How is Spaceshuttle pressurised?
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in my mind, if you were to put a 747 into orbit, the internal air pressure and the outside vaccum would surely make it rip open? the space shuttle must be made of some strong stuff 
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Here you can see how they were built up:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...d=4538&start=1
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...d=7231&start=1
There's a pressure hull like on a submarine that is placed inside the outer unpressurised hull that we see. The cabin is a capsule and is connected to the airlock with the docking mechanism.
Good view of the capsule:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...chmentid=13200
And the outer hull where it will be placed:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...chmentid=13206
Hope it helps 
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...d=4538&start=1
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...d=7231&start=1
There's a pressure hull like on a submarine that is placed inside the outer unpressurised hull that we see. The cabin is a capsule and is connected to the airlock with the docking mechanism.
Good view of the capsule:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...chmentid=13200
And the outer hull where it will be placed:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/for...chmentid=13206
Hope it helps
chris weston
I can't do the chemistry but all the sources I've seen over the years state that Lithium Hydroxide, not Peroxide, that has been used as the Carbon Dioxide "scrubber" in US spacecraft, right back to the days of Mercury.
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"...in my mind, if you were to put a 747 into orbit, the internal air pressure and the outside vaccum would surely make it rip open? the space shuttle must be made of some strong stuff..."
Not really. When things were going slow for Boeing in the early 1970's, they proposed the 737 fuselage to NASA as the basis of an orbiting laboratory to be carried to orbit by the space shuttle.
The differential pressure capability of the basic 737 fuselage would have been fine for pure O2, partial pressure environment.
Not really. When things were going slow for Boeing in the early 1970's, they proposed the 737 fuselage to NASA as the basis of an orbiting laboratory to be carried to orbit by the space shuttle.
The differential pressure capability of the basic 737 fuselage would have been fine for pure O2, partial pressure environment.
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"...in my mind, if you were to put a 747 into orbit, the internal air pressure and the outside vaccum would surely make it rip open? the space shuttle must be made of some strong stuff..."
Not really. When things were going slow for Boeing in the early 1970's, they proposed the 737 fuselage to NASA as the basis of an orbiting laboratory to be carried to orbit by the space shuttle.
The differential pressure capability of the basic 737 fuselage would have been fine for pure O2, partial pressure environment.
Not really. When things were going slow for Boeing in the early 1970's, they proposed the 737 fuselage to NASA as the basis of an orbiting laboratory to be carried to orbit by the space shuttle.
The differential pressure capability of the basic 737 fuselage would have been fine for pure O2, partial pressure environment.
The passenger planes are normally not pressurized to sea level - it would make them too heavy, and humans do have some ability to deal with lower pressure in mountains and elsewhere. Roughly 3/4 of the sea level pressure is regarded as enough: at 2500 m, ISA is 747 mbar.
This leaves 553 mbar differential to be borne by the fuselage. 553 mbar pressure can be found between 4500 and 5000 m.
People live at that height - sleep, drive cars, bear children, without additional oxygen. People who have just travelled there suffer mountain sickness, though. But oxygen can fix that completely.
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nah i didnt mean it as in anything to do with being able to live in a partial atmosphere with breathable air, i meant that because the cabin of the shuttle is pressurised (wether it be to sea level or 3/4 of sea level), and a few inches outside of that pressurised cabin is just a pure vaccum of nothingness, then the shuttle has to be structurally very strong. 
That depends what you mean by "...very strong." In comparison to other pressure shells it's not a hugely enormous must-add-another-inch-of-steel-plate step. Even if SL pressure is maintained in space, the max differential is only ~15 PSI ie around half of what your car tyre contains. Some Gulfstream business jets have a max differential of ~10 PSI. so the shuttle would only require another 50% gain (ignoring any other structural requirements). If the shuttle's cabin pressure was kept at half sea level pressure then the pressure differential would be ~7 or 8 PSI - less than the Gulfstream's maximum ability and in the same range as many other jets.
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Keep in mind that the max delta p on an airframe is based on fatigue life and not ultimate load. Therefore, the structure required to support pressurizing the space shuttle over its 100 flight life cycle might not be significantly heavier than that required to pressurize a 737 tens of thousands of times.
