How would you die w/o a spacesuit?

So the hatch blows in outer orbit and you’re a floater. How long would you live? What would be the exact cause of your death? Some say explosion, but I am very against that. You can’t compress or expand a liquid based on pressure changes, correct? I think you would get the bends and die.

You would freeze to death prior to suffocating from a lack of air. The temperature of space is absolute 0

Cecil’s column


“Penises don’t belong in the mouth, girls and boys. You’ve got the wrong hole there. Just like you wouldn’t shove pizza up your nose.”
-From the Brother Jed flyer-

Well, it’s not really absolute zero…heat being a measure of molecular motion, and there being no molecules by definition in a vacuum that can do any moving, space is technically temperature-less.

But it is a major, major heat sink. Be sure to wear a scarf.

I doubt you’d freeze to death before suffocating in such a scenario. With the density of molecules so low in outer space, the majority of heat loss will occur through means of radiation, and that isn’t exactly a fast process. In fact, the initial rate of heat loss would probably be well within the scale of a dozen 100W light bulbs, and dropping sharply thereafter as your surface temperature decreases.

You’d explode immediately, wouldn’t you? (They soft-petal this point in Mission to Mars). Currently these is a lot of air pressure all around us that nicely balances the internal pressures within us. We thereby maintain a dignified equilibrium. Remove the atmospheric pressure and pop. water boils at a lower and lower pressure as you go up in altidute. Up in space water boils (terms to gas) immediately. I do not believe our skin is strong enough to contain the pressure in us (though a space suit would be) because it is soft and porous.

You won’t literally explode in space, tony1234. Have you read Cecil’s column as has been posted above yet?

Okay, we could take a prisoner who has been sentenced to death…

j/k :smiley:


“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry

Are you a turtle?

If you could see the sun, you might get to be burned to death before you actually suffocate. One of the major environmental controls in a space suit is it’s air conditioning.

Both dogs the russians sent up died because they both stuck their heads out of the satellite window.

:::runnning:::


I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.

Yours truly,
aha

In essence, you’d get a really really really bad case of the bends, which is caused by nitrogen coming out of solution in the blood as pressure lowers suddenly.

If you held your breath, would your trachea explode and lungs swell? I don’t know. I suspect you wouldn’t be able to keep your throat closed off by your throat muscles, and the air would escape through your nose.

You won’t explode from the gas in your blood. Your body has a tensile strength to it, and retains pressure.

If you didn’t hold your breath, the air would escape your lungs and preclude injury, but then you would pass out within 15 seconds. You would then likely die from an air embolism causing a heart attack or stroke.

You won’t freeze to death, though you might get some frost bite, and/or radiation burns. Though the if the body stayed exposed, it would eventually get cold and icy.