[demosthenes the elder]

small technical quibble: It isn't the air let out by a small hole that causes the problem. It is the pressurized air NOT let out pushing against a skin that has been compromised by that small hole that might pose the catastrophic hazard.

[Dead Corpse]

No. Aircraft leak like sieves. Unless the air pressure regulation valve, normally located at the back of the aircraft, fails... there is almost no way to over-pressure an aircraft to a point where the fuselage will fail. You can loose a window at altitude and still maintain enough pressure to breath. Even if the bleed air dump valves on the engines were wide open and the valve at the back welded shut, I don't think you could generate more the 10-12 PSI. The windows leak. the skin along every spar, cabin deck, door seal, and lap joint leak. You'd need to weld and glue everything. The airframe would no longer be able to flex as it should and would no longer be flyable if you had done such work to it.

The whole exploding cabin thing is crap thought up in Hollyweird.

[hattend]

small technical quibble: It isn't the air let out by a small hole that causes the problem. It is the pressurized air NOT let out pushing against a skin that has been compromised by that small hole that might pose the catastrophic hazard.

Don'cha wish NASA (or somebody) would take up an unmanned, instrumented 737 and shoot the aircraft skin with a .45 caliber pistol at 35,000' just so we could put this argument to rest one way or the other?

Just take it out over a military bombing range and keep firing until the plane is brought down/depressurized and then tell us how many holes are in the fuselage.

It'll never happen because the public might gain some real understanding of what it takes to bring down/depressurize an airliner.

[ninenot]

Plug the hole with body parts of the perp you shoot.