----- Original Message -----
From: "Met History" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, May 03, 2002 12:48 PM
Subject: Nova show on WTC


> In a message dated 05/03/2002 12:23:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> > Mr. Robertson is blameless in my book- he fulfilled his contract and
created
> > a functional space in the real world..  DD
>
> Well, ditto, Drew -- but I would like to be spared the sanctimonious
stuff
> about how swell the buildings were, and performed.   The Trade Center
was a
> shitty structure built in a shitty time - no?  So we got what we paid
for -
> which was just fine, except for September 11th.  Leslie Robertson had
the
> double misfortune of having a disaster (not an unforeseen disaster -
he
> foresaw it by predicting it could withstand the crash of a 707,
although he
> does now say he didn't think about the fuel load) destroy his
signature
> project, and then having the project far more intensively scrutinized
than
> any other structure ever has been.
>
> Christopher

Drew also wrote:

>> Actually there was a better way- which is concrete encasement-
>> which is expensive in terms of money- which is how we keep score.

As the Devil's advocate, I will say that there are people out there who
believe that on 9/11 America got EXACTLY what it's paid for, from a
foreign policy standpoint, but we'll leave that alone for now. (Money
and priorities -- but I don't think that's what Drew meant about
"keeping score".)

OK, so now my next question is, could the buildings have been as tall as
they were if they'd been constructed more sturdily?  I was left with the
impression after the show that, no, in order to physically be that tall,
they had to be lightweight, both because of gravity, and because of wind
load  (compression and shear/torsion, right?)  If the heavier components
and design were used, could the buildings have actually physically been
that tall? (if money were no object..)

But early in the show, there was one brief mention that the reason the
structure did not contain more columns was because the owner wanted to
maximize rentable floor space....

So there's another question:  was it just naked greed on management's
part -- wanting more floor space than they actually needed to return a
reasonable profit, and demanding the elimination of additional columns
and materials--
or would it not have made good economic sense to even a reasonable
person to put more money into a taller or more stout building (ie,
heavier, and more, columns, concrete encased members, etc), because you
could not produce enough floor space to generate enough income to make
it a good (and just) value for the shareholders, whoever they are/were?

Keep in mind that this was before the digital revolution, back when we
had just gotten hand-held calculators and stuff, and there was no email,
no faxing -- just teletype and telephones and FM/TV, so it made economic
sense, from the standpoint of "time and geography", as my dad used to
say, to have lots of people jammed into close proximity on one little
island, centralized, to do business. Knowlege is power is money, and
back then, knowlege was communicated physically from person to person
mostly on pieces of paper, not electronically from machine to machine,
as it is now.


Regarding the design process:  I'm remember reading, but even after
searching not only the corners of my spleen, but all over everywhere
else too, can't remember where, that the reason the fuel load was not
factored in originally, was because the engineers on the design team
made the assumption that an aircraft striking the buildings would do so
accidentally.  The scenario was not that of a fully-fueled aircraft that
had just taken off, but that of one lost, or off-track in adverse
visibility conditions coming in to land at LaG or Kennedy, with very
little fuel on board after completing its flight. I did not hear that
mentioned during the program.

I think Leslie Robertson's biggest misfortune was being there, in his
office with a view of the buildings, on 9/11 to watch the whole thing,
in person, live, helplessly. It seemed obvious to me that he feels
personally responsible for the failure of the structures, and the deaths
of the victims not killed by the initial incidents. A lesser man might
have already committed suicide in this situation -- or moved his office
somewhere else at the very least. He struck me as a person in purgatory,
relentlessly determined to suffer his penance without absolution.

deb

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