Aircraft carriers are the fucking Death Star and every man and his dog has an X-Wing and proton torpedoes. Floating coffins.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Patch86]

... but even the Royal Navy could take them at this point.

They've got one aircraft carrier. One. Not even a full one.

The Royal Navy doesn't have any aircraft carriers at all at the moment. Not working ones (with aircraft!), anyway. Not since the last of the Invincibles (Ark Royal) was taken out of service; and that class weren't "full ones" either- they were helicopter carriers with space for Harriers.

Just no-one tell the Argentines, 'eh?

Re:Story is wrong:

[Patch86]

But they are necessary if you want to fight a war anywhere without a local friendly airbase.

As it's in fashion again at the moment, take the Falklands War. The only way for the UK to operate aircraft in the region was to base them off of an aircraft carrier. With no local airbases to use, if they hadn't had a carrier they would have been fighting without air superiority. Which means they almost certainly would have lost. Carriers might be vulnerable compared to other fighting ships, but you couldn't win a war like that without one.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Swampash]

The Royal Navy was just lucky that the Argentine Navy was just as wedded to early-20th-century naval dogma as it was itself. The Argentine Navy tried to fight capital ships with capital ships, because that's what they're for, and which no sane 21st century commander would do.

If you put a big expensive navy like the Seventh Fleet into the Persian Gulf in wartime in the 21st century, two thirds of it will be on the bottom in the first 4 hours.

Re:Story is wrong:

[stewbee]

As a former submariner myself, here is my read on the scenario you linked to (and in short I agree with the GP post). I think that saying the US did not know the sub was there is unlikely. It is nothing more that a show of hubris on the part of the Chinese since they knew the US would not act without causing a huge international incident. China knew this, so they figured that it would be better to embarrass the US since there really was no downside to their actions.

Re:Story is wrong:

[srmalloy]

The Constitution is still in commission as well; however, the claim was active service. The HMS Victory website states that she was launched in 1765 and commissioned in 1778, with an active service of 34 years. However, while the Constitution has the record for greatest number of years in active service, the Enterprise holds the record for continuous active service, as the Constitution was taken in and out of active service several times.

Re:Story is wrong:

[jareth-0205]

The USS Constitution, launched in 1798, retired from active service in 1856, after 58 years of active service.

Pah... amateurs...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victory

Re:Story is wrong:

[HideyoshiJP]

It might be old and may not perform well, but it's so huge! ...that's what she said.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a bunch of bullshit propaganda which they did so ignorant people would cite it.

It was a war game which is held in the same location every time. They went there ahead of time and waited. Once the games started waited for the best propaganda and popped up. So basically, the Chinese pulled off what a barrel tied to the bottom of the ocean can do. Wow. Impressive.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

That's exactly where I want the best and the brightest members of the Navy, stuck on a ship completely useless for modern warfare.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Marxist Hacker 42]

They have TWO- but they don't even add up to ONE- they also bought a decommissioned Australian aircraft carrier for use as an amusement park.

Re:Story is wrong:

[vikingpower]

There actually is a statue for an admiral here in Vienna: Tegetoff. He won some obscure battle on the Adriatic, back in the K & K times. *grin

Re:Story is wrong:

[sean.peters]

Being assigned to the crew of Constitution is still a very much sought after posting due to the prestige of the posting. Only the very best and brightest ever get such duty.

Not so much. Constitution duty is very much sought after, as it makes you a semi-celebrity. And it's really easy duty. Best and the brightest? I think those guys go to nuke school. Good looking and reasonably articulate? Go to Old Ironsides. It's basically PR duty, and the Navy just doesn't put all that high a priority on it.

Disclosure: retired Navy officer here, neither a nuke nor a Constitution veteran.

Re:Story is wrong:

[pixelpusher220]

a German navy sub that collided with the coast of Norway, but I'm having trouble finding a link to that one...

no worries, it sounds like the Sub found the coast pretty well ;-)

Re:Story is wrong:

[WindBourne]

Hence the reason why the USN is hard at work on railguns and lasers. Even the railgun could be used against IDed water threats.

Re:Story is wrong:

[mjpaci]

Didn't Motorbootkompanie 10 used to open for Kraftwerk?

Re:Story is wrong:

[Savantissimo]

I hear Bolivian admirals are usually high, though.

Re:Story is wrong:

[cheesybagel]

They did try using air power to strike the navy using Exocet missiles but it seems their "warranty" expired once they attacked a good friend of France or something like that.

Re:Story is wrong:

[cheesybagel]

The Chinese are doing fine with their new destroyers (not quite as good as the latest Western tech but coming close to it). However they have one recycled half-working carrier and their nuclear submarines are complete and utter crap. Their solid SLBM program also seems to be having issues. The US has like a dozen carrier groups which include the fleet auxiliaries besides the carrier itself. The plan (hah) to eventually have 3 carriers in working condition. Probably one per fleet or something close to that. They do have today the two largest naval shipyards in the world, but they still need to crank production up and work on improving their technological base.

