5 ms·

Survival in Space Unprotected is Possible

52 points by sethito 13y ago

tokenadult 13y ago
A famous scene in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey showed this. (The actor, Keir Dullea, almost was badly injured in the shot showing him entering the spaceship airlock without his helmet on, by the way.) But as the article points out, such survival is only "for at least a couple of minutes. Not that you would remain conscious long enough to rescue yourself, but if your predicament was accidental, there could be time for fellow crew members to rescue and repressurize you with few ill effects." So be sure to practice a buddy system if you are going into outer space without full protective gear on at all times. There's a reason that the full title of the article submitted here is "Survival in Space Unprotected Is Possible--Briefly."
- jessriedel 13y ago
  2 minutes isn't much time to accomplish anything in a space suit. Your buddy needs to recognize what's happened, get to you, drag you into the airlock, and repressurize the airlock. Unless this happens directly next to the airlock door, I think you're done for.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    Or patch the hole, if there is a hole. But your points is valid that its not a lot of time.
  - rsofaer 13y ago
    Your conscious time is more like 15 seconds, according to the article. All you're going to accomplish is hitting a panic button.
  - ceejayoz 13y ago
    Or, they throw you into a rescue ball. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure
- scott_s 13y ago
  Event Horizon from 1997 also had a scene where someone survived a short trip through space.
  - tterrace 13y ago
    That was the first thing I thought of when the author mentioned exploding eyeballs.
  - RVijay007 13y ago
    Also the movie Sunshine.
lmkg 13y ago
Explosive decompression won't happen in space, under normal circumstances. It is a thing that can happen, but it requires a drop larger than 1atm -> 0atm to overcome the strength of human skin. People have literally exploded from a pressure drop, but they were deep-sea divers in a decompression chamber that lost integrity and went from 9atm -> 1atm[1], a drop 8x larger than going from sea-level atmospheric pressure to vacuum. From the article, it sounds like some of the symptons resemble "the bends" divers have when they surface too quickly. The cause of the bends is the change in pressure no longer being sufficient to keep the nitrogen dissolved in your blood, dissolved in your blood. Bubbles in blood veins are bad news. Pretty much all of the issues with vacuum have to do with liquids becoming gases, and unsealed gases wanting to disperse. I have to imagine it's goddamn weird feeling the water evaporate off your eyeballs. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_accident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_acci...
js2 13y ago
The lack of oxygen is the biggest problem I'd gather: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTNX6mr753w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTNX6mr753w (hypoxia in an altitude chamber from "how to kill a a human being" documentary) I guess radiation exposure is another big one.
error54 13y ago
What the article fails to mention is that space is cold. Really, really cold averaging -454.81 Fahrenheit[1] making concerns about oxygen or water pressure irrelevant. The article should have been called "Survival in Vacuum Unprotected Possible." 1 - http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980301b.html http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980301b....
- silvio 13y ago
  Space is for all practical purposes a vacuum, thus the only cooling effect would be by radiation, given that the body wouldn't be in contact with anything around it, as opposed to what happens on the ground where it is surrounded by air or water in the sea. In these conditions, the change in temperature takes a long time. As stated in the linked article: "If we put a thermometer in darkest space, with absolutely nothing around, it would first have to cool off. This might take a very very long time. Once it cooled off, it would read 2.7 Kelvin." So, the vacuum really is the main concern. You'd be long dead before you start getting cold.
  - danellis 13y ago
    There's an awful scene in the film 'Mission to Mars' where Tim Robbins removes his helmet in space, and his head instantly freezes. No, no, no!
  - gmaslov 13y ago
    Indeed. A living human probably generates more heat from the normal bodily processes than can be radiated away in space. For this reason spacesuits are equipped with coolers, not (AFAIK) heaters.
    - error54 13y ago
      Thanks guys! I didn't even think about there being nothing around to transfer heat away the body. I would have figured that the fact that water boils and then freezes in space would mean (humans being mostly water) that a person would expire rather quickly unprotected.
Gravityloss 13y ago
Yarchive comes to help. http://yarchive.net/space/science/man_in_vacuum.html http://yarchive.net/space/science/man_in_vacuum.html There has been some real quality writing by certain individuals in the sci.space.* newsgroups about this and many other subjects (many of which are popular myths). You can learn a lot if you're interested in this kind of stuff.
jesseb 13y ago
They seem to have forgotten to mention the fact that the radiation levels would exceed lethal dosages in a matter of seconds.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  Is it all alpha radiation? Otherwise, astronauts and cosmonauts that did space walks are still alive. Don't think space suits are fantastic gamma ray shields, but I may be wrong...
kyllo 13y ago
As a dog lover, their descriptions of the animal subjects studies they did made me cringe. >During their exposure, they were unconscious and paralyzed. Gas expelled from their bowels and stomachs caused simultaneous defecation, projectile vomiting and urination. They suffered massive seizures. Their tongues were often coated in ice and the dogs swelled to resemble "an inflated goatskin bag," the authors wrote. Horrible. If this knowledge is going to actually directly save human lives, and there's no better way, well OK then, but this is just a terrible, horrible thing to do to a creature like a dog or a chimpanzee.
- HCIdivision17 13y ago
  I think you can be reassured that the only better way is to place people in hard vacuum, which most would assume too risky. A bit of our knowledge was gathered the traditional industrial way (via reporting on people getting hurt), but it looks like the animal testing was likely timely and informed the risks at stake. I wondered just how many dogs were involved, and I found the following link: http://triscience.com/Animals/Muscle/experimental-animal-decompressions-to-a-near-vacuum-environment/doculite_view http://triscience.com/Animals/Muscle/experimental-animal-dec... It notes the test group was 125, with tests done in groups of 6. My impression is that their experience wasn't a waste, and was a benchmark study for decades. While trying to find the original study, I stumbled across another that goes into some further detail. http://cousin.pascal1.free.fr/AVMA%20etude%20decom.pdf http://cousin.pascal1.free.fr/AVMA%20etude%20decom.pdf I don't have the constitution to read much medical research, but the impression is that the experience is markedly short. Physiologically decompression is pretty awful, but the subject doesn't suffer consciously. Hopefully that's a bit reassuring that the animals did not experience any horror film-like agony before blacking out (though it would be uncomfortable, to be sure).
ricardobeat 13y ago
Looks like Battlestar Galactica got it right then.
Houshalter 13y ago
Wtf is with the only two animal experiments being on dogs and chimps? I am ok with animal research, but on dogs? Or chimps which are closer to humans than any other animal? This research isn't even necessary. Everyone already knew going into the vacuum of space was bad.
- daeken 13y ago
  > Everyone already knew going into the vacuum of space was bad. That line of thinking leads to a complete lack of actual science. As the article points out: going into the vacuum of space is nowhere near as bad as is conventionally thought. That's an incredibly valuable finding, and it gives us the information we need to create effective safety and recovery mechanisms in space.
  - Houshalter 13y ago
    Well after you tried it on the first 5 dogs, why go for 120 more? And then 6 chimps after that? (I think those are what the numbers were IIRC.) And regardless the knowledge isn't terribly useful. We have a slightly more accurate timescale on how quickly people die in a certain (very rare and specific) way. And it's still not enough to actually do anything realistically.

