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Surviving in Space Without a Spacesuit

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i'll-just-wear-a-nice-sweater dept.

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.""

7 of 481 comments (clear)

  1. Re:SG-1 had a similar scene by ucblockhead · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Lots of SF shows have done it. Battlestar Galactica did it as well.

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  2. Re:Imagine drowning if you couldn't hold your brea by MyLongNickName · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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  3. Re:Imagine drowning if you couldn't hold your brea by Zenaku · · Score: 4, Insightful
    As per the article:

    What about the frostbite? That's actually the least plausible result of Sunshine's suitless spacewalk. The cold wouldn't cause Mace too much harm in just 15 seconds, even if he encountered the very lowest temperatures in space. That's because heat leaves the body very slowly in a vacuum.
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  4. Re:Imagine drowning if you couldn't hold your brea by pegr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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...

  5. Re:Imagine drowning if you couldn't hold your brea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    we should have a new mod: -1 RTFA

  6. Re:Imagine drowning if you couldn't hold your brea by Billosaur · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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  7. Re:Imagine drowning if you couldn't hold your brea by AceJohnny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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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