The kinetic energy and weight of the plane enormous though it was, was not the deciding factor in the destruction of the buildings. Fire was. The buildings withstood the strain of the crash quite well. But they burnt to structural collapse in only one hour in one building and 1/2 hour in the other. The fuel load was large, as large as you could ever deliver to such a building. The height of collision was optimal for complete destruction. However, if large water tanks for cooling fires had been implemented in construction, the fire could have been abated. This was known in all large buildings. But architects balked at constructing them with sufficient strength and space. Rent, rent, rent. Damn the lives, save dollars first.
Even high capacity redundant pumps through stand pipes could have been turned to focus on the fire and abated it. If the structure had been Chrysotile coated steel beam, baked on, the health hazard would be vanishingly small and the protection would have lasted for 4 hours or more, enough to let the fire burn out or be water doused to a safe margin.
Few people realize, as I have stated before that long fibre Serpentine Chrysotile asbestos is not a health hazard, especially when it is sealed into a product and buried in a building away from ventilation. By itself, the long fibre product does not entrain itself permamently in the lung and therefore cannot cause asbestosis. Agencies have confused the long fibre with Crocodilite or short fibre blue asbestos that is associated with asbestosis. Even this short fibre product was milled, mined and manufactured with few dust controls that today we could implement with ease.
It has been demonstrated that an enclosed wet plant that bound the Crocidolite to a base would in fact be no more hazardous to workers or end users than any other rock product, fibreglass wool insulation included. But in the rush to judgement, since the astonishingly bad dust control practices of the 19th century having been allowed to proliferate into the 20th, the statistics from these uncontrolled practices were allowed to colour our thinking. Chrysotile coated steel beams would not have cause a WTC rat indigestion, and several thousand people would be alive today.
For my money you could have shortened the towers by 50 stories, made the top two stories water tank, and had truly usable asbestos and thick-steel-door-protected fire escapes to add some margin to that estimation. (If the doors had been 1/4 inch polished reflective plate steel with asbestos coated interiors and lay against a high flange to prevent fuel materials from exiting the main structure, the fire escapes may not have been blocked. It has long been known that asbestos posed some calcualable risk. The reason they used it, is that it is the only thing that prevents burn-through and gives you exit time. There is no other comparable material you can trust your life to.)
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