Since developing advanced technologies such as underwater breathing equipment, high-altitude flight and space flight, humans have encountered many natural barriers to exploration. However, as each of these barriers presents itself, soon after we seem to find ways to breach them. Take the example of deep-sea diving. At first glance, it doesn’t seem like there should be much to the process, assuming you can get your air supply to come under water with you. But upon embarking on this frontier, it becomes apparent that additional complications, such as decompression sickness and the crushing pressures of deep water, are natural forces to be reckoned with – they’re not going to let us in without a fight. This is where tools like altitude chambers come in.

Decompression sickness is a sneaky barrier. It’s not surprising that it took more than a hundred years of guessing at what caused the symptoms exhibited by people emerging from dives and from pressurized mine shafts and caisson shafts. Once we figured out, though, that the symptoms are caused by the dissolution of inert gasses into the blood stream and their subsequent reformation within the blood stream of a person who rapidly enters an area of lower ambient pressure, we discovered a remedy for the ailment. That remedy was the altitude chamber. Altitude chambers are used to help people’s bodies adjust after diving or for testing in advance of test flights or simulated emergency conditions during flight training. These altitude test chambers both save lives and provide researchers with valuable insights into the affects of differential pressures on people.

In addition to providing this valuable service, altitude chambers can also be used to test the performance of products in R&D settings. This use is very beneficial to the aerospace products development industry. Altitude chamber manufacturers are contributors to the process of breaking down barriers in both industry and research in addition to providing life-saving tools for all kinds of contexts.