What stops water from a moon pool from filling the inside of a submarine?
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The pressure inside the submarine.
It’s basically a gigantic air bubble: the air pushes the water down.
Or rather, the water cannot push hard enough compress the air.
The air inside the moonpool prevents water from entering
It functions similarly to a water glass submerged upside down.
The water would need to displace the air inside the sub and the air doesn’t have anywhere to go.
Push an upside down glass into a sink full of water. The water can’t fill the glass because it can’t move the air. Or, put your finger over the end of a straw and put in a glass of liquid. No water goes into the straw until you move your finger.
Trapped gasses will compress/expand until it’s pressure is equal to the environmental pressure. The pressure of the room that contains the moon pool, and potentially the pressure of the entire submarine, will be increased so that it matches the water pressure at the submarine’s current depth.
If the pressure in the air is higher then in the water it will not flow up into the submarine. Most submarines do not have a moon pool except in movies. Some have regular pools though. The closest you get on a regular submarine is the trash shoot which contains an upper and lower hatch, only one can be opened at a time to prevent the water from flooding the submarine. It is theoretically possible to increase the pressure inside the submarine a bit, maybe twice the pressure, and then open both hatches at periscope depth to form a moon pool from the trash shoot. But it is more likely to send special operatives through the torpedo tubes as they are bigger.
When I first read “moon pool” I thought, “This person thinks there’s pools of water on the moon, and they’re going to ask why it doesn’t fall to earth.”
Turns out I just didn’t know what a moon pool was
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