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That is how pilots would talk, but only if they were idiots and knew nothing about pressurized aircraft!
Yes I do sometimes. I am always in awe at their total lack of standard scientific method!
A few years ago, a slight crack in a door doubler led to a 40x20' section of a hawaii aircraft roof departing the plane. Imagine what a .357 bullet hole would do?
Yes I do sometimes. I am always in awe at their total lack of standard scientific method!
A few years ago, a slight crack in a door doubler led to a 40x20' section of a hawaii aircraft roof departing the plane. Imagine what a .357 bullet hole would do?
Apparently you're not versed in modern aircraft design as well. A bullet hole would have a negligible effect on pressurization.Not many people are versed in modern aircraft design. That said, a bullet hole would not be good. Might not hurt the airframe, but would depressurize.
Not many people are versed in modern aircraft design. That said, a bullet hole would not be good. Might not hurt the airframe, but would depressurize.
...To maintain the pressure in the cabin equal to that at low altitude, even while the airplane is at 30,000 feet, the incoming air is held within the cabin by opening and closing an outflow valve, which releases the incoming air at a rate regulated by pressure sensors. Think of a pressurized cabin as a balloon that has a leak but is being inflated continuously...
Rapid Depressurization
One of the most misunderstood aspects of cabin pressurization is rapid depressurization. Often inappropriately referred to as "explosive decompression", movies have depicted scenes where a single bullet shot through the fuselage has sent people flying about the cabin. It makes for high drama but it is pure nonsense. If you can have a fairly large outflow valve open to the atmosphere, what difference would a small bullet hole make? As long as the bullet hole remains small, the outflow valve can compensate instantly...
A friend of mine was a crew chief on a C5 Galaxy during his time in the Air Force. One of the routine maintenance items he did was to repair holes, cracks, and gaps in the body of the aircraft. To make them easier to spot, he would walk the plane at altitude with a bucket of red rags listening for wind. When he heard it he would toss a rag in the general direction of the sound. The rag would get partially sucked through the hole so when they landed he could spot the holes from the outside by the hanging rags. He would sometimes have dozens of them. It's a wonder he survived.
The problem is that if you are in a pressurized plane (say there is a 5 psi differential between cockpit and ambient air pressure) and you put a bullet thru a plastic window (say it is 2 square feet of plastic), you have just traumatized the plastic while it has 2880 pounds of force on one side of it. If there is a crack that propagates, that window will explosively decompress.
Same for the fuselage of the plane. Lets say the bullet hits the fuselage in a way that starts a crack to propagate. A 5 x 5' piece of aluminum would have 18000 lbs force on one side just itching to peel that aircraft wall away.
The math is pretty impressive.
The only reason C-5's fly is because they're so ugly the ground rejects them.
Kind of like the F117's are the physics example of "If you give a brick enough thrust it will fly"?
UThen, I'm not a areo-engineer, and don't really know for fact, but I play one on tv.