Re:Story is wrong:

[cheesybagel]

The Soviets called their carriers "cruisers" because of a silly clause that no aircraft carrier may cross the Dardanelles Strait and navigate to/from the Black Sea which were like the only warm water ports they had available. If you compare the Admiral Kuznetsov with other aircraft carriers in displacement, length, crew size or aircraft carried you will see it is 2nd only to the US Nimitz supercarrier class.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Hognoxious]

An army company, even if they have boats, isn't a navy.

Perhaps you should take your own advice?

Re:Story is wrong:

[damien_kane]

I remember reading somewhere several years ago about a German navy sub that collided with the coast of Norway, but I'm having trouble finding a link to that one...

I believe it was in Stephenson's Cryptonomicon

Re:Story is wrong:

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as major powers go Navy's are purely offensive weapons for flexing on non nuclear non space age countries. The Chinese or the Russian would nuke the US fleet out of existence using ICBMs if the SHTF. Its really all about satellites, missiles, and subs at this point. The Navy on top of the ocean has very little defensive capability.

Re:Story is wrong:

[Swampash]

Marketing bullshit. Railguns and lasers would be utterly useless in a battle where a ship is trying to defend itself against, say, five hundred incoming rockets, drones, torpedoes, remote-controlled boats, and tiny speedboats.

Re:Story is wrong:

[WindBourne]

if 500 rockets are all incoming on a ship, then the ship is sunk no matter the defense system.

Re:Story is wrong:

[msi]

You have misread the story, the USS Enterprise is 1,123 ft (342 m) long and the USS Constitution is 204 ft (62 m).

Re:Story is wrong:

[Swampash]

Doesn't have to be 500 rockets. It can be 1 rocket and 499 distractions. Total cost of that attack, coupla hundred bucks. Total cost of the target - what, 5 billion dollars?

Summary: floating coffins.

Re:Story is wrong:

[jamstar7]

The report can probably be taken at face value, but if it would be interesting if the US forces had been tracking the sub all along, but never let on that they knew, so China would be caught "flat footed" in any real conflict.

Sounds more like the infamous Team B report that came out of the political analysts who invaded the CIA back in the 70's. Their purpose was to find proof that the Soviet Union was truly the 'Evil Empire' bent on starting and attempting to win a nuclear war and somehow manage world domination. They went through everything the CIA's Russian Desk had accumulated, cherrypicked the data for impact, then went through several cycles of 'What if?', each cycle building on the 'conclusions' of the previous cycle, each cycle getting further and further from reality. After reading the declassified report, I was rather surprised that Team B wasn't insisting that the Soviets could just say a magic word and make us all disappear, therefore we must immediately insert covert operatives to kill every suspected magician, warlock, medium, and psychic in the Soviet Union to preserve the 'magic gap'. Team B was that far out there.

MODERATORS!!! A moderation emergency!!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up! The first funny thing I have read in years!!

We're to put in for decommissioning...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I were human, I believe my response would be "go to hell."

Re:We're to put in for decommissioning...

[mrbester]

If you were human...

Re:We're to put in for decommissioning...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you were human...

Failed Star Trek reference recognition.

Overhaul

[Skapare]

Keep the same frame, but just replace stuff with better stuff more commonly available. New ship at half the price. That's assuming the old frame is any good.

Re:Overhaul

[LWATCDR]

Up to a point.
Think about it this way to bring the Enterprise up to the quality of a new carrier you would have too.
A replace the reactors and turbines.
Replace all of the wiring.
Replace the radar, fire control, SAMs, and all the command and control systems.
It would take longer and cost more money than building a new carrier from the ground up and it still would be the only ship of it's class and have lots of one off parts and problems.
Many years ago I remember reading about the retirement of the F-8 and did a little work. I figured out that if you replaced the engine radar and added a new composite wing that it would be about 70% as good as an F-16. The problem was that it would cost like 90% as much and wouldn't have as long of service life as a new F-16.
At some point you are just better off building a new Car, Carrier, Plane, or just about anything than spending money keeping an old one. Of course if the car or plane is a "Classic" and is just going to a show piece then it can have a very long life.
Or if enough of them where made and or they where way over built you can get an extremely long life out of them.
Good examples of air craft that managed that are.
The B-52.
The C-47/DC-3
C-135, KC-135, RC-134, and E-3
And the DC-8.
But those are the exceptions and not the rule.

It was a beater in the 90's.

[dcherryholmes]

I remember finishing Nuke School in the early nineties, and one of my buddies went surface and got assigned to the Enterprise. It was kind of a good deal for him since he went straight to the shipyard instead of going out to see on a non-hoopty vessel. But we stayed in touch for a while after our assignments and I remember him telling me "dude, I will *never* go out to sea on this thing, I'll jump ship first." Obviously a bit of hyperbole involved, but the ship was showing its age even back then.

Re:It was a beater in the 90's.

[Anonymous Coward]

The condition of old ships can wax and wane based on the quality of the leadership and money invested. I was on Kitty Hawk during her last few years, and I had heard stories about how bad of condition she was in, however after repeated SRAs (Ship Repair Availability) in Japan, and a lot of investment repairing old systems, she was in much better shape in the end than her sister ships (Connie, America, JFK) and was the last decommissioned despite being the oldest. To be fair, Connie had a great rep and I never set foot on her, but America and JFK had bad reps. Repairing old aircraft carriers always involves a lot of custom work and fabrication, however at some point the things that start wearing out are parts that were NEVER planned on being replaced. You still can replace them, it just gets really expensive.

