Re: Cause this isn't Star Wars...

Sean O'Hara <seanohara@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in news:5kt7huF5bg0lU1
@mid.individual.net:

In the Year of the Golden Pig, the Great and Powerful DougL declared:
Suzanne Blom wrote:

Hull breach alarm. Wind. Yelling & screaming.

Not wind so much as minor breaze. At a guess your vacuum probably has
more suction than a bullet sized hole.


Has anyone ever simulated a pressure leak in space? I know the
Mythbusters experimented with bullet holes on airplanes and
concluded that movie-style explosive decompression doesn't occur,
but they did it at sea-level with the cabin pressurized to simulate
the pressure differential at 40,000 feet. I'm not sure if having
vacuum on the outside would make any difference.

Geoff Landis says, at
http://www.sff.net/people/Geoffrey.Landis/vacuum.html (scroll about 3/4
of the way down),

GL:: For a fast estimate, you can assume that the air exiting through
GL:: the hole will travel at the speed of sound. Since the atmosphere
GL:: drops in pressure as it moves through the hole, the effective
GL:: rate at which the atmosphere leaves is at about 60% of the speed
GL:: of sound, or about 200 meters/second for room-temperaure air

and

GL:: This gives you a quick rule of thumb, the one-one-ten-hundred
GL:: rule: A one square-centimeter hole in a one cubic-meter volume
GL:: will cause the pressure to drop by a factor of ten in roughly
GL:: a hundred seconds.
GL:: (for quick approximations; only roughly accurate). This time
GL:: scales up proportionately to the volume, and scales down
GL:: proportionately to the size of the hole. So, for example, a
GL:: three-thousand cubic meter volume will decompress from
GL:: 1 atmosphere to .01 atmosphere through a ten square centimeter
GL:: hole on a time scale of a sixty thousand seconds, or seventeen
GL:: hours. (it's actually 19 hours by a more accurate calculation).

Of course, that still doesn't describe how the process actually looks and
feels; you would have to work out those details.

--
My screen name, sent to gmail, is a valid email address.
.

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