Human body in space WITHOUT a suit.. what would happen?
 

I've wondered for quite some time: if an astronaut were to remove his suit in outerspace, what exactly would happen?

Would the body explode or liquify due to lack of pressure and intense vacuum?

Is it realistic for someone to breifly take off their helmet and then put it back on so they could temporarily feel the effects of space, or would death be immediate?

Well I've never seen it happen, but 1 atmosphere (about earth's atmospheric pressure) is 14.69 psi. Now that's 14.69 psi being pushed by your body outward. That doesn't seem as bad to me, but when you consider we have quite a bit of surface area, it adds up.
I think it's similar to what happens if you pull a deep sea ocean fish up to the surface really quickly, whatever that may be. My money's on boom.

NASA says:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...rs/970603.html

Rodney, thanks alot for the link. "And his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil" is one of the coolest things I've read in a long time. Very fascinating information to me.

Awesome link!

Once again, science proves to be something moviemakers just dont check on. nice link

The movie "Event Horizon" seems to have a pretty accurate take on this exact thing.

Pretty good movie actually.

I was about to say the same thing, the_marq.

"Mission to Mars" would be on the opposite end of the spectrum. When Tim Robbins removed his helmet in space he was immediately frozen solid. :rolleyes:

Man, I'd much rather it go boom, or maybe be like in Total Recall where the face stretches... Oh well. Next thing you'll say is that when a starship is shot at, everybody gets flung in the same direction....

Yep. I loved it too. Well actually it scared the crap out of me but it was a good scary space movie (which they aren't too many of).

I guess Hollywood has to make dying in space more dramatic, if they applied real principles then it wouldn't be exciting (and gory) if it were similar to what that article implied.

Respect science I do, but I gotta be entertained too...

Thanks for the link, I'd always wondered about that.

:lol:

Life is so full of bitter disappointments, eh?

Yeah, I remember one movie wherein a small hole formed in the wall of a space ship (baseball sized) and someone got 'sucked' out the hole in gory squishy detail. Wish I could remember the movie.

stupid stupid

the_marq, you could be remembering Alien: Resurrection where the final alien is killed by being sucked out through the hole. I suppose you could do some calculations to figure out exactly what the suction should be in that situation, but personally I was amazed at how much air they had apparently packed into that ship. :P

Alien: Resurrection sounds about right.

Seems to me that 14psi of pressure could be held in by simply placing my hand over the hole. Other than a nasty blister I'd probably come out of that disaster just fine.

Yeah, kinda a shame real life isn't as cool as the movies sometimes ain't it.

hmm
 

About not holding your breath so you won't damage your lungs...couldn't you just pinch your nose and be in good shape? For at least those uh 10 seconds before serious injury develops.

Wouldnt the radiation from the sun bake you into a mutated piece of KF chicken?

In the link posted above (which definitively answers this question), the author writes that serious sunburn would be almost an immediate effect. Of course, that would depend on where you were in space without a suit. In the vast nothingness of the cosmos, radiation would be about the last thing you'd have to worry about.

interesting

This is really cool info. I always wondered.

I would think so. The ozone layer here on earth protects us from all that radiation. Take it away and cook you will.

The air in your lungs would EXPAND! This is what causes injury to scuba diver. At deeper depths, the air in your lungs is at a higher pressure. If you ascend, and hold your breath, the air will expand at the lower pressures near sea level. BOOM.

If you don't hold your breath, and the air pressure equalizes, and the expanding air has somewhere to go.

If you do a very rapid ascent while scuba diving, you can pretty much be exhaling for the whole journey up.

Thats also why skin diving is safe. If you hold your breath and dive, you don't need to exhale, coz the original volume of air in your lungs at sea level remains the same. At depth, the air in your lungs just shrinks.

that link is cool, i wish the could try that in space when they are protected from the sun by the earth, it would be very cool to have actual results from space!!!

You volunteering..??

As for the sunburn thing, if you were out of the direct rays of the sun, sunburn would not be a problem. If you could directly see the sun, welcome to blindness! :D

That may not be too far fetched, actually. From my understanding, if a single window on a large passenger plane blew out at the height of it's flight in a tranatlantic trip, it would suck out at least 6 of the surrounding seats.


I heard that from a fellow that worked at an airport, but it may or may not be an urban legend... seems to make sense, though.

Now, even without the sun, would you end up with the world largest hickey from the vacuum?

What? no mention of hitch hikers guide to the galaxy? Arthur and Ford survived in space for 28 seconds (or thereabouts) before being picked up by Zaphod :)

On Mythbusters, they did a segment where they simulated a bullet-sized hole at average pressure. Not much happened.

Even more
 

They made way more than a bullet size hole on mythbusters; didn't they knock out a few windows too? Yeah, and not much happend. Real life sucks.

I'm having a total recall of Total Recall

That's odd. My physics teacher in high school said that you would indeed explode because of the "Equal or opposite reaction" law. According to his description, the Earth's atmosphere pressurizes our bodies, while our circulatory system reacts upon that pressure, pushing back. While the atmosphere and our circulatory actions are harmonius, once removed from the atmosphere, our circulatory system will STILL have that "depressurizing" effect, pushing outward, and without the atmosphere, there would be nothing to push inward.

Well, he IS just a high school teacher... I'd tend to believe the good folk at NASA :o)

What about oxygenized liquid rebreathers? If you have oxygen-heavy liquid that you could breathe, would you be able to just chill out (literally?) in space indefinitely?

No pertinent information, but I can't help but giggle when I read the phrase, "....and animal experiments confirm."

A group of astronauts all huddled around hurling gerbil after gerbil outside into space.

I know that's probably not what happened. I'm sure it was much more scientific....you know, copius notes and all that. :)

That was actually my first thought :P

Darn, I wanted to be the one to post that. Infact I think I will read the book again. If not the whole series. It was the saddest thing when i realized I was done reading it :(

How crazy would it be to try and breathe in air when there's n o air :eek:

Well, Spindles and Great White, as much as I love the Hitchhiker's Guide, I would have to say that holding your breath in this situation is a very bad idea, the pressure from your lungs would explode out of your throat if it just didn't blow out your chest.

Oh, and just as a nitpicky matter of point, Zaphod didn't pick up Arthur and Ford, that was done by the Heart of Gold alone due to the improbabilty field it created. Zaphod had nothing to do with it and even complained about it.

man i was gonna make a comment about the hitchhikers guide...

and then i was gonna correct the other comment...

but i guess i was just slow to respond... and man... i just read those books during the spring... now yall are making me wanna read em again :lol:


pretty cool to hear it from nasa what would happen ... i always figured something like event horizon was a bit more plausible then most other movies...

great question and great link above. Thanks

Ha... the Hichhikers Guide. Too bad Adams died after he wrote Mostly Harmless (or as I've heard it called, Mostly Awful.)

I've thought about it, and it reminds me of Titan A.E. Good movie. I wonder if persperation would boil off, or if it would burn when the water in your mouth boiled.

interesting