summerkc

I do not believe the link explanation is correct. The reason is that I am a pilot and at an altitude above 45,000 ft you have only 3-5 sec of consiousness. I have always been told that because of the lack of pressure, the oxygen actually is released through your skin thus rapidly depleting your available oxygen. I would think that in a almost absolute vacuum, this would be even more abrupt. This would be about like your blood boiling, but because of the low pressure it would boil at a temperature that is like normal body temperature or lower, which is difficult to understand. This can be shown by boiling water at high altitudes, where it will boil below 100 deg Celcious.

As for the oxygen leaving your skin, your skin would have to be able to hold in 14.7 psi which seemingly it could until you take into account that the oxygen is leaving on a nuclear level so it probably could permeate the skin and leave the body.

Maybe I've just been fed a bunch of crap though.

Herk

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying summerkc. I don't think oxygen is just hanging out behind your skin. It would have to permeate the lungs and everything else. And that is only if you don't assume that it is still bonded into other mixtures with cohesion and adhesion. And how is it leaving on a nuclear level? Its nucleus? Surely not. It will still be at least an atom. Actually two since oxygen is a ditomic.

As for liquid boiling, it doesn't take a high ambient temperature at all, the drop in pressure itself would boil it. Just like a diver getting the Bends, a dramatic decrease in pressure will evacuate all of the gases that have previously be dissolved into water. Like taking the cap off of a bottle of soda.

Herk

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Fire

This is so fucking awesome- in part because the first time I read a statement echoing what the nasa site says was while reading a scenario for the old Space Hulk war game- upon reading it I remember saying well, its a sci-fantasy game anyway, its not supposed to be realistic- for some alpha geek reason it just seems so cool that a game company did their homework

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d*d

If you were to take your body as it is at the moment and then instantly expose it to a space like vacuum It would do the pressure explosion thing, but as astronuats ascend out of our atmosphere do they not decompress? If a person on a space walk were instantly exposed to a pressure similar to that on earth, they would be crushed would they not?

joeshoe

"but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm"

Haha.

And Event Horizon scared the s*** out of me.

Thermopyle

Good question and answer!

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reiii

Im liking the link...I'll have to try that sometime

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