Puts me in mind of my days, long ago, as a crew member on a USAF C-141...
We were in cruise half way between Hawaii and Japan and everyone had congregated on the large flight deck. I sat in the outboard ACM seat and chatted with a 20-year 141 veteran flight engineer. The conversation turned to the pressure differential between where we sat and the atmosphere just outside the aircraft. I began to ask questions related to the number 1 escape hatch on the ceiling of the flight deck...
Me: "Is there any danger of that hatch opening up during flight?"
Him: "Nope. It's a plug, put in from the inside. The hatch is pushed against the seal by the pressure inside the aircraft."
Me: "So, even if I opened the latch it wouldn't open up?"
Him: "Not a chance.”
Me: "How about if I opened the latch and pulled really hard on the handles?"
Him: "Even if we all pulled together, the handles would come off long before the hatch opened up."
Me: "Really? It's in there that good?"
Him: "Yup. I guarantee it."
Me: "Well then, I'm going to give it a try!"
Him: "What the hell is wrong with you boy? Do you want to get us all killed? Do you understand what would happen if that damned thing opened up right now?"
I've always reflected on this conversation with a chuckle, even now, some 25 years later. To me, it has always demonstrated the tension between what we KNOW when it comes to aviation, and the real human gut-check that always seems to be required. In the same way, I recall how I flew for perhaps 6000 hours in 141s before I stumbled across the fact that if you pulled up one of the pallet rails during cruise on a sunny day, you could look through the aircraft floor at the skin on the belly of the airplane and see just how thin and perforated it was, with sunlight streaming in all over the place. All of a sudden I was an acrophobe. It was the first time that I actually felt as though I was really high up in the air... the same feeling as being on top of a tall building. Oddly, I had never gotten that sensation from flight before that day... It had always seemed different to be in an aircraft than it did being on top of the roof of my house, until then.
I just love this conversation!
Dave
PS I got better, thank you.