Re:It was a beater in the 90's.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah that thing was notoriously rickety even back then, getting sent to it as a SWO was a form of punishment almost !

Re:It was a beater in the 90's.

[DesScorp]

I remember finishing Nuke School in the early nineties, and one of my buddies went surface and got assigned to the Enterprise. It was kind of a good deal for him since he went straight to the shipyard instead of going out to see on a non-hoopty vessel. But we stayed in touch for a while after our assignments and I remember him telling me "dude, I will *never* go out to sea on this thing, I'll jump ship first." Obviously a bit of hyperbole involved, but the ship was showing its age even back then.

Back in the late 80's, we had constant reactor safety drills on Big E. She's got eight old and unique reactors which even then required a lot more TLC than the two more modern reactors on the Nimitz class. I almost got to hearing those drills on the 1MC in my sleep they happened so often. "Emergency in number 3 MMR", etc. They were always drills, of course, but man... they happened a lot.

Re:It was a beater in the 90's.

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to hear more comments from sailors about behind the scenes on the oldest aircraft carrier.

Sounds like the end of BSG more than the Trek comparisons.

Re:It was a beater in the 90's.

[petsounds]

In one (or more) of producer Ronald D. Moore's BSG podcasts he mentioned that several people on the BSG writing staff had served in the military, including himself who had served a stint in the Navy aboard the frigate USS W. S. Sims. It's possible one of them even served on the Big E.

Re:It was a beater in the 90's.

[sean.peters]

Part of the problem with the John F. Can-opener (so nicknamed for her collision with a destroyer years ago) was that for years she was a reserve ship. Which meant in practice that she had to do all the stuff a regular ship had to do, but with about 70% of the manning and budget. So of course she fell apart.

Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

[westlake]

Did you guys know that the Enterprise is the United States' only nuclear wessel?

I am not sure if you mean this as a joke.

There are ten Nimitz class carriers in service. Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

Re:Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

[Oxford_Comma_Lover]

I think it was a joke. He said "nuclear wessel." It's probably a Russian invention.

Re:Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

[mschuyler]

Eleven.

CVN-65 Enterprise is in home port at Norfolk, about to be deployed to the Mideast
CVN-68 Nimitz is in the Pacific for trials,
CVN-69 Eisenhower is in home port Norfolk.
CVN-70 Vinson is in the Arabian Sea 5th Fleet AOR, arrived 1/17/12.
CVN-71 Roosevelt is at Newport News for RCOH & non-deployable, Avail: late 2012.
CVN-72 Lincoln is in the Arabian Sea, 5th Fleet AOR, arrived 1/12.
CVN-73 Washington is in home port Yokosuka, Japan.
CVN-74 Stennis is now in homeport, Bremerton (arrived 3/2/12)
CVN-75 Truman is home at Norfolk for DPIA & non-deployable. Avail summer 2012.
CVN-76 Reagan is in home port at Everett, WA (arrived 3/5/12)
CVN-77 Bush is in home port at Norfolk.

Re:Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

[mschuyler]

Sorry. You DID say "Nimitz Class" which the Enterprise is not.

Re:Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

[bruce_the_loon]

Chekov says "VOOOOSH"

Re:Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

[Anonymous Coward]

Nimitz-class, which the Enterprise is not. See the gap in numbers? CV-66 was America, scuttled in 2005, 67 was the JFK, currently on donation hold.

Both were Kitty Hawk class and not nuclear powered. Five of the Enterprise-class were planned, but they were too costly, so a more efficient design was sought.

Re:Nuclear Powered Surface Ships of the World

[Phrogman]

I used to never get the "W" confusion over a "V" in that film. Having learned a bit of Russian I was well aware that the Cyrillic alphabet has a /v/ but no /w/. I thought they had made a real mistake with Chekov's accent.
Then I learned that amongst the lower classes in Moscow, the /v/ is often pronounced as a /w/ :P

Preservation

[ArundelCastle]

2015? That seems like plenty of time for a couple million trekkers to sign a petition to preserve a chunk of it.
How's CBS doing? They got some spare cash?

Star Trek & space shuttle namesakes gone too

[peter303]

This is the end of an era. New ships of the same name often reappear in a future decade or war.

The HMS Victory is cheating.

[Anonymous Coward]

Puh: that's nothing. HMS Victory was launched in 1765, and is still in commission.

Keeping a ship that was tied up and used as a floating storage depot & school building for a century and then dry docked nearly a hundred years ago and turned into a museum "in commission" on paper shouldn't count. She only had 47 years of active service.

Here's where the reactors go

[Animats]

That's just for refueling access. For decommissioning, the entire reactor compartment has to come out. For a submarine, that's the whole hull section containing the reactor. A lid is welded on each end, and the old reactor compartments are then neatly lined up in a big open space at 46.566488,-119.517712. When the space is full, a berm will be built around it and filled in.

Re:Here's where the reactors go

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

They don't do that with surface ships. I was on the deactivation crew for the USS Arkansas and the shipyard pulled the cells out of the ship with a crane. They actually built temporary buildings on top of the ship over the reactors called Refueling Area Enclosures. These housed a crane that lifted the cells (with rods welded in) into a 20,000 lb lead 'cask' that shielded the radiation. These were transferred to a larger crane next to the drydock, which transferred the cask and fuel cell from the ship to the final holding vessel, where the cell was dropped in, presumably, for the next 1000 years or so.

