So What REALLY happens to a Human exposed to the vacuum of space?

Contary to belief, humans do not 'explode' straight away, a vision popularized by films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey , Event Horizon and Total Recall.

In fact, a person can survive 90 seconds in the cold of space and suffer no major injury

www.damninteresting.com...

Very interesting stuff

sweet... and i always thought your head turned into a block of ice and that the only cure was being wisked back to earth by the frizz and given a healthy dose of tissue

reply to post by AbsoluteInfinite


i would think that they would be able to survive as long as they can hold their breath... no oxygen there...

i've also heard that space might not be a vacuum at all - i've heard that one square-foot of space is incredibly dense and weighs a lot!

maybe i heard that from Thunderbolts of the Gods"??

Google Video Link

Originally posted by adrenochrome
i would think that they would be able to survive as long as they can hold their breath... no oxygen there...

Actually, holding your breath is one of the worst things you can do during rapid depressurization. You'll either rupture or gravely injure your lungs - they weren't designed to hold in 1atm of pressure against a vacuum. You should exhale, preferrably just before depressurization.

i've also heard that space might not be a vacuum at all - i've heard that one square-foot of space is incredibly dense and weighs a lot!

That would make spaceflight rather impossible.

Ya don't hold your breath bad idea.

Also you would die almost instantly for the reason at around 63,000 ft your blood boils. All the gasses contained in the blood would bubble out like opening a pop bottle.

A single bubble to the brain would kill you much less the thousands that would be going through your blood.

Boyle's law basically covers this.

link

Here's another link talking about it concerning blood and altitude.

link

Found this to add here's what really occurs with no oxygen at around 30,000 feet quite painless really.

You will hear the term "Gangload" it means to push all 3 switches on the oxygen regulator to the up position and put the mask back on. Funny the guy lecturing "narrator so to speak" I use to work with lol.

Link

[edit on 9-6-2009 by Darthorious]

Altitude only matters there where gravity is an issue. In space obviously it is not.

Best i have found so far:

How long can a human live unprotected in space?

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get a very bad sunburn.

imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov...

The entire page is worth the read as it has a few different scenarios and plenty of source links.

Stellar

The low orbit suits work but how much of a vacuum was
on the Moon.

The Moon suits had to work.

Or else you look like Schwarzenegger in "Total Recall' before Mars
got its atmosphere back.

Imagine building such a machine.
We can't even build the machines of Tesla to rule the material world.
Perhaps why we don't hear of those types of machines any more.

Originally posted by DrDragonfly
Altitude only matters there where gravity is an issue. In space obviously it is not.

I would think whether your blood boils in the vacuum of space or at the near-vacuum of very high altitudes would still kill you regardless of whether or not their is any gravity acting on you.

In fact, the astronauts who space-walk around the ISS are still subjected to over 99% of Earth's gravity (they and the ISS are simply in an orbital "free-fall" caused by gravity).

So gravity is indeed an issue for the astronauts in Earth's orbit -- and I would think an astronaut's blood would bubble in the near-vacuum of Low-Earth orbit without a spacesuit.

Something in orbit is NOT in zero-gravity...In reality an object in orbit (such as a space-walking astronaut or the space station) requires the Earth's gravity acting upon it in order to stay in orbit (i.e. an "orbit" is defined by gravity, not by the absence of gravity).


[edit on 6/10/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]