🚀 go-pugleaf

Merlin Dorfman wrote:
> 
> trebor@sirius.com.no.more (user@example.com) wrote:
> : Merlin Dorfman <dorfman@rahul.net> wrote:
> 
> : >: All this prattle about the danger of puncturing the skin or blowing out a
> : >: window is nonsense.
> : >
> : >     You're wrong, and I can't remotely understand why you want to
> : >deny the danger of explosive decompression.
> 
> : Is the pressure differential great enough to cause explosive
> : decompression? Or would there just be a loud whistling sound as
> : pressures equalized?
> 
>      The point is that the skin of an airliner is very thin
> aluminum alloy (to use anything else would incur a huge
> weight penalty that would degrade performance extensively).
> A bullet would not just make a clean hole .357 inches in
> diameter or whatever; the pressure differential around the
> hole would lead to a much larger rupture.

No, the point was your (now admitted to be bogus) claim of explosive
decompression.  I agree that a bullet would probably not make a "clean
hole" because bullets generally don't (there is some amount of
stretching and heating of the target material before the bullet breaks
through), but how much larger is the hole likely to be?  Assume it to be
twice the cross sectional area of the bullet and redo the math.  You'll
still find that decompression will take a long time.  

I don't believe the pressure differential is likely to affect the size
of the hole by any significant amount; the amount of force on the small
area surrounding the impact is quite small.

And, by the way, even in case of truly explosive decompression (due to
airframe failure) passengers have survived, thanks to access to oxygen
and the flight crew acting to quickly descend to a breathable altitude. 
Decompression is no picnic, but people don't explode or otherwise
instantly die the way they do in movies.  In a desperate situation it
may be a relatively minor concern.

>      I did a quick web search for a report confirming or
> denying that a bullet-size hole would lead to explosive
> decompression, but did not find anything on either side
> that would pass for authoritative.

Then why did you make the bogus claim in the first place?