What I picture is something mixed with Tang.
Wouldn’t the sun provide enough due to the thin atmosphere?
Sounds like the best answer is what HMS Iruncible posted earlier - set the living chamber to be 100% nitrogen. Get comfortable and go to sleep.
Even if you manage to override all the safety mechanisms and accomplish this, you’ll have low-oxygen alarms going off everywhere. Not exactly a comfortable or peaceful way to die.
Are you sure that is the reason? 15 seconds is pretty fast. People don’t pass out if they hold their breath for 15 seconds. People do pass out if the blood pressure to their brain drops. Maybe the lack of pressure on the outside of his body caused his blood pressure to drop?
If you hold your breath, your lungs are full of air that can continue to oxygenate your blood for a few minutes.
When there is no air in your lungs at all, then the blood that goes from your lungs back to your heart and out to the rest of your body contains zero oxygen; you will remain conscious only until this blood reaches your brain.
See time of useful consciousness; if your body experiences sudden decompression at or above 50,000 feet, you’ve got 6-9 seconds before you are useless, and not much longer than that before you’re completely out.
It’s been stated in this thread that it’s the CO2 build-up, and not lack of oxygen, that leads to the sense of air hunger.
While it is the case that climbing CO2 levels are a more potent stimulus than is low oxygen for the need to breathe, declining oxygen levels will still very much make you feel short of breath. Just ask any patient with pneumonia (where low O2 but not high CO2 is the rule) or, for that matter, go for a hike up Everest without an oxygen pack and report back.
With respect to the drug contents of the ISS medical kits, I am astounded to see that Demerol (meperidine, pethidine) is available. Honestly, I think it is incredible that such a toxic drug is provided (with a ridiculously short half-life to boot making its analgesic effect equally short). In addition to the potential for life-threatening drug interactions, Demerol at therapeutic doses, uniquely among narcotics, can cause seizures and ‘encephalopathy’, the latter being distinct from the usual euphoria of narcotics.
I’ve read it from multiple sources. Also, consider that your blood completely circulates through your body in about 30 to 60 seconds or so, depending on how physically active you are at the time. The path from your lungs to your brain is only a small portion of that entire round trip, so 15 seconds or so is definitely in the right ballpark.
When people hold their breath, their lungs are still filled with air (they even have a fair amount of air in there if they exhale first then hold their breath), and the blood doesn’t completely pull all of the oxygen out of their lungs instantaneously. In near vacuum conditions, the lungs are pretty much emptied of air, which makes a big difference to the blood that’s going through them.
This is what NASA has to say about it, based on animal studies:
[QUOTE=Bioastronautics Data Book, Second edition, NASA SP-3006]
Some degree of consciousness will probably be retained for 9 to 11 seconds (see chapter 2 under Hypoxia). In rapid sequence thereafter, paralysis will be followed by generalized convulsions and paralysis once again. During this time, water vapor will form rapidly in the soft tissues and somewhat less rapidly in the venous blood. This evolution of water vapor will cause marked swelling of the body to perhaps twice its normal volume unless it is restrained by a pressure suit. (It has been demonstrated that a properly fitted elastic garment can entirely prevent ebullism at pressures as low as 15 mm Hg absolute [Webb, 1969, 1970].) Heart rate may rise initially, but will fall rapidly thereafter. Arterial blood pressure will also fall over a period of 30 to 60 seconds, while venous pressure rises due to distention of the venous system by gas and vapor. Venous pressure will meet or exceed arterial pressure within one minute. There will be virtually no effective circulation of blood. After an initial rush of gas from the lungs during decompression, gas and water vapor will continue to flow outward through the airways. This continual evaporation of water will cool the mouth and nose to near-freezing temperatures; the remainder of the body will also become cooled, but more slowly.
[/QUOTE]
So the blood pressure does drop, but it takes longer than 15 seconds.
NASA also says that the animals occasionally died due to heart fibrillation within the first minute. If fibrillation did not occur, the survival rate was very high if recompression occurred within 90 seconds. Once the heart stopped (usually around 90 seconds or so) the animals didn’t survive.
I can’t speak to the experience of Everest climbers but AFAIK the people in high-altitude simulation chambers (see my post upthread for link to videos) don’t report any sense of air hunger; they just get more and more stupid until they pass out.
I was thinking this. I’d try to be good and tired, take any medications that would help me sleep, hopefully out cold before I even notice any change. I guess I’d drop the pressure as far as I could right off the bat so my ears will adjust, assuming there’s a valve. Then poke a pinhole.
Everest is an extreme example.
Would you not agree that people get breathless much faster when they exert themselves at higher altitudes? Even something as trivial as a short walk can leave you huffing and puffing if you’re not used to it (i.e. if you’re body hasn’t acclimatized by implementing processes and chemical changes that increase oxygen delivery to the tissues).
Interesting use of “acclimatized” without using quote marks. /not snark
I was gonna use ‘scare quotes’ but then decided they really weren’t necessary in this instance.
I understand that the carotid body and other blood chemistry-sensing systems work to promote increased ventilation in response to low blood oxygen levels - which happen more easily at high altitude. But I don’t think this causes the same sense of suffering that high CO2 levels in the lungs does.
At the top of Pikes Peak several years ago (14,000+ feet), I found that I had to take deliberate deep breaths to prevent tingling sensations in my extremities, but this was not at all the same sensation that I get when I hold my breath for a minute, or inhale from a mostly-empty 2-liter Coke bottle; the latter two are intensely unpleasant.
Similarly, I have had my lungs filled with inert gas (nitrogen or helium) and held my breath to the point of dizziness (maybe 20 seconds), and never experienced any suffering or involuntary compulsion to breathe.
In my post, I meant that they may have sent up suicide pills *with *him, not later. I think I remember hearing that the Apollo guys refused to take them up because if something went wrong, they’d want to spend their last hours/minutes sciencing as much as they can.
More Tang?!
CMC fnord!
Thanks for the info Machine Elf and engineer_comp_geek. I incorrectly assumed that it would take longer for the oxygen levels in the blood to drop. I didn’t consider that the blood hitting the brain would be completely depleted of oxygen.
I vaguely remember some rude reporter interviewing someone in the space program about that.
This is the obvious answer.
Anoxia is painless. (And can induce mild euphoria - pilots are warned that one of the common effects is a sense that “all is well and I’m feeling fine”).
The resulting unconsciousness feels very much like falling peacefully asleep.
How slow would a leak need to be for the body to adapt to ambient atmosphere? Could humans eventually adapt to the point that, as long as they were getting enough oxygen, the Martian surface would be enough?
Go from a pressurized full-body suit to something like a scuba tank and regulator?
A FOR (Fresh Off Rocket) human would die instantly (explode, correct?), but 15 years down the line the “Training Wheels” (now called “Space Suits”) can be removed and the noobie can jump around with the best of them.
Possible?
Maybe an urban legend, but don’t the descendants of the Incas have adaptations for high altitude living? How about Sherpas?