52 points by sethito 13y ago

A famous scene in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey showed this. (The actor, Keir Dullea, almost was badly injured in the shot showing him entering the spaceship airlock without his helmet on, by the way.) But as the article points out, such survival is only "for at least a couple of minutes. Not that you would remain conscious long enough to rescue yourself, but if your predicament was accidental, there could be time for fellow crew members to rescue and repressurize you with few ill effects." So be sure to practice a buddy system if you are going into outer space without full protective gear on at all times. There's a reason that the full title of the article submitted here is "Survival in Space Unprotected Is Possible--Briefly."

jessriedel 13y ago
2 minutes isn't much time to accomplish anything in a space suit. Your buddy needs to recognize what's happened, get to you, drag you into the airlock, and repressurize the airlock. Unless this happens directly next to the airlock door, I think you're done for.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  Or patch the hole, if there is a hole. But your points is valid that its not a lot of time.
- rsofaer 13y ago
  Your conscious time is more like 15 seconds, according to the article. All you're going to accomplish is hitting a panic button.
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  Or, they throw you into a rescue ball. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure
scott_s 13y ago
Event Horizon from 1997 also had a scene where someone survived a short trip through space.
- tterrace 13y ago
  That was the first thing I thought of when the author mentioned exploding eyeballs.
- RVijay007 13y ago
  Also the movie Sunshine.

lmkg 13y ago

Explosive decompression won't happen in space, under normal circumstances. It is a thing that can happen, but it requires a drop larger than 1atm -> 0atm to overcome the strength of human skin. People have literally exploded from a pressure drop, but they were deep-sea divers in a decompression chamber that lost integrity and went from 9atm -> 1atm[1], a drop 8x larger than going from sea-level atmospheric pressure to vacuum. From the article, it sounds like some of the symptons resemble "the bends" divers have when they surface too quickly. The cause of the bends is the change in pressure no longer being sufficient to keep the nitrogen dissolved in your blood, dissolved in your blood. Bubbles in blood veins are bad news. Pretty much all of the issues with vacuum have to do with liquids becoming gases, and unsealed gases wanting to disperse. I have to imagine it's goddamn weird feeling the water evaporate off your eyeballs. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_accident http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin#Diving_bell_acci...

js2 13y ago

The lack of oxygen is the biggest problem I'd gather: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTNX6mr753w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTNX6mr753w (hypoxia in an altitude chamber from "how to kill a a human being" documentary) I guess radiation exposure is another big one.

