What happens to a person's body if they left a spacecraft without a suit to protect them?

Question

Would they suffocate from no oxygen? Would the vacuum suck the air out of their body? How long would it take to die? Would they just die from exposure to the cold?

Answer 1

http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/scienceques2004/20041105.htm

Answer 2

There's a lot of popular science fiction myths surrounding what happens when exposed to a vacuum, from the idea that you're body would explode to the one that you'd instantly freeze solid from the coldness of space. Neither of these are true.

If you have any significant quantity of air in your lungs when exposed to a vacuum (such as if you're holding your breath), the loss of external pressure would force the air out of your body. The more that was there, the more violent this would be and it would probably be painful and could damage your lungs, even cause death from the damage. Essentially, this means that if you expect to be exposed to vacuum imminently, you should push as much air out of your lungs as you can, to avoid hurting yourself.

You would lose consciousness within seconds of exposure generally, but you won't die usually for a few minutes. Of course, in a vacuum there is no air containing oxygen to breath, death will usually be caused by asphyxiation. The lack of external pressure can cause your blood to boil causing ebullism (gas bubbles in the bloodstream).

Space is cold as they say, but because there is no real matter to carry heat away from your body, you would only lose body heat through radiative processes, which is relatively slow. Moisture on your skin will quickly turn to frost usually but this is not much of a danger. If exposed to the sun, depending on the distance, you might actually get warmer, similar to how we commonly feel the heat of the suns rays on us during a clear day.

So long as you are provided breathable air within a relatively short time after exposure (90 seconds or so) you will generally recover completely from the ordeal. Longer exposures generally result in death from which resuscitation has never succeeded.

Your eardrums can be ruptured by rapid decompression, and soft tissues may bruise and seep blood as well. Rapid decompression is often a surprise which will cause stress which accelerates oxygen consumption which can lead to death sooner.

Answer 3

The air would be forced out of their lungs.
They would be unconscious very quickly.
Nitrogen would boil into their blood and things would go downhill from there

Answer 4

After a minute and a half you become a meat sickle.

Answer 5

Their body would be REALLY REALLY pissed!!!