You must have had a non-DC battlestation

[Anonymous Coward]

I saw nothing persuasive in anything you said. I did note that you had to flash around your IQ (low class, almost always exaggerated, and of questionable value to begin with). Also as a navy man you should have an appreciation for how much damage a relatively small amount of jet fuel can have on a structure (The sprinkler system likely made everything worse fighting a class bravo fire with water requires a skilled firefighter and is considered a last resort)... once the metal gets going it's all she wrote (At this point putting water on the fire is against the rulles.. a reaction much like thermite) , the fire is going to be practically unstoppalble and you only need to cause collapse on one level to bring the whole mess down.

So large plane crashes into building causing initial structural damage.. but not enough, then it dumps it's fuel which is spread and washed by sprinklers (intended to put out alpha fires) and busted pipes setting EVERYTHING on fire as it is washed through the spaces a small amount of spaces are protected with CO2 or haylon.. but those spaces are few and far between. Also this would be horrid on a ship that had time to set a protective posture but instead you're in a building that hasn't closed doors and turned off ventilation, and once you do (which is nobody's job) it's not going to be nearly as effective.

Now that the burning fuel has been pushed through the spaces setting fire to paper, plastic, and cloth it just has to get up to temperature for the metal to begin burning.. once the metal is burning it loses strength and the metal not hot enough to burn becomes softer and after a bit the whole floor comes down.. collapsing the floor underneath that and underneath that and underneath that... exactly like the picture.

You state that they could have put nano-thermite into the paint.... as a former BM I can tell you that putting an oxidizer in paint is pretty noticeable when metal is involved. I used to do this to people's paint if I didn't like them. Iron oxide will bleed rust, oxidizers make the paint flake and any flaws in the primer coat will spew rust streaks or white aluminum oxidization.. it will age a month overnight with flakes, blisters, discoloration, and rust staining, if these components were nano-ized they would be even more reactive (the whole point of nano-thermite) and the changes would be even more rapid. Someone who handles a lot of the same paint all the time is likely to notice even the smallest inconsistencies as paint does go bad and paint suppliers can do a shitty job it's more a question of if I feel motivated to disrupt my work day to do something about it or do I take a gamble and ignore it.

"EXPERTS EXPERTS EXPERTS and SO CALLED EXPERTS".. don't talk like that it further makes you look crazy. Especially when you promote yourself as an expert for having a high IQ and being a navy ET and then use quotes around "expert findings".. Like I'm sure that they had a few guys more qualified that being ex-navy ETs with high IQs involved in this investigation.. Like scientists and engineers, many of whom were navy ETs early in life and normally have an IQ around 140.

Re:You must have had a non-DC battlestation

[Anonymous Coward]

So anonymous old-man-insulting troll, your official theory is that THE WATER SET EVERYTHING ON FIRE?!!!?! Given that the renovations in which the incendiaries were thought to be installed was only a few weeks to mere days earlier, by people who were perhaps not innocent career painters, seeing as none have come forward to discuss the work (which we know was being done due to the power cuts' disruption of data centers in the WTC 1&2 buildings), I doubt the potentially unusual texture and reduced longevity of the paint was a big concern. Oh, and I doubt your claim to be a "former BM". Nothing former about it.

Re:You must have had a non-DC battlestation

[BranMan]

No, water did not set everything on fire. Jet fuel was on fire, oil and water do NOT mix, and the water SPREAD the burning jet fuel to every area of the building, to set all the contents on fire, along with the fuel.

Instead, you actually think it was deliberate, with paint. How many thousands of gallons of paint do you think they applied up there? 'Cause they know how many thousands of gallons of jet fuel there were in the planes.

carriers are people too

[Goldsmith]

As much as a ship like the Enterprise is important to the Navy (and it's hard to find one which is more important to the modern Navy), what is truly amazing about modern carriers are the way the people on them work together.

If you ever have a chance to cruise on a carrier, go for it. Watching launch and recovery of planes is amazing, particularly at night. People die if someone makes a small mistake, stands in the wrong place, leaves a tool or spare nut lying around, or sets the pressure on an arresting cable just a little off. So they don't do anything wrong. Several hundred people working together flawlessly is really something to see.

Re:carriers are people too

[LittleImp]

If that really were the case that thing would crash and burn. Nothing is built so it has to rely on several hunderds of people making no mistake. Because people make tons of mistakes all the time.

Re:carriers are people too

[Lando]

As posted by littleImp, the jobs are not done perfectly, but are created in such a way as to minimize the chances for a fatal mistake. Each crew is responsible for a limited number of things. Many times different groups will be waiting while another crew is doing their own work. The reason of course is that by reducing responsibility it makes it easier for people to concentrate on their assigned tasks, ie not rushing to get things done so that they can do something else. This also relates to downtime, you will be on the job until your superior releases you so there in no reason to rush. Which reduces the chances for error as well. The reason the entire flight deck does a fod walk, is precisely because people make mistakes. If you watch them do the walk you'll notice the same area is covered by multiple people.

