In article ,
Elwood Dowd wrote:

The eventual purpose of the project is space tourism. My guess is that
it is easier to fully contain the vehicle than to teach every tourist
with $30k how to operate a pressure suit, not to mention classier.

Not to mention... inflating a cabin is not new science to this
particular batch of engineers.


While we're at it, I'm curious why they chose to pressurize the cabin
rather
than put the pilot into a pressure suit. From my position of pure
ignorance, it would seem that a pressure suit would make for simpler
engineering of the vehicle.

You might also gain some structural rigidity by pressurizing the cabin.
The lowly aluminum soda can, for example, depends on the internal
pressure for much of its strength. To get the same strength in an
unpressurized can would require a much greater wall thickness and end up
weighing more.