Just joined and as a NYC transplant to California, LOVE following the progress of 1WTC. Thanks everyone for the pictures! So amazing to get the skyline back.
You know, the banter about the spire is so interesting and makes me reflect on my childhood. When the WTC was completed, my parents took us kids down to the "fill" (what is now Battery Park City) circa 1972-ish. It was really just a huge field of dirt and sand and we had a BBQ. I'll never forget people complaining about the towers. Non-stop. "They don't match Manhattan"... "The most boring slab-sided buildings ever erected"... "They ruin NYC". On and on and on. Then, a few years later when they put the antenna on the north tower, people went berserk. Now, 40 years later, I bet all those folks miss the twin towers as much as I do... antenna and all.
As an engineer, I can tell you, I can't see HOW the radome could have possibly been maintained/repaired. I know many doubt the explanation by the builders but I have to say, it would have been impossible to clean/maintain/repair that multi-panel covering without erecting scaffolding or installing some kind of permanent "kangaroo crane". The other option would have been to affix the panels on the interior of a skeleton but that would present even greater challenges.
It's difficult to see it now, but believe me, once the temporary platforms are removed... and the cranes vanish... the design pattern from a distance (which is the view EVEYRYONE will see... not the close-ups posted here) will not look transparent... it will appear solid and actually resemble the original radome pattern... particularly since most people will be looking UP at the spire, not directly into it at close range.
The current design actually resembles the AT&T building antennas in SoHo... transparent and clunky zoomed in... but solid and patterned from afar:
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I try to visit the forums almost daily, so that must of been one of the days I missed about that topic! 
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