So perfect is far from the way things are, the thing is that by reducing scope and having checks and double checks the hope is that major blunders are caught, but they aren't always caught. Also pressure on cables, etc are not precise there is lots of room for error, maybe not a 98% margin of error, but there is flexibility. Having a centralized command, training, and lots of time doing the same thing over and over may make it seem perfect from an outsider's view, but you could say the same thing watching any busy city intersection, hundreds of drivers working together flawlessly.

Anyway, just wanted to emphasize that things aren't done perfectly, they are structured to be safe even with errors. The problem with thinking that people are doing things perfectly, when a problem happens you start looking for who screwed up instead of why the problem arose. Which ends up being blaming someone rather than fixing the problem so that it doesn't happen again.

Re:carriers are people too

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not as perfect as you think... Topside you may be dead if you f' up, so the margin for error is smaller. Below also deck has its tales though, if none of the glory...

I remember having JP-5 getting in the potable once. (How does one not tell dark purple connections from light blue? And how the hell did that valve line-up happen?) Mungy taste, and an effect of taking a little ex-lax for about 4 days. Not squirts, but more "regular" than usual. Whoever did it had to be a purple shirt, because nobody in engineering touches potable except M-div's Aux or Oil & Water lab guys.

Then there's always a FUBAR situation with unreps, because for some reason supply and weps officers can't shift loading schedules enough to keep out of each other's way. Plus the elevators for perishable stores rarely worked. E-5 or below often got shit-on-a-stick with that kind of deal. You just got off of 6 hours watch? Oh, you've got an unrep. And after that? Uniform inspection during the next muster.

Some guy on watch would see fireworms going nuts on plankton at 3AM (bioluminescent sea-life, go figure?), and suddenly there'd be a man-overboard called. One would think it would be possible to tell reddish-orange randomly blinky lights underwater from the bright white strobe on a lifejacket.

Some guy forgot to put a chock down? Only thing keeping that F-14 out of the drink during a turn-n-churn was one of the cables on the elevator catching its tail. Glad I wasn't in the hangar bay then, but I did witness the cleanup effort.

There was also the midnight shitter... Dunno who it was, but somebody thought it was crafty and ingenious to paint the stall walls in the head brown at times. I wouldn't be surprised if it was some chief with a mile wide trolling streak. It really sucked if you had berthing detail. Then occasionally HT guys couldn't keep things together and you had closed heads... (Bad enough that some toilets had a splash-back issue when not backing up.) Ate something a little to disagreeable? Now you have to hike it to the other end of the ship...

Then of course working at 03-158-2-L, you learn that the COSAL is definitely quite a piece of work. A real archivist's treasure. On the mechanical side, the ship has more in common with WWII era ships than any other ship in the nuclear fleet. Also you'd have things like a dozen different valves on the index when they all served practically the same purpose. Some of it was QA specs, but others just got re-indexed because of different manufacturers being available during a yard period.

There were also a lot of things that could have been automated, but weren't. The one upside is that Enterprise I remembered was pretty much invulnerable to any kind of attack that would target SCADA. However it had other weaknesses, that were much more mundane. I think sailing into kelp fields was one of them. Eight reactors need a lot of cooling, figure out the rest.

Shipyard periods were quite fun too. 10 stories down to concrete. What blocked entry to a sponson with a bottom cut out? Painter's tape. Glad I set down what I was carrying and looked. Keeping yardies from walking on freshly laid PRC (some type of vinyl-epoxy stuff) on the decks also had its challenges. New deck finally sets... Oh now there's welding in the same space or a space adjacent. Nice that whoever was in charge of resurfacing the flooring didn't check what else was being done first. Also they're not kidding about keeping your "head-on-a-swivel" at the yards, I've seen how the crane-operators operate. Some of the fork-lift guys were a little dodgy too.

I think one thing they need to do is get Discovery Channel on board and have Mike Rowe do an entire Dirty Jobs episode on the ship. He could be kept busy every day of the week and then some. Unfortunately I don't think the O-side would ever go for it though, even though it would best show the reality of what makes a carrier actually work.

Despite all the hard work, and boredom, and danger, there were a lot of fun times too. Liberty c

Inevitable

[Vladius]

It's time for the "Big E" to go. As a former carrier sailor I can attest to this. Lately this ship has been spending spends just as much time or possible more in the yard after every cruise. The time in the yard has been incrementally longer and longer as it's gotten older. As much of a rustbucket as the Enterprise was it was a lot more dependable than the Kitty Hawk and the JFK (thankfully both decommissioned).

Re:Inevitable

[Z00L00K]

And this leaves room for a new Enterprise. The name will survive even though the shell bearing it will pass on.

Re:Inevitable

[bigredpaul]

Yes, the current Enterprise is the seventh US Navy ship bearing that name. I was stationed aboard her for three years from 1988 - 1991 and have very fond memories of my time aboard.

Retrofit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yamato style retro-fit for the Enterprise. She'll be space-worthy in no time.

Re:Retrofit!

[Erbo]

Wave Motion Gun, FIRE!!!

Re:Retrofit!

[master_p]

Are you a Star Blazers fan? I am. Are you also a Star Trek fan?

