I watched a rather bad Sci-Fi film this weekend, but one scene got me thinking - one of the heros is trapped in an airlock which then opens and he starts to float out into space, but is saved by a buddy who is outside and grabs him, flings him back into the airlock, closing it and then getting him to medical treatment ASAP.
What I was wondering is - How long would it take to die in the vacuum of outer space without protection? My WAG would have been that it would have been pretty instantaneous - with no pressure outside the body, I would expect the body to explode almost straight away…
The film Event Horizon has a scene very similar to what grimpixie describes, and even if it’s not totally accurate, they seem to have done quite a bit more homework than Mission to Mars or 2001. In that film,they have a whole protocol that the hapless victim undergoes while the airlock is depressurizing. I don’t remember it totally, but I believe it involves emptying his lungs as much as possible, clenching his eyes and mouth tightly, and curling up into the fetal position. He doesn’t spend much longer than 10 seconds in actual vacuum, and he is certainly worse for the wear - he loses consciousness and has several injuries.Can anyone attest to accuracy or inaccuracy of this scene?
For other instances in SF of survival-in-vacuum, see A. C. Clarke’s “The Other Side of the Sky”, “2001”, and at least one other short story, maybe even more.