Wow this does not seem like a good idea at all. Firstly I am no bomb expert or aerospace engineer but this seems just rediculous.
The whole premise they base this on his a reinforced can built for an explosion... the can had a LID that blew off to release the pressure!!
Bomb goes off on a plane pressure rises (note the pressure on a plane 5 miles high is already higher than the outside pressure) and the plane falls apart the pressure must go somewhere!!
Even if by some miracle the plane doesn't shred apart then I'm sure all the passengers will be dead from the explosion, and if by some miracle they don't get killed they will probably die by inhaling the fumes!
Everyone is going to die inside either way I would rather take my chances jumping out with a spare pair of underwear for a parachute!
DISCLAIMER - Don't drive boats that have been tampered with by the smash lab crew!
See, here is where some of the show's critics are justified.
A bit more research would have uncovered the fact that the more vulnerable part of the plane is not the fuselage, but the cargo hold. The cargo hold could (and should) be re-enforced with the blast wrap.
It seems to me that someone should have thought of that.
Yup. I'm no engineer, but my layperson guess is that bombs on planes kill due to concussion, fire, smoke, making it crash, but not so much by just damaging the fuselage, a la Goldfinger. As another noted, even assuming the fuselage could be reinforced to Kryptonian toughness, the concussion, heat, smoke, etc. of a blast has to go somewhere - all into the sealed passenger compartment?
Now, if I'm really missing something, please be kind and let me know.
I agree...as soon as I heard Nick say, "How 'bout a plane?" I thought the same thing. The pressure wave in an explosion is extremely powerful, and I doubt that if the aluminum skin of an airplane could handle it, a person couldn't either. Even if the explosion were contained, the force has to go somewhere. So it seems like they disregarded the human element and went solely with the airplane survival solution, which even the Smash Lab folks admitted to (the narrator said the team conceded there would be casualties with any result). I think this misses the point entirely with this experiment. What good is a surviving plane if everyone inside is killed from the percussive force of the explosion or suffocating on lava rock dust, etc? I didn't even see one dummy in the plane to see what the explosion would do (assuming what they were attempting to do was going to work). Had the scientists already doomed their experiment to failure?
Another valid point is, assuming the experiment DID work, what would you do with the massive dust cloud that has now appeared inside the plane? You'd have to find a way to vent it somehow. I would assume the lava rocks are abrasive and not to be inhaled.
See, here is where some of the show's critics are justified. A bit more research would have uncovered the fact that the more vulnerable part of the plane is not the fuselage, but the cargo hold. The cargo hold could (and should) be re-enforced with the blast wrap. It seems to me that someone should have thought of that.
yes thats excately what i came here to say but more over if you did not try to contian the blast using that wrap but intsead use it to protect the the passegeners (and fuel tanks) form the shock waves and fire and drecet the blast to an engneered soft spot on the belly that would be desgined to blow out with out taring the rest of the plain to bits. it would rock the plain and couse a peruse loss but thats why they have air masks. it took me about two seconds to come to this concluestion after seeing the frsit garbage can test. realy theese peopel have no sense what so ever
the main problem (this is just for plane survival) is that the stucture can not take the pressures being generated. this is similar to the issue they encountered with the train air bags. in that case, if they had used rupture discs, the experiment 'may' have been more successful (vice corks). in regards to the plane,it seems that the pressure wave is the main culprit in compromising the plane's structure, thus, (through experiments) one could determine the pressure at which the skin ruptured & the volume of air to be vented. that known, one could determine the size & amount of relief valves (not safety valves) required to prevent structural failure. that said, i still believe the bomb's concussive effect would be 'very bad' for the passengers, however, if the plane survives......who knows?
The bubble wrap has potential for airplane use. The "engineers" of the show are ignorant of a feature called "blow-out panels". These are structural elements designed to literally blow outwards to vent excessive pressures in case of explosions to prevent catastrophic destruction to the overall structure. Navy ships have been using these in magazines for years; and they are used in shore storage ammunition bunkers. If the bubble wrap can be used to hold the initial explosive pressure wave and extinguish the resulting fireball, having blow-out panels located within the airplane's structure to vent that contained pressure to the outside in a controlled manner would retain the plane's external .75" skin and allow for design features to re-pressurize the plane by closing off the panels after they were used, or at a minimum allow the pilot to bring the plane to a lower safe altitude. None of this is to say that there wouldn't be physical injury to both the plane and the passengers during the over-pressure period, but that is still better than the alternative
I think "ignorant" might be too strong a word, seeing as you were unaware that this concept has bee proposed twice before you, once by myself on this board, and once by someone else on the now-defunct blog.
Tim
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