Do you remember the episode "best of both worlds" from TNG? they used the deflector dish as a giant beam weapon, much like the Wave Motion Gun. The deflector dish was unusable for some period of time after the firing, just like the Wave Motion Gun!

I could almost hear Riker give the order: 'NINE...EIGHT...SEVEN...SIX...FIVE...FOUR...THREE...TWO...ONE...ZERO...WAVE MOTION GUN, FIRE!'

Overtook

[Gonoff]

I take it you mean in the amount of money spent on it. No argument there.

Asbestos Kills

[drainbramage]

The plans called for the steel beams to be wrapped in asbestos.
By the time construction was in prgogree the use of asbestos was banned.
Blow on insulation was used.
Much of the blow on insulation got blowed off, the rest did not have the properties required to portect the structure from a prologed exposure to fire.

Re:Asbestos Kills

[styrotech]

Not to mention that unprotected steel is probably one of the worst performing mainstream construction materials in a fire. Its thermal expansion will badly warp and buckle members before the heat has had much of a chance to make them go soft yet. Even timber usually does much better.

Of course at 100 storeys, there aren't really any other materials that will work structurally. You just have to use whatever protection you can and hope that you don't get a large prolonged fire fuelled by an awful lot of kerosene combined with serious structural damage (which is usually outside most design parameters and building codes).

Crew Member 89-93

[N8F8]

I was a Nuke MM aboard the Enterprise from 1989-1993 and worked aboard during it's last nuclear overhaul. This ship is certainly old and was basically a prototype for the Nimitz Class carriers but remember that this ship is more capable than anything any other country in the world right now can forward deploy. Look it up.

Fair Winds and Following Seas.

Re:Crew Member 89-93

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering that of the floating carriers in the world, eleven are US, and the largest of the others are the Russian Kuznetsov and the French Charles De Gaulle, which together add up to roughly the same as the Enterprise, it's not exactly saying much. You might be able to argue that it is more capable than anything EVERY country in the world right now can forward deploy. I'm sure the US LHD's could probably duke it out with the others in the world, if their loadout was set for such operations.

Woosh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Woosh!

and Tonkin Gulf. and the WMDs

[decora]

thank god we stopped the Spanish Crown from invading South Vietnam with Nuclear Weapons.

 

Re:and Tonkin Gulf. and the WMDs

[Eponymous Hero]

so then a fishing boat is going to take out the enterprise?

we are trying to prevent war with Iran

[decora]

just like we tried to prevent war with Spain, with Vietnam, and with Iraq.

i do not see how that falls into the same category as "9/11 truthers". the Maine explosion was a lie, the Tonkin Gulf was a lie, and the WMDs were lies. The government has a history of lying. Here are some examples, written by non-conspiracy-theorist journalists

Puzzle Palace, by James Bamford
Body of Secrets, by James Bamford
The Shadow Factory, by James Bamford
State of War, James Risen
Burn Before Reading, Stansfield Turner
The Black Banners, Ali Soufan
The Asylum, Leah McGrath Goodman
The Pentagon Papers, by the Department of Defense

Also visit the FOIA sites at the CIA and the FBI.

Machinist? what is this Machinist you speak of?

[decora]

last i heard, we had outsourced all of that stuff to China. you know, capitalism and all that.

Re:Machinist? what is this Machinist you speak of?

[dbIII]

It's not machinist, it's machiner.
There's still the skills but in unexpected places. A skilled machiner can be found for instance making things like whistles to copy the mating calls of ducks.
We can get the manufacturing industry back on track. All we need is a good duck sex machiner.

most scrapping happens in India

[decora]

on a beach where they say 'another day, another death'.

but hey, at least none of those 'liberal environmental nazis' or 'commie labor unions' are there to complain about the free market, am i right?

Good point

[slashmydots]

I guess it stands as proof that even ancient nuclear technology can be operated safely when maintained with proper care and safety standards. The typical "oh whatever, we just need to be profitable" attitude in Asian countries like Japan leads to accidents that never should have happened. That and "oh, just use lead paint for the toys, it's cheaper." But the US military is even more strict than the US business/industrial world. Their manuals are so thick and the training and expectations for work so to the letter, it proves nuclear power is as safe as the maintainers make it. A coal plant can explode just as easily. The only difference is nuclear material is a lot more destructive and dangerous in the long term.
P.S. Tooooootally blew my mind the hell up cuz I was watching Star Trek TNG on Netflix on monitor 2 while reading that headline :-P I was like, "BULLSHIT! It's only season 3!"

Re:Good point

[master_p]

You are so correct. Nuclear energy is as safe as you make it to be.

Sadly, the case of how the military treats safety reveals a very thorny problem with the private sector: while the military, i.e. the public sector, has the highest standards of safety, regardless of the cost, the private sector has the same level of safety only if it is profitable enough.

The situation in Japan was created because a private company did not think a tsunami would ever hit those reactors. They were warned by the government that they should take stronger safety measures because Japan frequently has bigger than 7 Richter earthquakes, but the company chose to do nothing.

This kind of problem would never happen to the military, because they put safety above profits. Or profits brought by the safety over profits by ignoring safety.

HMS Victory was Lord Nelson's flagship, of course.

[bdwoolman]

Brushed up on her provenience thanks to your post. The history of this ship is amazing. Great shout, Malc.

yay..

