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Surviving in Space Without a Spacesuit
Geoffrey writes "The recent movie Sunshine features a scene (echoing the famous scene in 2001: a Space Odyssey) in which two astronauts have to cross from one ship to another without spacesuits. But, can you survive in space without a spacesuit?
Morgan Smith, writing in Slate, asks whether this is realistic, and concludes: "Yes, for a very short time.""
Lots of SF shows have done it. Battlestar Galactica did it as well.
The cake is a pie
But there is almost nothing to conduct the heat. You can survive a long time in 40F degree air. Now just in 40F degree water and see how long it takes before hypothermia sets in. The difference is conduction. There would be (almost) nothing to carry away your body heat in space.
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You can't forget about the extreme cold. Space is a very, very cold place. One might think frostbite could be an issue.
It's not quite that easy. Space is not cold (nor warm). Things in space may be warm or cold. How do you lose heat in space? Well, there's no convection because there's no air. You would only lose heat via radiation, a much slower process. For the purposes of this discussion, I think you could ignore temperature, as you would perish well before a drop in heat got ya...
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Exactly. The pressure differential is what will more likely kill you, though even that will take time, given the tension of cell membranes. Combine the temperature and pressure differential and you're looking at a short window of maybe 30 - 60 seconds where you get by without major physical damage and perhaps 1 - 2 minutes with some sort of major but survivable damage. And don't forget long term effects, as you will be exposed to intense solar radiation with only minimal protection.
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Actually no, frostbite isn't an issue. In vacuum, there is no heat transfer through convection. The only way to lose heat is through thermal radiation.
Convection is what will freeze you when you fall in ice-cold water.
Radiation is what will cool the beer you put in the reflective satellite dish at night.
In fact, human space modules (such as the ISS, but the ISS has to cope with atmospheric drag too, IIRC), have trouble dealing with excess heat, and have to use large surfaces to maximize radiation output
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From TFA:
"One NASA test subject who survived a 1965 accident in which he was exposed to near-vacuum conditions felt the saliva on his tongue begin to boil before he lost consciousness after 14 seconds"
sounds like after a few seconds in empty space, things get painful and gross!
stuff |
Explosive
Evacuation
Bowels.
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Seeing as how the easiest path to vacuum for air in your lungs would be through your mouth, not through your chest wall, I can't see any explosion happening. If you attempted to hold your breath during a transition to vacuum you probably feel something like a sharp kick to the chest/diaphragm as all the air is forced out of your lungs through your nose/mouth.