Comments on: I abhor a vacuum

By: Tobi

Tobi — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 14:46:45 +0000

I had a middle school science teacher who would always say “Nothing sucks; everything blows.”

By: GQ

GQ — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:13:57 +0000

A little late for the discussion but someone suffers a “space hicky” in the movie “Event Horizon”.

And doesn’t Tim Robbins get that intense sunburn thing in some movie? Can’t remeber which one but its something about a mission to Mars…

By: marko

marko — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:32:36 +0000

I’m in the 1:17 group, too. But hey, there are many wonderful things you can do in 77 seconds: watch your whole life roll out before your eyes, for example. I’m 37 years old, so that would mean roughly 175 days each second. That’s what I would call fast forward.

Of those 77s, I’d be watching myself eat 5s, on the train 3s, walk 4s, messing around with computers 25s and asleep 26s. The remaining 14s ain’t none of anybodies business.

By: Emily

Emily — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:50:30 +0000

This page at NASA says that hemorrhaging / freezing wouldn’t really be as much of a problem as, well, suffocation. It also says that holding your breath is a bad idea.This is SO great! Awesome information.

By: Charon

Charon — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 06:55:14 +0000

Space isn’t a vacuum, at least not a perfect one. There’s a lot of gas out there, although it’s not very dense. There are many definitions of temperature (e.g., brightness temperature and spin temperature), but they don’t agree in systems that aren’t in thermodynamic equilibrium (like the interstellar medium). The ISM is never cooler than about 10K, though most areas are much hotter (~5000K is considered just “warm”), though as Torbjörn Larsson points out the (brightness) temperature can never drop below that of the CMB (2.7K).

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 21:16:32 +0000

@ Gary Ansorge:

VACUUM HAS NO TEMPERATURE

Of course it has, as everything else that interacts with matter. Vacuum consists of all fields, and fields have temperature as observable with a thermometer (i.e. interacting with matter). As it happens, cosmological vacuum has the temperature of the microwave background radiation. In fact, there was a recent thread here on the subject.

By: Larian LeQuella

Larian LeQuella — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:12:33 +0000

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By: Don Snow

Don Snow — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 06:54:32 +0000

With hyperventilation, I endured faintness after 5 seconds and held my breath for a wimpy 47 seconds.
Without hyperventilation, I endured faintness after 10 seconds and held my breath for a limp 34 secons.

Seesh, I once could hold a note for forty beats, 2/2 time.
190lbs
bronchitis as long as I smoke
I smoke
little exercises (mostly at work).

So, I wouldn’t suffer in space that long, then.

Is the moral of this, be careful with whom you rocket into space?
I’ll stay on earth, thanks. No worries about vacuum.

By: pcarini

pcarini — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 02:47:18 +0000

This page at NASA says that hemorrhaging / freezing wouldn't really be as much of a problem as, well, suffocation. It also says that holding your breath is a bad idea. Another interesting bit of data is what happened to Joseph Kittinger's hand when his suit glove had a breach during his ascent for the highest parachute jump. Which is nothing, really... he couldn't feel it after he landed but it was fine by the next day.

By: Manual para sobreviver no vácuo do espaço infinito | Bender Blog

Manual para sobreviver no vácuo do espaço infinito | Bender Blog — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 01:59:30 +0000

[...] Vi primeiro aqui. [...]

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:49:03 +0000

Another note: VACUUM HAS NO TEMPERATURE,,,

GAry 7

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:48:00 +0000

Pulmonary embolism is the principal problem with holding your breath. A partial pressure equivalent to rising 4 feet in water, which is about 2 PSI, differential between air pressure inside the lungs and the pressure outside, can force air bubbles into the space between the lung and the lungs surrounding membrane . It can also force air bubbles directly into the pulmonary artery, which might kill one a bit faster. It had occurred to me that people who are able to survive w/o supplemental oxygen atop Mt. Everest, with a partial pressure of O2 about half that at sea level, might be able to survive breathing pure O2 in vacuum w/o a pressure suit, though they might not be able to perform useful work.

Partial pressure of O2 at sea level is 21% of normal atmospheric pressure, or about 2.7 PSI.

GAry 7

By: RL

RL — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:55:19 +0000

There aren’t very many good ways to die. I wonder if you’d at least get a good albiet rather short view of the stars?

By: IBY

IBY — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:46:56 +0000

Sounds like an unpleasant way to die. I would want to lose constiousness immediately, not in 15 seconds. That sounds a lot, considering you will have an eardrum pop, get dehydrated, bleed through all the capillaries, and not so nice stuff happening in other orifices… By the way, wouldn’t you also burn or freeze to death thanks to the temperature extreme of space? Maybe this quizz assumes space is room temperature.

By: zandperl

zandperl — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:11:45 +0000

Andy Beaton:
Unless it’s random, then it’s just a matter of how many different ways you can answer the quiz. Each question has a different number of answers: 2, 7, 5, 3, 3, 2. Multiply them to get all the possible ways to fill out the quiz to get a maximum of 1260 possible different results. It’s likely much lower than that, since chances are some of the different times you’ll get from different questions will be the same, but that’s just an absolute max.

By: The Evil Eyebrow » Because Phil Plait Did It

The Evil Eyebrow » Because Phil Plait Did It — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:06:50 +0000

[...] Phil Plait did it, so I have to do it, too. [...]

By: Joe Meils

Joe Meils — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:31:26 +0000

Oh, yeah, and then there’s the ridiculous scenes in “Total Recall” where people are out on the surface, sans suit, looking like those toys you squeeze and make the eyes/ears bug out, and 30 seconds later (after the machine creates an atmosphere) they’re up and walking around, talking… not even a headache, or the occasional fart due to difference in pressure…

By: Joe Meils

Joe Meils — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:26:55 +0000

Here’s an interesting question: how many people have actually dies from this? Seems to be there was a russian soyuz flight that lost pressure explosively during re-entry, but other than that, has anyone ever actually died in the vaccuum of space?

By: Andy Beaton

Andy Beaton — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:33:35 +0000

1m17s as well. I wonder how many actual results there can be?
Well, it’s nice to know I can get back to the spaceship by flinging away the body of one of the 1m11s suckers.

By: Todd W.

Todd W. — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:27:44 +0000

@Ibid

I was wondering how long it would take before a Hitchhiker’s Guide reference popped up.

By: !AstralProjectile

!AstralProjectile — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:18:09 +0000

Beverly and …Geordi? needed to depressurize the cargo hold and she advises them to hold their breath. As others have said this would probably pop your lungs. My SCUBA instructor says about 1/3 ATM is enough.

Elwood:
One of Clarke’s characters got a bad sunburn when they were building the communications satellite. One of John Varley’s characters, in The Golden Globe states that sunburn will kill you faster than the vacuum.

By: josephbales.com :: Blog Archive :: How long can you survive in space?

josephbales.com :: Blog Archive :: How long can you survive in space? — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:29:10 +0000

[...] How long can you survive in space? Courtesy of the Bad Astronomer: [...]

By: Ibid

Ibid — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:15:26 +0000

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy says that if you hold a lungful of air you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However it goes on to say that what with space being the mind boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship within those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and sixty-seven thousand seven hundred and nine to one against.

By: RL

RL — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:06:16 +0000

@ Michael L. Oh! Yeah, I think she was out there way longer than a few minutes. At least that time, someone on Galactica noticed!

By: Shoeshine Boy

Shoeshine Boy — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:01:29 +0000

That’s just great. I’d get 1:29 of gasping and flailing-around for air that isn’t there.