Did anyone see hardball on Monday when Donald Trump was on?  The twit said that the twin towers were built sub-standard and should not have fallen.  He said that the empire state building was hit by a B-52 and did not fall.  He's smokin' crack.  It was a B-25 that hit the empire state building in 1945.  14 died, $1 million in damages.  BIG difference between a B-25 and a B-52.  I emailed Hardball but have not heard anything back.  I wanted to email trump, but getting his email is proving difficult.  Was anyone else as torqued off about this as I was?  [soapbox]

How about Trump's hair?  WTF?  I think you're right, that guy's been smoking crack!

Trump is a fathead, but the Empire State Building probably would not have fallen.  It is constructed in an entirely different manner than the WTC was, by making essentially cubes of structural steel and stacking them on top of and next to each other.  The WTC was a "revolutionary" design intended to give more useful interior space that had the steel form an exterior framework of the building.  Great for most purposes, not-so-great for the impact of loaded jetliners.

If you'll note, the towers [i]survived[/i] the "impact load" of the jetliners.  Nothing sub-standard in their construction at all.  What brought them down was collapse of the structural steel from the heat of the fires.  Which is why the terrorists chose intra-continental flights for their guided missiles -maximum fuel load.  The second tower failed first because the impact was lower, resulting in greater stresses on the steel-beam construction.  

Could the Empire State building survive such a strike?  Probably.  But then if you hit a 2001 Cadillac with a 1950 Cadillac, which one will come out with less damage?