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by anshumankmr 1318 days ago
>the pilot depressurizes the cabin, turns off transponders, turns around to avoid civilian radar

wtf... Why is there a way for one person to depressurise the cabin?

3 comments

Because if you can't trust the pilot you're fucked anyway?
Wait till you find out what they can do with the little steering wheel like thing and the other levers in front of them!
Can be used to clear the cabin of smoke in the event of a fire.
Or in case of overpressure, which can be just as bad.
You sure about that?

Humans regularly work at 30x atmospheric pressure and can probably go to 100x

https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/32640/what-is-the-...

I don't think airplane hulls are designed for more than 1 Atm of pressure differential between cabin and the outside; according to the wikipedia article [0] on cabin pressurization normal values are between 540 and 690 hPa pressure differential are normal.

If the cabin has an overpressure event, the hull might pop like a balloon, leading to a decompression event.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_pressurization

Exactly. The humans aren't the problem, it's the plane itself.
These seem to talk mostly about diving, where you breathe from a regulated air supply. I assume that air supply is not at 30-100x atmospheric pressure?
If the air supply wouldn't be at a slightly higher pressure than that, the air would get sucked out of your lungs as far as I understand.

This is why dive tanks run out way way faster the deeper you go (around 1 hour at 18 meters deep and around 10 minutes at 30+ meters out the top of my head).

Air supply is at that pressure, but they don't breathe the same mix as atmospheric air. Atmospheric air becomes narcotic at 4 atmospheres.
The air is at that pressure, as is the surrounding water pressure on the human body.

We are remarkably good at handling higher pressures.