Comments on: Burning question #234: how deadly is space?

By: PartiallyDeflected

PartiallyDeflected — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 02:50:14 +0000

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?

By: frodopal

frodopal — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:05:57 +0000

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

By: Chris Higgins

Chris Higgins — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 21:27:18 +0000

There’s a pretty dramatic moment involving that “ten seconds of useful time” bit in Season 3 of the new Battlestar Galactica.

By: Zach

Zach — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:28:36 +0000

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.

By: Ransom Riggs

Ransom Riggs — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:52:57 +0000

@Rob —

Whoops. Thanks. Duh.

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 15:46:50 +0000

Hey guys, 200K is only 1% of 20M.

By: Dion

Dion — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 01:13:42 +0000

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.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:28:40 +0000

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.

By: Marc

Marc — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 19:54:09 +0000

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.

By: Jessy

Jessy — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 17:44:31 +0000

Maybe it just smells like burnt space.