Missles and airliners (was Terrorist...)

["Eric Benson" <e_r_benson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
Benjamin wrote:
>It was not disitigrated on impact from the missile......i din;t say
>that the airliner would not come down from a missile attack, but shooting 
>down a 757 over new york or any other city will simply change where the 
>hundres of thousands of tons of jet crash down.

Yes and no.  Gravity dominates, what goes up must come down - somewhere.  
Breaking the plane up reduces the size of the pieces, hopefully to the point 
where no one piece has the energy required to generate a structural failure. 
  Part of the problem with the WTC is the collateral damage that the 
building collapse caused.  Just an engine, for example, would have been 
unlikely to cause the entire building do collapse.

Aside... if the missles today aren't capable of taking down a civilian 
airliner, what were we planning on using on the horde of Soviet bombers 
coming over the top during the cold war?

-Eric

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