Re: Explosive decompression - how fast?

On Apr 27, 12:20=A0pm, Michael Ash <m...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> I'm not sure what news blurbs you're referring to.

Actually, I was referring to a direct statement from you in an earlier
post, which I assumed you had gotten from some media outlet. My point
was given the inexact nature of the statements, there is very little
to base this discussion on. For example, even the "fluid hammer"
theory should be very easy to prove, based on the sequence of events
observed during the break-up... but observer reports are notoriously a
poor way to determine things under these conditions.

> Here is a direct quote from the NTSB report:
>
> "This was a survivable accident; the fatality was the result of the
> explosive nature of the decompression. The flight attendant was swept
> violently from the airplane and passed through an opening of jagged
> metal."

Thank you for the direct quote (and the source - you're right, I
hadn't found that). I don't think the NTSB "got it wrong", as much as
"it didn't matter". They did not say, for instance, if it was
internally-produced turbulence, or shock-front acceleration, or non-
compressible fluid flow resulting from the pressure differential set
up due to the difference in pressure between the uniform internal
atmosphere and the external pressure. And those are the sort of
differences we're discussing here. They simply say "was swept" - not
what did the sweeping, or what the proposed forces and accelerations
were.

*Especially* since the original example explicitly postulated an
external environment that is at a vacuum.

> As for the bit about being thrown to the floor, humans tend to fall down
> when experiencing significant unexpected lateral accelerations.

My point was that in a single sentence you mentioned one being sucked
up and one being thrown down... and then used this as a starting point
to assume the airflow due to the pressure differential was
responsible. That construction immediately calls into question how the
second person "fell down", if explosive decompression was so critical.

--
Brian Davis