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Fifty years of movies that feature gory death scenes in which people are exposed to total vacuums (with decidedly gooey results) would have us believe that outer space is so incredibly hostile an environment that it can’t be withstood, even for a second. According to damn interesting (and some scientists with access to fancy vacuum chambers), that’s not entirely true.
For about ten full seconds– a long time to be loitering in space without protection– an average human would be rather uncomfortable, but they would still have their wits about them. Depending on the nature of the decompression, this may give a victim sufficient time to take measures to save their own life. But this period of “useful consciousness” would wane as the effects of brain asphyxiation begin to set in. In the absence of air pressure the gas exchange of the lungs works in reverse, dumping oxygen out of the blood and accelerating the oxygen-starved state known as hypoxia. After about ten seconds a victim will experience loss of vision and impaired judgment, and the cooling effect of evaporation will lower the temperature in the victim’s mouth and nose to near-freezing. Unconsciousness and convulsions would follow several seconds later, and a blue discoloration of the skin called cyanosis would become evident.
Though an unprotected human would not long survive in the clutches of outer space, it is remarkable that survival times can be measured in minutes rather than seconds, and that one could endure such an inhospitable environment for almost two minutes without suffering any irreversible damage.
This is obviously good news for super-rich thrill seekers, who can experience the ultimate head rush, probably not die, and hopefully confirm or deny space tourist Anousheh Ansari’s claim that space smells like burned toast.
Update
Since we wrote this blog, there’s been one more space tourist — Hungarian-American Charles Simonyi, who was a big cheese at Microsoft for years and now heads his own software company. After his April 7, 2007 flight, he said “It is amazing how it appears from the blackness of the sky. It was very, very dramatic. It was like a big stage set, a fantastic production of some incredible opera or modern play. That’s what I was referring to when I said I was blown away.”
Two of the next three space tourists planned are also software geeks: videogame designer Richard Gariott, expected to fly this October, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who’ll fly in 2011.
Meanwhile, cheaper “sub-orbital spaceflight” is in development by folks like Virgin’s Richard Branson, which will offer some of the same thrills for about 1/100th of the price ($200k vs. $20 mil). If that sounds like a bargain to you, check out Virgin Galactic.
Comments (12)
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‘Member that wicked cool scene in Event Horizen when that douche from Dead At 21, Jack Nosebloody, goes batty and launches himself from the ship and then all this blood starts streaming out his eyes and squirts outta his veins? That’s so bitchin, I hate to hear it debunked. Thanks for ruining my day, Randsome!
posted by Amanda on 11-28-2006 at 11:31 pm
I thought she said it smelled like burnt cookies?
posted by Christine on 11-30-2006 at 10:57 am
Maybe it just smells like burnt space.
posted by Jessy on 11-30-2006 at 11:44 am
Yeah. She wrote in her space blog that it smelled like “a burned almond cookie.” It’s on the X-prize foundation website if anyone wants to read it for themselves.
posted by Marc on 11-30-2006 at 1:54 pm
Those of you who remember “2001: A Space Odyssey” might remember the scene in which Dave Bowman, the astronaut, is forced to endure about 8-10 seconds of deep space vacuum when HAL, the computer is trying to kill him by locking him out of the space ship Discovery. The scene was the first in a major work of fiction to posit that humans could indeed survive that long without death or severe impairment. It had the backing of some of the latest scientific understanding of that time.
posted by Gordon on 11-30-2006 at 4:28 pm
There is still the caveat of the rapidity of exposure to the vacuum. Explosive decompression sounds unpleasant, whereas the gradual decompression of an airlock (admittedly fictional) seems far easier to withstand.
posted by Dion on 12-1-2006 at 7:13 pm
Hey guys, 200K is only 1% of 20M.
posted by Rob on 8-5-2008 at 10:46 am
@Rob —
Whoops. Thanks. Duh.
posted by Ransom Riggs on 8-5-2008 at 10:52 am
I think Dion made the point that a sudden exposure to vacuum would likely kill you a whole lot faster than a gradual decompression. Furthermore, I always thought the incredible cold of outerspace would kill you pretty freakin’ fast too.
posted by Zach on 8-5-2008 at 11:28 am
There’s a pretty dramatic moment involving that “ten seconds of useful time” bit in Season 3 of the new Battlestar Galactica.
posted by Chris Higgins on 8-5-2008 at 4:27 pm
Okay, but the whole “instantly returning to normal after your head almost explodes from being in a vacuum” thing from Total Recall, that’s BS. :D
posted by frodopal on 8-5-2008 at 7:05 pm
I’ve seen a few of these “you could survive a few seconds” articles and none of them address what would happen to your eyes. At the most basic level they’re little pressurized balls of liquid. Now what would happen to them with zero pressure?
posted by PartiallyDeflected on 8-5-2008 at 9:50 pm