Ok, first off, what the hell is a 90-degree crosswind? For bike aerodynamics we use yaw angles, which we get from trigonometry -- resolving the vectors of bike and wind speed and direction. If you play with the permutations, a wind hitting the side of your bike at 90 degrees isn't a condition you need to worry about much -- unless you like to stand perfectly still during races.
IIRC, Kraig Willett of BikeTechReview.com once sawed a spoke off a tri-spoke and tested it. I believe there's some video of him riding it.
There has been a long debate about whether a bike hangs from the spokes at the top of the wheel or rests on the spokes on the bottom. Nobody has ever made a case for the bike being suspended between the spokes horizontally.
Somehow this makes me think of the old Spinergy Rev-X wheels:
http://pardo.net/bike/pic/fail-020/
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