[Anonymous Coward]

"Its final deployment will take it to the Middle East and last for seven months."

hmm, Iran and the straight of Hormuz by any chance??

I should add

[dbIII]

The quality of the steel isn't really the issue when the design requirements are exceeded by running a large aircraft full of fuel into it. The stuff was chosen to be strong at room temperature and not red hot and carrying more weight than normal anyway.

Re:HMS Victory was Lord Nelson's flagship, of cour

[Malc]

You're welcome. It was actually meant a little tongue-in-cheek :). But yes, a pretty important part of British history. If you wish to read more, I recommend Sieze the Fire. You'll be truly amazed that she could still float after the Battle of Trafalgar. At the time, it seems the core strategy of naval warfare was to pump as many canon balls as possible through the other ships to obliterate the other crew in some primitive form of the maritime equivalent of trench warfare.

lol

[shiftless]

Won't it be ironic if it turns out to be actually true?

False dichotomy

[shiftless]

You're talking about the same type of people who really believe the planes that hit the World Trade Center didn't hit the World Trade Center, or if they hit the World Trade Center they didn't have people on them, or if they had people on them they were controlled by robotic pods.

I believe the 9/11 conspiracy theorists are misled, and many of the ideas emerging from that group have been nuts. I don't however discount the possibility that our government may have been aware of the attack and let it happen anyway. Yes, there are many actors in various agencies cold and cruel and greedy/selfish enough to do that.

I also believe that an Enterprise false flag attack could be a possibility. Based on all I've seen and experienced, especially over the past few years, and what I know about the state of the world and our government, and the depths they are willing to resort to in order to maintain the current system, in the odds of possible worldwide economic collapse, riots, and war?

It does not at all shock me to think such a thing could happen. It would not at all surprise me if it were to happen.

The assholes in our government most certainly would benefit from a "Pearl Harbor" type moment to rile everyone up and anger them against Iran, since nobody is at all eager right now to enter into yet another Middle East war.

For good reason: because when we do, this time we are going to get our asses STOMPED.

How does this viewpoint fit into your black and white picture of the world?

No big deal

[shiftless]

When you look at the bigger picture, maybe it's not so bad. Its our brains which let us see this type of catastrophe coming a mile away while the moronic masses are led cheering on to their fiery death in a nuclear holocaust. Take your ass away from the major cities and the military hot spots and find a nice quiet hideout in a small town near natural resources. Not saying today--there's still time to see if things are going to turn around, or if we really are on a course for disaster. I'm not worried. Nobody is going to nuke my town and I've got enough Fallout 3 (and Air Force) experience to survive whatever comes. When all the morons finish nuking themselves into oblivion, that'll leave much more room and oil for MY descendents to spread out and get comfy. Well, at least after the molten slag cools to the touch.

Re:No big deal

[AngryDeuce]

I am far less concerned about a nuclear attack than I am about economic collapse. The former is a long shot at best, very few countries on this earth would tolerate a nuclear attack by anyone against anyone, and would likely unite against the attacker at a level not seen since WWII. I think the vast majority of the world is just too sane to tolerate that shit...

Economic collapse, though, I think is inevitable at this point, so your advice to "Take your ass away from the major cities and the military hot spots and find a nice quiet hideout in a small town near natural resources." is still quite sound. We're not going to have to worry about Chinese or Iranians, we're going to have to worry about bands of criminals, and the major cities are going to be war zones as local gangs openly fight each other in the streets and police (many of which live in the suburbs, and thus have no connection whatsoever with the neighborhoods they're charged with patrolling) are going to vanish the second the paychecks stop coming. Same thing with the military; I have a lot of active duty and retired military in my family and during the last budget showdown and potential government shutdown, when they weren't sure if that month's paychecks for the military were going to go out, pretty much everyone was of the same mindset, "Until I get paid, I'm not doing shit." When the shit hits the fan (and it's gonna), we're gonna be on our own, every man for himself.

Which is why I've started preparing for that eventuality, by stocking up on food, supplies, and most importantly, means of defending ourselves. Some people call me crazy and say I'm treading into Ted Kacynski "move into the mountains and write a manifesto" territory, but there are a hell of a lot less than there used to be a year ago. We're not going to be victims in this house...

Re:No big deal

[tehcyder]

And above all, remember to stock up on tinfoil. Once the apocalypse comes, those scary voices in your head are only going to get louder. The last thing you want is to run out of hat liners

Re:No big deal

[shiftless]

..." he laughs to himself, smirking as he clicks Submit and takes another swig of Mountain Dew.

Tell me, LITTLE man....you aren't from one of those big cities he's talking about are you? I sure hope not, cause your bitch ass ain't gonna last too long when the all-too-likely nightmare scenario he presented actually starts playing out. You'll find out that stupidity HURTS, either now or eventually, each and every time.

USS Texas

[FairAndHateful]

Going to the scrapyard can be avoided if interested parties take enough interest. It can be done, but it's not free.

I've visited the ship, and it's a mixed bag, but you're allowed an unguided tour with no time limits for 10 bucks? No complaints.

Stating the bleedin' obvious.

