Space - Crush Pressure

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Kimbo

I realize this question might be highly hypothetical and thus arbitrary. "A spaceship can withstand as much pressure as it is designed to withstand. If its specs say 50 atmospheres, then it is good to 50." Okay, but what is a believable, reasonable, number for that upper pressure (crush limit)?

Honestly, not much. Maybe not even 1. In most settings spaceships aren't *supposed* to be diving into oceans or gas giants, they're for flying around in space. There's no reason to design them for more than highest pressure atmosphere they will encounter minus the interior pressure.

(The Millenium Falcon probably can withstand higher pressures than our 1970's Apollo spaceships).

Actually, I bet Apollo will withstand more. It's much more symmetric, and designed to take pretty substantial reentry stresses the Falcon would never need to worry about.

Lastly, a third related question: (3) Supposing an acceleration of 1.4G on a streamlined hull, how long (assume terminal velocity) would it take to fall to this hypothetical crush depth?

Fall *from where*? A spacecraft in orbit won't fall, ever. A vessel on contragravity lift just above its crush depth when the generator goes out is doomed in seconds. But why the hell would you be hanging around in the atmosphere of a gas giant on contragravity lift anyway?

That is, suppose a 10G Contragravity Lifter malfunctioned, or was only working at 70% efficiency (only canceling 7G above a world with 8.4G, thus net downward force of 1.4G), how long would the ship's Mechanic have (while the ship is falling) to fix the Contragravity Lifter before the atmospheric pressure crushes them?

If you are far enough down in the atmosphere of a gas giant to be feeling 8.4 G, you're way past the crush depth of anything not designed as a dedicated gas giant probe *already*, and were crushed well before the contragravity problem came up.