Ok, this is on the matter of actual falling objects; airplanes in fact.
To start with: I am NOT entering the weird world of tin foil hats. I could not care less about what happened. The return of Elvis. Evil gnomes. Alien abductions. AlQaeda, IRA and PLO joint operation or any government cover up. I really really DO NOT CARE.
I am only interested in the physics, ok?
So, with this in mind, I would like to know if anyone here knows of ANY kind of calculation that would make, say TWA800, drop its nose and then continue to climb a few hundred metres (thousands of feet). I have tried different ballistic calculations but can only get the plane up to some tens of metres (about hundred feet actually). Some scenarios I tried:
- Approximating a B747 fuselage shortened with the length of the nose but CoG intact from official documents of a whole 747.
- As above but with different CoG.
- Approximating a B747 without a nose, instead a metal skin at the point of breakup, CoG intact from official documents of a whole 747.
- As above but with different CoG.
In all scenarios I assumed that all four engines after-the-fact were providing equal amounts of climb thrust and constant climb ratio per official documents, although I know that may not be the case depending on what wires may or may not have been severed.
Ballistic calculations are not the best way to approach this case because you have to take into account the various drag forces that would make a noseless plane do strange things, but statistically analyzing my calculations I still can't get the plane to make such an extraordinary trajectory even with significance 5%.
Do anyone here know if that animation of the trajectory after (whatever happened) is based on scientific calculations or if it is just a conjecture based on eyewitnesses statements?
Please, no endless tirades about your preferred theory about what happened. CFT explosion sounds good enough for me. I am just baffled by the trajectory - that is my only concern.