(Aside from involving death, obviously)
Something I’ve been musing over for a sci-fi scenario: say, I’m an astronaut, standing on the surface of Venus in a “hardsuit” spacesuit—something like an atmospheric diving suit, built and powered out of fancy enough future technology to allow the wearer to survive and move around.
Now, suddenly, a hole gets poked in the leg, or a seal breaches.
The conditions at the surface of Venus, I understand, consist of a mostly Carbon Dioxide atmospehere at 90 bars pressure, and greater than 800° F (over 460° Celsius). I’m assuming this would quickly prove fatal to the unlucky suit wearer (the hypothetical me), but my question is: what, exactly, would happen, and how fast?
Might something like “helmet squeeze” happen? Depending on the atmospheric mixture in the suit, could the sudden change in temperature and/or compression cause the contents (the unhappy astronaut) combust, or actually burst into flame (if, perhaps, very, very briefly)? Would they simply be torn apart messily by the overpressure?
And, most importantly, what would it look like if you were looking through the unfortunate’s faceplate/helmet dome from the outside? Aside from “probably not pretty”?
Like an amplified reverse version of this accident: Byford Dolphin - Wikipedia
The person closest to the open door while being exposed to decompression of 9 bars to 1 : “was forced through the 60 centimetres (24 in) diameter opening created by the jammed interior trunk door by escaping air and violently dismembered, including bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which further resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section later being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.”
The spacesuit would be filled with mush and chunks of bones.
It would depend on the size of the leak but at those temperatures and pressures any leak would essentially be like a blowtorch to the affected area. Provided that the breach does not grow or the suit buckles due to damage, the suit would rapidly fill with carbon dioxide atmosphere at 740 K (that’s about 467 °C or 870 °F, or about as hot as a brick pizza oven that cooks your pizza to a crisp in 3-4 minutes) and to ambient pressure of 93 bar, essentially crushing your sinuses and compressing the lungs, not that you’d want to inhale the superheated gas. Next to being tossed into a pit of lava or a vat of molten steel, it’s probably the fastest non-penetrating or contussive form of environmental death, and I doubt you’d remain conscious long enough to register anything more than, “Oh, shi…”.
To the outside observer, you’d roast like a ham hock in a pressure cooker. I can’t imagine it would be pretty, or would leave anything recognizable beyond some small pieces of fractured bone.
Just another good reason to stay home and send the robots out for the dangerous and boring stuff. Save the tourism for Cold Faithful and the Titan Seashore. (I’d stay away form Io, too but apparently Tyler Nordgren thinks its worth a visit.)
Stranger
The CO2 on Venus is supercritical–the pressure so high that the liquid and gas phases are indistinguishable. There would be an enormous energy release as the fluid expanded to 1 bar inside the suit. The results aren’t going to be too far from having a having a stick of dynamite go off inside the suit. The temperatures and chemical products are really the least of your worries–the physical trauma will kill you first.
A *very *small pinhole might simply slice open the affected area and might be just survivable if a patch could be applied quickly. Not much margin for error here.
