I'm liking your physics, whatsgoingon. Perhaps one of the strongest antidotes to metaphysics is good-old Natural Philosophy, applied with inarguable estimates and simple logic.
Your previous running of the numbers is good, for that parabolic arc. Can I come back to that in a second?
Now, when you're saying....(I am just thinking aloud here)
whatsgoingon wrote:
Energy = mass * height * acceleration_due_gravity
... I also thought of something else, mainly because of simon's inspiring little side-view....if you look at the height of the current-day building facing the 'impact' point (see here
http://g.co/maps/v4gdg) would you agree that this perhaps forces consideration of a notional silo entry angle for the incoming...projectile??
I'm estimating 60m height for 14 storeys (allowing for HVAC and a potential penthouse on top of the 'Starbucks' block), and basing the overall width estimate of the drop-silo upon the log-jam parked width of 6 Gillig Phantom school-buses, since there's usefully one in the current Google maps picture...so that's approximately 14m including the whole far side-walk...(which as we know from movies, are always wide-enough to take buses
). I am being perhaps too kind for the width of the whole of Murray Street....is it tighter?
So tan^-1 (60/14)= 76.8 degrees for 'X' degrees. Or am I wrong with any of the above estimates? But it does seem like an
extremely-steep attack angle.
And this is where I wondered (and where my maths+physics starts to fail)....your parabolic trajectory equation, if it were to be expressed graphically in terms of a cartesian section superimposed onto a scaled cityscape elevation view just taken from Google maps (hey, a bit like a histogram made of NYC skyscrapers), with a Y-axis vertical displacement of your WTC2 80th floor point of 303m, and an X-axis excursion just to the top of the drop silo....is there
any kind of final descent intercept point that could be argued, to defend the supposed ballistics of the fall-of-shot?? My gut feeling is a
no.....but maybe I'm wrong.
Do people see what I'm trying to get at here?? Hey, it's not rocket science (well, actually, it is)