What would happen to you if you were chucked naked out of a spaceship into outer space?

Answer 1

The Answer
From the now extinct page http://medlib/jsc.nasa.gov/intro/vacuum.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.

At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

Aviation Week and Space Technology (02/13/95) printed a letter by Leonard Gordon which reported another vacuum-packed anecdote:

"The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect. However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute jump, the hand returned to normal."

References:

Frequently Asked Questions on sci.space.*/sci.astro

The Effect on the Chimpanzee of Rapid Decompression to a Near Vacuum, Alfred G. Koestler ed., NASA CR-329 (Nov 1965).

Experimental Animal Decompression to a Near Vacuum Environment, R.W. Bancroft, J.E. Dunn, eds, Report SAM-TR-65-48 (June 1965), USAF School of Aerospace Medicine, Brooks AFB, Texas.

Survival Under Near-Vacuum Conditions in the article "Barometric Pressure," by C.E. Billings, Chapter 1 of Bioastronautics Data Book, Second edition, NASA SP-3006, edited by James F. Parker Jr. and Vita R. West, 1973.

Personal communication, James Skipper, NASA/JSC Crew Systems Division, December 14, 1994.

Henry Spencer wrote the following for the sci.space FAQ:

You would probably pass out in around 15 seconds because your lungs are now exchanging oxygen out of the blood. The reason that a human does not burst is that our skin has some strength. For instance compressed oxygen in a steel tank may be at several hundreds times the pressure of the air outside and the strength of the steel keeps the cylinder from breaking. Although our skin is not steel, it still is strong enough to keep our bodies from bursting in space.

Also, the vapor pressure of water at 37 C is 47 mm Hg. As long as you keep your blood-pressure above that (which you will unless you go deep into shock) your blood will not boil. My guess is that the body seems to regulate blood pressure as a gauge, rather than absolute pressure (e.g. your blood vessels don't collapse when you dive 10 feet into a pool).

The saliva on your tongue might boil, however.

For more information and references, see http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis/vacuum.html

Answer 2

Contrary to what you may have learned from pop culture, if thrown out an airlock without any clothing on, you won't explode. Your skin is amazingly elastic and surprisingly strong.

If you tried to hold your breath, the sudden pressure differential would cause your lungs to rupture, and you'd die horribly. Not that you wouldn't die horribly anyway, but it'd be a little less painful if you didn't try to hold your breath. Due to the sudden drop in your blood pressure, and the cessation of oxygen coming into your circulatory system, you'd have around nine to twelve seconds before you lost consciousness.

After this, you'll develop a nasty case of the bends, due to the evolution of gas bubbles within your bloodstream. (It won't boil, though, because at your body's regular blood pressure, the boiling point of water is still above human body temperature.) Your body will swell without some sort of elastic garment, and the gas bubbles in your bloodstream will make the blood pressure in your veins equal to that of your arteries, and circulation will cease. Four minutes later, you die of suffocation.

Answer 3

Well, first of all, they would never be able to chuck you out of the space ship. in order to deliver you into outer space, they would have to decompress (vent) the chamber you were in so that it equalled the "zero atmosphere" of outer space. That process would turn you into a mass of exploded jelly, blood, guts, and bones. So they could never "chuck" you out. They would have to scoop you out with a spatula and shovel. It would not be a nice thing.

Answer 4

The human body has constant pressure on it due to the atmosphere and gravity of earth. Take away this pressure and........Space is a vaccuum. So, basically, you'd expand outward to fill that void and eventually explode. During that time, your blood boils because of the pressures and expansions placed upon it. There are some other gruesome details about bodily fluids escaping but.....naw! Cheers!

Answer 5

you'd die.


and your space - shipmates would either be throwing a space party, or wondering why they chucked you out as they plunge at millions of miles an hour towards some huge planet, realising you were the only one who knew how to drive the damn thing. Your choice, really.

Answer 6

The air would rush out of your lungs.
Depending on which way you were pointed ,you would either crash into the space ship or barrel away from it,which wouldn't make any difference to you.
Luckily,by this time you would be unconscious.
Nitrogen would start boiling out of your blood,you would begin to dehydrate,the suns rays would start to burn you.
For all intents and purpose you would be in rough shape,you would go down hill from then on.
All in all you would travel merrily on your way to eternity.

Answer 7

I'd roll in a ball as I'm extremely shy and I don't want Earthlings watch my naked body on their televisions then demand at least a dressing gown or something to cover up. Anyways, I wouldn't want to catch a cold....

Answer 8

It would be like a reverse birth: you came in naked and breathed your first breath in a matter of seconds, and you'd go out naked taking your last breath in a few seconds. And in each case, you won't know what hit you.

Answer 9

Because of the instant and extreme drop in pressure all the gases in your blood stream will come out of solution, boil.

While the extreme cold of space will just as quickly turn you into a human ice cube.

Either way you are dead faster than you can scream, which by the way would be impossible, and if it where no body would hear you anyway, vacuums are funny that way.

Answer 10

Millions of people would look up into the sky and see a naked man floating... and who knows, your dead corpse could be the next constellation in teh beauuuutiful night sky