[Anonymous Coward]

> replacement parts often have to be custom made

Nix scheisse Sherlock ! If it doesn't grow on a tree then OBVIOUSLY somebody, somewhere has to make it.

I was almost stationed on the enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

People in the US Navy are either "surface" or "submarine" sailors. There is no one person or position, officers or enlisted that routinely serves on both, some people can switch at some point but that would be an exception. Even the cooks are designated either surface or sub and serve all of their sea going time on one or the other but never both. I am not downplaying the importanc or duties of a cook, just an example to show that even duties most people think that would be interchangable are not. These two "parts" of the Navy are totally different from the top down.
That being said...
When our class graduated the final nuclear power school, most were getting orders to the Enterprise which I believe was getting close to ending a major upgrade and about to become operational again, even the people that volunteered for submarines were going there instead. My wife just had a baby and I was put on hold. Six weeks later, I was transfered to submarine insead. I was lucky and was able to avoid a ship.

They should sink it.

[Anonymous Coward]

They should sink it.

Then in a hundred years when there's an alien invasion, and the Earth Defence force is all out of ships, they can rebuild it using alien technology.

It's a little known fact that....

[Anonymous Coward]

....the oldest commissioned US warship is the USS Constitution. "Old Ironsides" was commissioned in 1797.

Save the Enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

The U.S. S. Enterprise is a piecve of history, she should be saved.

If we as a nation can afford to take over private business (G.M., Chrysler, etc) prop up banks, Solar Energy companies, and Wind Turbine makers, then why are we letting them "scrap" a piece of naval history.

As the "first Nuclear Carrier" the Enterprise is something to save, not something to be given cut rate to our Chinese financiers for scrap.

This is a tragic farce, and likely another Obamanistic Strike at the Military.

Jim Noord

Museum it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would they just scrap such a historical "nuclear wessel" ??? It would make a great museum! Put it along side the USS Midway in San Diego!

Star Trek

[blumpy]

Came for the Star Trek jokes, got nothing...

Re:That's odd - NOT!

[quarkscat]

Consider for a minute the number of USA state-sponsored false-flag attacks, sometimes characterized as terrorism, that have occurred or were planned in the past 100+ years:

(1) USS Maine in Havana Harbor: faulty design, rather than a Spanish "mine" -- Spanish-American War

(2) Lusitania Sinking: American passengers aboard a liner packed to the gills with munitions -- US entry into WW-1

(3) Pearl Harbor, HI: total economic embargo of Japan & asset seizure & outdated naval ships left vulnerable -- US entry into WW-2

(4) Operation Gladio: false-flag terrorism in Europe after WW-2 -- installation of right-wing governments in Greece, Italy, etc.

(5) Operation Northwoods: (planned, not carried out): "student-filled" aircraft "shot down" over Cuba -- 2nd Bay of Pigs Invasion

(6) JFK Assassination: No SS protection, no Army G3 on streets, pristine "magic bullet" that wounds 2 people -- US regime change

(7) Gulf of Tonkin "Incident": N Vietnamese gunboats "attack" US 5th Fleet -- US enters Vietnam Civil War, not "Falling Domino"

(8) RFK Assassination: lone gunman "kills" candidate with wrong caliber pistol from back, not front -- eliminates political opposition

(9) Waco, TX: Branch Davidians assaulted & burned-out by over-aggressive FBI -- beginning of Police State legislation

(10) First WTC Towers Bombing: Thorough FBI involvement in attack planning, funding, arming -- set-up of fabled Moslem enemies

(11) OKC Bombing: Bomb damage far in excess of 1 ANFO truck bomb & multiple bombs -- ramp-up of Police State legislation

(12) 9/11/2001: inept "terrorists" coordinated w/ NORAD "drills" & WTC 1/2/7 drop at free-fall speed into own footprint -- Iraq War

(13) Anthrax Letters: weapons-grade anthrax genetically ID'ed as USA military strain -- blamed on Saddam, USA PATRIOT Act

(14) Numerous "failed attempt" domestic terror "attacks": FBI infiltrated, subverted, suborned "terror cells" -- rise of Police State

It is no longer a matter of wild speculation that the USA government itself is & has been deeply involved in self-inflicted "terrorist attacks" to alter & sway public opinion in favor of an increasingly tyrannical Police State. And just as the Twin Towers were a depreciated property with tremendous looming asbestos clean-up, the USS Enterprise is scheduled for dismantling & disposal of 8 nuclear reactor cores with a final cost of over $2 Billion USD. How naive can the American People (& world-wide spectators) possibly be if state-sponsored false-flag terrorism is not considered regarding this decrepit aircraft carrier, when "justification" for a new war, this time against Iran, is involved?
 

Another dumbass Mensa member

[Anonymous Coward]

You are yet another stupid fucker bragging about his IQ.

First off you stupid fuck, IQ only shows that you're good at taking IQ tests, the biggest fucking idiots I know are members of Mensa. Oh yes, Mesa is just a club for idiots who are good at taking IQ tests.

Just as an example your Mensa investment club is world renown for being completely incompetent, and has been knows as such since the 1990s. So perhaps you dumb fucks should actually start listening to experts, like engineers and investment brokers, you might actually gain some useful knowledge instead of sitting around solving irrelevant puzzles.

NO wrong

[Falconhell]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_30