Submitted by hobbitlover t3_12337br in askscience
kompootor t1_jdu1n6t wrote
For a spacecraft pressurized at 1 atmosphere, a puncture would cause the nearby air (and anything that it can blow with it) to move surprisingly slowly and gently compared to what's depicted in Hollywood. The correct speed of a fluid being sucked out into space is depicted in season 1 of The Expanse (nsfw gory clip). You can do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of this pretty easily (I forget the exact number) and you'll find that the flow of air is being sucked out is the same regardless of the size of the hole (for a puncture larger than a pinhole and smaller than the entire wall).
Also, the force felt from the vacuum is highest near the puncture -- it's a pressure gradient that quickly feels negligible as one moves inward into the ship -- i.e., as more of the ship's air lies between you and the puncture.
So if you're ever in hand-to-hand combat with a vicious alien xenomorph queen, about to be ripped to shreds, and your last hope is to release the air lock... then it was nice knowing you.
[I'm being exceptionally lazy with this comment -- mixing different quantities in the same description, not bothering to look up further reading for you, etc. -- probably because I know the calculation's somewhere in my notes from the past couple years but I can't find it offhand. At the end of the day though, until I either show the math or show other sources, it all just looks bad.]
Hugh_Mann123 t1_jdujkj4 wrote
>So if you're ever in hand-to-hand combat with a vicious alien xenomorph queen, about to be ripped to shreds, and your last hope is to release the air lock... then it was nice knowing you.
Damn
If blowing the airlock isn't going to work, how do you actually deal with this scenario?
[deleted] t1_jdup8kr wrote
[removed]
El_Sephiroth t1_jduqyu4 wrote
The expanse is awesomely accurate about spacetravels. A lot of great things in that show.
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