Re: Explosive decompression - how fast?

: Michael Ash <mike@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: They directly state that the loss of the flight attendant was due to the

: explosiveness of the decompression.

Could it not be as in, "it happened too fast for her to react",
rather than a claim that the forces were overwhelmingly large?

And as you pointed out, they didn't say how large the forces, how close
to the opening when she started, etc, etc, etc.  Sure, if there's a
human-sized hole the forces of a human just filling that hole will be
huge.
But that doesn't say much about what happens some distance *from* 
the hole, in either direction.

In the case at hand, the airlock, it seems (depending on how much
distance to the back wall and such) that she might be accelerated
at more than 10 g, but for less than 1/10th second.  So, expelled at
something like 10 m/s, or vaguely something less than 40kph.  And I
could have many any number of errors, but something vaguely like that.
I didn't save John Schilling's post, but iirc (and I may not, but iirc),
it's the same general ballpark if there's 10 meters to the back wall of
the lock.  Not off by more than an order of magnitude in either direction,
I'm thinking.

In the airliner with a hole, the exact characteristics of the hole would
make a *great* deal of difference, and the pressure difference 
is likely to be lower.


Wayne Throop   throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
   http://sheol.org/throopw