Why is Space a Vacuum

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
You won't 'blow up' like a frog with an M80 in his mouth, but you will suffer damage from the pressure differential. Crew escaping from submarines are taught to exhale as they ascend or else their lungs will burst -- not 'explode' with a boom, but yes, actually burst from the excess pressure.

Actually from what sites I could google the damage from the pressure difference is slight. Although I was apparently incorrect about holding your breath. They say that might cause some lung tissue damage. I'm not sure how severe though. It might be worth losing some lung cells to hold your breath. If you can't hold your breath then you are looking at just a few seconds before unconciousness, although brain death will still take a couple minutes.

I was also wrong about freezing, since I forgot that vacuum is a very poor heat conductor. In fact if exposed to sunlight you'd get a pretty bad sunburn in a relativly short amount of time. But if you are unconcious, and if noone was around to pull you in you'd stay that way permenantly, the burn wouldn't have much effect.

[Fyron]

Being in a vacuum makes the gasses and liquids diffuse through your skin rather rapidly. They do have a massive number of pores, which are just holes, after all. You will not explode or anything, but you will not Last as long as just being under water.

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Being in a vacuum makes the gasses and liquids diffuse through your skin rather rapidly. They do have a massive number of pores, which are just holes, after all. You will not explode or anything, but you will not Last as long as just being under water.

No, that's simply not true. Going from normal pressure to zero pressure is not as bad as going from very high pressure to normal pressure. You will experience some slight effects, but not the debilitating conditions that a diver coming straight up will.

Your skin doesn't difuse liquids very rapidly at all. And your pores aren't simply holes in the skin. They are the external openings of your sweat glands. They don't diffuse any liquids under normal circumstances expect what is in your sweat glands. The vacuum of space isn't normal circumstances, but it's not going to suck your blood out your pores or anything like that.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

in one of the short stories i read, people evacuated from one ship in space to another after expelling air from their lungs. no-one was in space more than 30 seconds. feasible?

side note: the book mentioned a technique where you breath heavily a few times then expell the air from your lungs. i tried this and was able to hold my breath for 20 seconds at the start and after some practice, 35 seconds. it really is easier, despite sounding counter-productive.

[Ragnarok]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
side note: the book mentioned a technique where you breath heavily a few times then expell the air from your lungs. i tried this and was able to hold my breath for 20 seconds at the start and after some practice, 35 seconds. it really is easier, despite sounding counter-productive.

Competition free divers use this technique I believe. They basically hyperventilate themselves by taking deep breaths for a couple minutes. What this is doing is it expands the lungs and makes them larger, giving you more storage for oxygen. If you do this technique too long though you could passout from the hyperventilation. I did it once and was able to extend my ability to hold my breath to somewhere around a full minute, perhaps even longer.

[Fyron]

Geo... your skin will also rupture with many tiny holes as the molecules inside your body attempt to diffuse from areas of very high concentration to areas of 0 concentration. Skin is a very weak barrier. It is, at best, no better than going from high pressure to low pressure. Of course, it is exactly the same as divers coming up from high pressure to low pressure...

[Fyron]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
in one of the short stories i read, people evacuated from one ship in space to another after expelling air from their lungs. no-one was in space more than 30 seconds. feasible?

No. 0 pressure environment is entirely different from high pressure environment. High pressure environment pushes things into the system, low pressure environment pulls things out of it.