Posted on 09/25/2012 9:15:32 AM PDT by pabianice
In its latest edition, we get this from the nitwits at "Scientific American":
" Why Airplane Windows Don't Roll Down
"Were you to open a plane window, the compressed air inside would rapidly rush out, atmospheric conditions inside and outside the plane would equalize, and everybody would die."
I don't know what grammer school kid wrote this for Scientific American, but after I stopped laughing, I had to call it.
"At 35,000 ft. (11,000 m), the typical altitude of a commercial jet, the air pressure drops to less than a quarter of its value at sea level, and the outside temperature drops below negative 60 degrees Fahrenheit (negative 51 degrees Celsius), according to The Engineering Toolbox. Exposed to such conditions, you would quickly die.".
Short answer: NO. For those of us who actually know something about aviation and who may have gone through military flight training, when you lose atmospheric compression, everyone has an enormous fart, your ears hurt, your pen lets lose in your flight suit pocket, there is an instantaneous fogging of the cabin, and it does get very loud and cold but you have time to grab your O2 mask or close the hatch and re-ressurize. You do NOT explode like in a bad sci fi movie, or get sucked out into space like Goldfinger. You do NOT instantly die. You DO have about 25 seconds to put on your mask or make other arrangements. You die only if you work for "Scientific American."
Nitwits.
More evidence SA is not much of an objective digest of science and technology any more. Their first foray into becoming a populist rag was globull warming support.
Now they become even more of a political commentary.
Pitiful.
The collective intelligence of all that have voted for or still support Obuggery is substantially less than a bag of hammers.
SA. Seriously? You should be ashamed to include “scientific” in your title. Do you REALLY believe that Romney is that stupid? Try looking in the mirror. Morons! You don’t understand what he meant? Who’s the mensa genius running your outfit.
Helping keep mankind warm for 65 years. (do you think SA will understand that?) Never mind, probably not.
Er, not to get in the way of a good rant, but I didn’t see anything in the text you highlighted that suggested they were saying you would “die instantly.” They said that if you were exposed to these conditions, you would die quickly (which you would). The oxygen masks exist to make sure that you AREN’T exposed to these conditions for more than a few seconds.
As an ex fighter jock, I confirm that FR readers are a lot more informed than the Scientific Muslim...er...American loons.
I quit getting their joke of a magazine years ago.
That’s true. If the cabin depressurized at 35k, everyone who votes for Obama would sit there passively, O2 masks dangling in front of them, waiting for a government worker to come and help, so yes, they would all die.
about 10 years ago I quick taking SA because of it’s turn away from science to political science. Complete rag sheet
I own an airplane that has a proper roll down window. But, also, many Part 25 Transports have windows that can be opened in flight.
http://www.pprune.org/tech-log/424078-why-open-cockpit-window.html
BTW, he said “Open”, “Roll Down” is incorreclty inferred.
That’s about right.
And I’m sure their last dying thought as they sat there staring at the dangling masks would be “Wah! Romney got more than his fair share of oxygen!”
It would be nice if there was a way, once the plane was not moving, to pop the windows open if there is a fire inside the cabin.
That would help prevent suffocation deaths.
Even a small fire could kill a lot of people in a plane by smoke inhalation, if the fire took out the ventilation.
Of course, the chance of that is very low compared to the risk of having windows that could be forced open, so trade-offs are made. That doesn’t mean we can’t say that it would be nice if you could.
We do have removable windows in the center of the craft, to help people escape onto the wing. SO it’s not a stupid idea. And yes, if someone manages to open one of those in flight, or to open the doors, we would have decompression.
This was actually a hit piece on Romney. He was joking with the press (according to a pool reporter) but SA and its readers assumed he was serious.
Note that the oxygen mask doesn’t prevent ANY of the conditions they mention, EXCEPT for the lack of oxygen.
So apparently, the cold and the lack of pressure aren’t going to kill you very quickly. There is time for the pilot to bring the plane down to a safe altitude, so long as you can keep oxygen to your lungs.
SO I would call their rant “mostly false”.
If Romney called himself “eye candy” or said a terrorist attack was a “bump in the road”, the MSM would crucify him
In their zeal to attack Romney Scientific American used statistics for a “Commercial” airliner. Ann Romney was on a 10 passenger corporate jet (Canadair CL-600 Challenger 601). I’m no scientist but I am pretty sure they are not the same.
Now I can't stand to even look at it.
A shame, really.
The whorenalists are are beclowning themselves all over
One of the scariest things to happen in an airplace is for it to fill with smoke
You cant see your instruments, you can’t see outside the windows, you cant breathe... if it is bad enough you are going to die unless you can normally land a plane with your eyes closed
The oxygen masks are basically for passenger comfort. Passengers can be exposed for two full minutes to complete depressurization. This is from the FAA. They also specify (like they would need to anyway) that this requires an emergency descent.
It’s critical that the flight crew mask up fast. But the passengers can sleep and will wake up fine after the emergency descent.
hee hee... I didnt know about the enormous fart part
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