Physical and mathematical analysis of Pentagon crash
by Gerard Holmgren

PART 6. FUEL LOAD ANALYSIS

The previous analysis examined the question of whether it was possible for the plane to have been cremated in the context of the damage to the Pentagon wall. It was shown not to be. But is such a cremation possible anyway, in any situation? The only available source of energy is the plane's fuel.

Jet fuel burns at 800 degrees C. Aluminium, from which a large part of a plane is constructed, melts at 660 degrees C.
http://www.kitco.com/jewelry/meltingpoints.html

During the aluminium recycling process, it is heated to 700 degrees C, and then poured into moulds.
http://203.202.189.6/waste_stop/act_09.htm

So it is possible in theory for burning jet fuel to melt aluminium, although this is not the same as cremating it. Whether it's possible in practice depends upon the ratio of fuel to aluminium and how efficiently it is applied.

One look at the shape of an aircraft tells us that it's a very difficult shape to efficiently apply such energy to. Long and thin one way, crossed at 90 degrees by another section, also long and thin. So if one was to try to melt a 757 by sitting it in a tub of burning jet fuel, the tub would have to be a very specifically designed shape, unless you wanted to waste an awful lot of fuel. No such intelligently designed, controlled and efficient application of fuel can occur in a crash, so even if all of the fuel burned or exploded, only a small proportion of it could have been applied in an efficient manner to the task of melting the plane.

How much fuel was on board? A maximum possible figure can be calculated from the specifications referenced at the beginning of the article. According to the official story, the plane left Dulles, flew about 400 miles to Ohio,and then 300 back to Washington before crashing - about 15.7% of its maximum range. So if it had a full tank on departure, then the most fuel it can have had when it crashed was about 85% of its maximum capacity. This is 9765 gallons. The maximum take off weight of the plane is 255,00 lbs. Let's assume a rounded figure of 200,000 lbs of aluminium and other materials in this plane. I'll call it 180,000 lbs of aluminium.

This is a guess, but not a completely uneducated one. According to

http://www.bath.ac.uk/~en0daar/Materials.htm

about 80% of the structural material of a plane is aluminium, although it doesn't specify whether this is by weight or volume. If we assume that it refers to weight, then if the plane's weight - minus the fuel load was 200,000 lbs at take off, this gives a figure of 160,000 lbs of aluminium. The other significant materials are steel and titanium. (See the above link.) Since both steel and titanium have higher melting points than aluminium,

http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Ti/heat.html

http://www.chemicalelements.com/elements/fe.html

thus increasing the work needing to be done by the burning fuel, a factor which then needs to be offset by such materials as glass and plastic, then assuming the other 40,000 lbs of plane weight to be roughly equivilant to another 20,000 lbs of aluminium in terms of the energy required to melt the plane would appear to give an accurate enough estimation for the analysis which follows.

Such crude approximations are only a problem if the result is marginal, so lets see if it is.

It means that each gallon of fuel, even applied with intelligent efficiency, would have to melt about 18.5 lbs of aluminium. Does this sound possible? Assume a 50% efficiency rate, which would seem extraordinarily generous. The result is the equivalent of half the available fuel being applied with intelligently designed efficiency, and the other half being completely wasted. So the equivalent ratio for the problem is the need for each gallon of fuel being able to melt 37 lbs of aluminium, in a controlled and designed situation.

Let's translate this data into an everyday example. 1 gallon is about the size of the small emergency fuel cans that motorists carry. 1 lb of Aluminium makes about 29 and a half standard soft drink cans.

http://www.westfield-ma.com/tips/aluminium.htm

So 37 lbs of aluminium is about 1090 cans. Can you melt 1090 aluminium cans with a 1 gallon can of kerosine? Let's reduce the alleged cremation of AA 77 to a crude model with a scale about 1 to 10,000. This model is extremely crude, but nowhere as crude as simply saying “The plane burned - end of thought process.” The model doesn't take into account other materials such as glass, plastic, fibreglass, steel, titanium etc. And the scaling is extremely rough. But the only point in exploring this model further would be if it gave any indication that the melting of the aircraft was even remotely possible. Reduce the fuel load to a scale of 1 to 10,000 - about 1 gallon, and then halve it to account for the 50% efficiency. Reduce the weight of the plane to the same scale - about 18 lbs of aluminium. Reduce total cubic volume of the plane by the same scale, in order to keep the same weight to size ratio- and material to air ratio. This means reducing the dimensions to a scale of about 1 to 22. (22 times 22 times 22 = close enough to 10,000.) The result is a fuselage about 7 ft long, about 6 inches wide and about 7 inches high, with a very thin cross section representing the wings, about 5 ft 6 in long. This structure is made from 18 lbs of aluminum - about 530 compressed aluminium cans. To give an idea of the density, each foot of the fuselage would contain about 70 cans worth of metal. Fill a section in the middle with half a gallon of kerosine and set fire to it, and see if you can melt it. Better still, attach a fuse to a small firecracker placed inside, to give the fuel the best chance of going up in one sudden catastrophic explosion, rather than burning slowly, to see if we can not just melt, but actually cremate the model - reduce it to a pile of dust and ashes. It is of course, impossible.

Lets look at the small scale model from a different angle. 1 gallon is about 12 standard soft drink cans. So we need 12 cans worth of kerosine to melt 530 cans. That's about 44 cans to be melted for each full can of kerosine. Expressed another way, take one standard soft drink can, a scew top lid from a cordial botlle, put two lidfuls of kerosine into the can, drop in a match and see if it melts.

1 gallon of kerosine cannot melt 18 lbs of aluminium even in the most efficiently applied, controlled situation one could devise.

And we're only talking about melting, not cremation. Even if this ridiculous scenario was possible, we should see a big block of something approaching 100 tons of melted aluminium somewhere. This would be a little hard to miss, if it was there.

The US government may be the most powerful on Earth, but if it believes that it has invented legislation that changes or suspends the laws of physics, then it needs a reality check. Things can only happen if there is enough energy to drive the process. All such processes are calculable and predictable. If there was insufficient energy for an alleged event, then it never happened. There wasn't enough energy in the fuel load to melt, let alone cremate the plane, which means that it didn't happen.

Once more, the argument is concluded, but for the sake of hard line sceptics, let's move on to another aspect.


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