What would happen if you were unprotected in space?

Question

Besides the answer "you would die" what events would lead up to death?

Answer 1

NASA has a detailed answer to that exact question: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

Ultimately, you die from lack of oxygen...it's not nearly as gruesome as some folks are answering here and not as Hollywood usually depicts it.

Answer 2

Your blood would "boil" - that is, the gases inside your tissues would expand because of the lack of atmospheric pressure. It is similar to when a deep sea diver surfaces frfom a deep dive, he may suffer the bends, which is when the nitrogen gas in your blood expands and basically causes littles infarcts all over the body - veryk painful and dangerous. In space, however,this continues past this until your organs mayh rupture internally, your eyes will burst, your brain willl swell inside the skull,etc. Lets take this one step further and assume he has no space suit on at all, he would burn on one side, and freeze on the other because of the solar radiation on the side facing the sun to > 250degrees, while the side away from the sun would freeze. As if this were not enough, the cosmic radiation would eventually kill you from over exposure to radiation.

Answer 3

If you were in space just as you are now on Earth, naked (naked in the sense that the only thing covering your body would be your clothes), a few things would begin to happen immediately.

Because there is no oxygen, you'd begin to suffocate, and there'd be a tightening feeling in the center of your chest that would only grow as time passed. The second more painful thing would be the boiling of your inner body fluids. Everything liquid in your body, from your blood to the water in your eyes would start to boil out. Here's what I mean by boil:

On Earth, we depend more than we think on the surrounding atmospheric pressure (about 14.1lbs per sq. in) on our bodies to keep what should be liquid, and what should be solid as such. In the abscence of that atmosphere, there would be no pressure holding those parts of your body (our blood, etc) in those crucial states, and they'd have no choice but to physical change to gaseous states. No heat whatsoever would be necessary for this to happen.

Evaporation would be one result of this boiling process, and from any orifice of your body, the water within you would begin doing so. Evaporation is a cooling process, so the longer the water in your body evaporates, the cooler and cooler you'd become. Eventually, you'd freeze because of this even if our surroundings were at room temperature. Though because space is at an unbelievable low temperature of 3 K (-270 degrees Centigrade), you'd freeze almost instantly...that is, if we don't explode first due to the boiling of your fluids...

Thank God for spacesuits, eh...

Answer 4

The first think that would happen is that you would just blow up because the pressure inside of your body (created by air, water, blood, and other things) would be too much for your skin to handle AND there will be nothing outside to push it back in.

Second, you would freeze because it is might cold there (or boil depending how close you are to the sun).

Third, you can suffocate because there is absolutely no oxygen available up there to breathe.

Fourth, radiation and things like the great cosmic rays would turn you into a mutant like the fantastic four...but don't count on it because you would be looooooooong dead before any of that has any effect.

Answer 5

You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness. Various minor problems start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly.

Answer 6

Among other things, your blood will vaporise due to reduce pressure. The boiling point of a liquid such as your blood increases with pressure and decreases with pressure. If water (like your blood) boils at 100 degrees Celsius a atmospheric pressure, it could boil at -40 degrees Celsius while in space. Certainly the temperature out there is colder than that.

Answer 7

Human blood boils at a temperature of 98.6 degrees F at an altitude of 63,000 feet. (I knew that piece of trivia would come in handy someday!!!)
Since space has even less pressure than the stratosphere, your blood would boil away in no time, making your body burst at the seams like a hotdog that's been in the microwave too long!
(How long you would suffer before lack of oxygen shut your brain down, I do not know...)

Answer 8

Your entire body would depressureize. There's no gravity or atmosphere in space, so your body (which is actually under enormous strain right now from miles and miles of air on top of it) would just expand until the obvious problems occur.

Answer 9

It would be my luck to get struck by a meteorite about the same size as a volkswagon and traveling at 60,000 km/h... and it would splatter me all over the upper atmosphere... seeding the clouds below with my blood and guts... and causing rain on someone that is more unlucky than me!!

JUST KIDDING!!! *GriN*

Answer 10

Your smaller blood vessels burst in your brain and eyes and surface of your skin most likely causing unconsciousness. You then suffocate and freeze to death. Unless you are getting sunlight, and you might not freeze so fast, but you would suffocate.