10 points to the first person who can correctly tell me what would happen if..?

Question

an astronaut took off his/her space suit outside of the shuttle or space station.

I see a couple of very, very close answers

I'll post the answer as soon as I can choose a best answer.

Answer 1

From

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html

How long can a human live unprotected in space?

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) 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. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get a very bad sunburn.

Answer 2

Basically, all of the gases trapped in your body will want to escape into the vacum of space. The air in your lungs, the air dissolved in your bloodstream and the air utilized in your tissues, will all find it's way out of your body and into space. This will cause a bubbling of the blood and rapid onset of caission's disease (the bends) and massive embolisms.

Fluids exposed to low pressures have low evaporation points. so while the blood is not boiling, per se, it will begin to evaporate. Rapid decompression causes a sudden drop in temperatures as well. Freezing wont be far off.

Answer 3

In theory... Any combination of the four things listed below will occur:

(A) They will explode like a balloon -- In space there is no atmospheric force pushing against our bodies to counteract the internal forces that push outward; That is the reason why their suits are pressurized.

(B) They will suffocate -- Because there is simply nothing to breathe.

(C) They will freeze solid.

(D) Their blood (and other bodilly fluids) will boil and they will start to cook like a giant piece of meat.

The exact outcome depends more on WHERE they in space at the instant in which they are expoused.

Answer 4

Their blood will seep out of hid pours and he would still be alive during part of this and their would be a great wind trying to blow hin out of the suit. He would evtually die of axphication and the loss of blood and nutrients.

Answer 5

They would die within 30 seconds from asphyxiation

Answer 6

Decompression of the body. Ouch.

Answer 7

He will die in 30 to 60 sec boiling in there own blood.

Answer 8

Even though Zhimbo pulled it verbatim from a NASA website, he is correct.

Answer 9

Johnny B got it right,his blood would boil.(but I want the points)

Answer 10

He would die because of the freezing temperatures and asphyxiation.

Primarily the asphyxiation.