Reading The Martian and thinking about things like depressurisation – why does air from a higher concentration feel the need to rush through a small leak with enough force to rip or blow things apart instead of staying put?
What calls it from the vacuum for it to be so obsessed in doing so?
In: Planetary Science
Think about water. If you have a water line that springs a leak you will suddenly have water spraying into the room. Why? Because the water is pressurized. It’s being pushed on by other water molecules and the walls of the pipe and is pushed out the leak.
In a spaceship it’s the same thing just with air. The air in the spaceship is pressurized. It’s not that the vacuum outside is pulling the air molecules out, it’s that other air molecules and the walls of the spaceship are pushing the air out into space. If the damage to the vessel is bad enough the leak can grow bigger until the vessel blows apart, that’s just crack propagation.
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