error54 13y ago

What the article fails to mention is that space is cold. Really, really cold averaging -454.81 Fahrenheit[1] making concerns about oxygen or water pressure irrelevant. The article should have been called "Survival in Vacuum Unprotected Possible." 1 - http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980301b.html http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980301b....

silvio 13y ago
Space is for all practical purposes a vacuum, thus the only cooling effect would be by radiation, given that the body wouldn't be in contact with anything around it, as opposed to what happens on the ground where it is surrounded by air or water in the sea. In these conditions, the change in temperature takes a long time. As stated in the linked article: "If we put a thermometer in darkest space, with absolutely nothing around, it would first have to cool off. This might take a very very long time. Once it cooled off, it would read 2.7 Kelvin." So, the vacuum really is the main concern. You'd be long dead before you start getting cold.
- danellis 13y ago
  There's an awful scene in the film 'Mission to Mars' where Tim Robbins removes his helmet in space, and his head instantly freezes. No, no, no!
- gmaslov 13y ago
  Indeed. A living human probably generates more heat from the normal bodily processes than can be radiated away in space. For this reason spacesuits are equipped with coolers, not (AFAIK) heaters.
  - error54 13y ago
    Thanks guys! I didn't even think about there being nothing around to transfer heat away the body. I would have figured that the fact that water boils and then freezes in space would mean (humans being mostly water) that a person would expire rather quickly unprotected.

Gravityloss 13y ago

Yarchive comes to help. http://yarchive.net/space/science/man_in_vacuum.html http://yarchive.net/space/science/man_in_vacuum.html There has been some real quality writing by certain individuals in the sci.space.* newsgroups about this and many other subjects (many of which are popular myths). You can learn a lot if you're interested in this kind of stuff.

jesseb 13y ago

They seem to have forgotten to mention the fact that the radiation levels would exceed lethal dosages in a matter of seconds.

rdtsc 13y ago
Is it all alpha radiation? Otherwise, astronauts and cosmonauts that did space walks are still alive. Don't think space suits are fantastic gamma ray shields, but I may be wrong...

kyllo 13y ago

As a dog lover, their descriptions of the animal subjects studies they did made me cringe. >During their exposure, they were unconscious and paralyzed. Gas expelled from their bowels and stomachs caused simultaneous defecation, projectile vomiting and urination. They suffered massive seizures. Their tongues were often coated in ice and the dogs swelled to resemble "an inflated goatskin bag," the authors wrote. Horrible. If this knowledge is going to actually directly save human lives, and there's no better way, well OK then, but this is just a terrible, horrible thing to do to a creature like a dog or a chimpanzee.

HCIdivision17 13y ago
I think you can be reassured that the only better way is to place people in hard vacuum, which most would assume too risky. A bit of our knowledge was gathered the traditional industrial way (via reporting on people getting hurt), but it looks like the animal testing was likely timely and informed the risks at stake. I wondered just how many dogs were involved, and I found the following link: http://triscience.com/Animals/Muscle/experimental-animal-decompressions-to-a-near-vacuum-environment/doculite_view http://triscience.com/Animals/Muscle/experimental-animal-dec... It notes the test group was 125, with tests done in groups of 6. My impression is that their experience wasn't a waste, and was a benchmark study for decades. While trying to find the original study, I stumbled across another that goes into some further detail. http://cousin.pascal1.free.fr/AVMA%20etude%20decom.pdf http://cousin.pascal1.free.fr/AVMA%20etude%20decom.pdf I don't have the constitution to read much medical research, but the impression is that the experience is markedly short. Physiologically decompression is pretty awful, but the subject doesn't suffer consciously. Hopefully that's a bit reassuring that the animals did not experience any horror film-like agony before blacking out (though it would be uncomfortable, to be sure).

ricardobeat 13y ago

Looks like Battlestar Galactica got it right then.

Houshalter 13y ago

Wtf is with the only two animal experiments being on dogs and chimps? I am ok with animal research, but on dogs? Or chimps which are closer to humans than any other animal? This research isn't even necessary. Everyone already knew going into the vacuum of space was bad.

daeken 13y ago
> Everyone already knew going into the vacuum of space was bad. That line of thinking leads to a complete lack of actual science. As the article points out: going into the vacuum of space is nowhere near as bad as is conventionally thought. That's an incredibly valuable finding, and it gives us the information we need to create effective safety and recovery mechanisms in space.
- Houshalter 13y ago
  Well after you tried it on the first 5 dogs, why go for 120 more? And then 6 chimps after that? (I think those are what the numbers were IIRC.) And regardless the knowledge isn't terribly useful. We have a slightly more accurate timescale on how quickly people die in a certain (very rare and specific) way. And it's still not enough to actually do anything realistically.