Cross section of a commercical airplane

[Mave]

 

[Impulse]

The outer part of the plane (the metal you can see) is only a couple of millimeters thick, something like 3 iirc.

 

[Mave]

The outer part of the plane (the metal you can see) is only a couple of millimeters thick, something like 3 iirc.

Damn.

 

[ThePro]

Yep, it needs to be solid enough not to fall apart, yet light enough to fly.

 

[Panki]

"For comparison, the hull of the Lunar Module in Apollo missions to the Moon was so thin that you could punch a hole in it with a ball-point pen. And yet it got astronauts to the Moon and back many times. The skin of an airplane is a brick wall in comparison, and at least there's air on both sides of an airplane fuselage, instead of low-pressure oxygen and a total vacuum."

 

[Mave]

"For comparison, the hull of the Lunar Module in Apollo missions to the Moon was so thin that you could punch a hole in it with a ball-point pen. And yet it got astronauts to the Moon and back many times. The skin of an airplane is a brick wall in comparison, and at least there's air on both sides of an airplane fuselage, instead of low-pressure oxygen and a total vacuum."

That's really interesting, yet frightening in some way.