08 July 2018

Shut That Hatch

There's no iris valves in Interstellar Wars!

So there's hatches.

How does a swinging door hatch work?

It's not a simple hinged door.

There's gears.  And a motor.

Normally, you hit the button and the motor cranks the hatch open or closed.

Should there be a power failure, there's a hand crank.

Should there be a pressure loss, there's a diaphragm that disengages the gears in the transmission and a spring slams the hatch shut!  Even against the roaring of 3 atmospheres of pressure differential!

The diaphragm moves a plunger to extend into the vacuum side that gives a tactile and visual indication of pressure loss.  The movement of the plunger also breaks a chem-light giving some light even if there's a power failure.

If the pressure on both sides of the bulkhead equalizes, the diaphragm returns to center and reengages the transmission.

But what if the pressure isn't equalized and you NEED to open that hatch?

Press (or pull) the plunger back to the center position, rotate 90˚ and the transmission will be reengaged and the auto-matic close feature disabled.  A tell-tale in engineering and the bridge will light showing the disablement.  Once you have the transmission reengaged you can use the power buttons or the hand-wheel to open the hatch.

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