If you have the technology to build a multi kilometer long space habitat I’m fairly certain someone would think of adding shock and sound absorbing material between the hulls so that you wouldn’t hear or feel impacts unless they were catastrophic impacts.
Also important to note that the scale of these things can lead to intuitive misunderstandings. For example, if a meteor blows a meter-wide hole through the hull of an O’Neill cylinder, that intuitively sounds like a huge crisis. But in fact it’ll take weeks before enough air leaks out through a hole that size to become a problem. As an emergency patch all you need to do is drop a big manhole cover over it on the inside and the air pressure will seal it up against the hole quite tight, making it easier for the repair crew to weld a proper patch onto the actual hull.
There’d only be a one-atmosphere pressure differential, though. Wouldn’t be so bad, depending on which bit of your body gets stuck on the gap (don’t sit on it).
This is another thing Hollywood often gets wrong about the vacuum of space. If your spaceship gets a bullet hole in it you could do an emergency patch by sticking your finger in it and you’d be fine.
If you have the technology to build a multi kilometer long space habitat I’m fairly certain someone would think of adding shock and sound absorbing material between the hulls so that you wouldn’t hear or feel impacts unless they were catastrophic impacts.
Also important to note that the scale of these things can lead to intuitive misunderstandings. For example, if a meteor blows a meter-wide hole through the hull of an O’Neill cylinder, that intuitively sounds like a huge crisis. But in fact it’ll take weeks before enough air leaks out through a hole that size to become a problem. As an emergency patch all you need to do is drop a big manhole cover over it on the inside and the air pressure will seal it up against the hole quite tight, making it easier for the repair crew to weld a proper patch onto the actual hull.
Careful putting that manhole cover in place though! Delta-P is no joke
There’d only be a one-atmosphere pressure differential, though. Wouldn’t be so bad, depending on which bit of your body gets stuck on the gap (don’t sit on it).
This is another thing Hollywood often gets wrong about the vacuum of space. If your spaceship gets a bullet hole in it you could do an emergency patch by sticking your finger in it and you’d be fine.
Which has literally happened on the ISS.