What happens to people when they are exposed to the vacuum of space?

Question

I've seen it in a few movies but its always different. Do you die and freeze up immediately? Or is it possible to survive after a short period of time? Has any humans ever died because of this or have this happen to them?

Answer 1

On a space station orbiting Saturn, a man inside a punctured spacesuit swells to monstrous proportions and explodes ( See the movie 'Outland'). On Mars, the eyes of a man exposed to the near-vacuum of the martian atmosphere, pop out of his head and dangle by their optic nerves on the sides of his face (See the movie 'Total Recall'). Enroute to jupiter on the Discovery spacecraft, Astronaut Dave Bowman space walks for 15 seconds with no helmet, and in no apparent pain, succeeds in reentering the Discovery through an open hatch ( See the movie,'2001:A Space Odyssey'). Fortunately, only in science fiction stories do humans ever come into direct contact with the vacuum of space, but these contacts are often portrayed as having horrific consequences.

To experience the vacuum is to die, but not quite in the grisly manner portrayed in the movies Total Recall and Outland. The truth of the matter seems to be closer to what Stanley Kubrik had in mind in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

According to the 1966 edition of the McGraw/Hill Encyclopedia of Space, when animals are subjected to explosive decompression to a vacuum-like state, they do not suddenly balloon-up or have their eyes pop out of their heads. It is, in fact, virtually impossible to compress or expand organic tissues in this way. Instead, death arises from the response of the free gasses trapped within the tissues.

If decompression takes 1/2 second or longer, even lung tissue remains intact. When the ambient pressure falls below 47 mm of mercury (similar to the pressure at the surface of Mars), the water inside all tissues passes into a vapor state beginning at the skin surface. This causes the collapse of surface cells and the loss of huge amounts of body heat via evaporation. After six seconds, the process of cell collapse involves the heart and lungs causing circulatory interruption, followed by acute anoxia, convulsions and the relaxation of the bowel muscles. After 15 seconds, mental confusion sets-in, and after 20 seconds you become unconscious. You can survive this for about 80 seconds if a pressure higher than about 47 mm mercury is then reestablished, otherwise, you turn into freeze-dried dead meat on a stick.

Answer 2

There has never been a decompression accident like this in space. If it were to happen, depending on how far from the sun you were, you may freeze solid before much exploding can occur. Other than that, your lungs would indeed rapidly expel all the gas within them, though since they could leave through your mouth, this may not cause the lungs to explode. However, the alveoli that represent most of their internal surface would probably be destroyed pretty quickly.
You will not burst- human skin is very tough and would be able to withstand the pressure difference. However, your capillaries would probably burst, as would your ear drums,
your eyes might pop out, and most of your internal fluids would probably leave via your various mucous membranes- mouth, nose, ****, eyes etc. This wouldn't be an especially fast process, and oxygen deprivation would probably be the first thing to kill you. There was a scene in 'Event Horizon' (generally a dire, derivative film that I cannot in good conscience recommend), in which one of the crew suffers decompression. They show what is probably a fairly accurate portrayal of its effects.
The least credible portrayal I've seen was in 'Outland', in which someone's suit was opened and their head burst. No.

Answer 3

The moment you're exposed to the vacuum of space, your body would NOT actually inflate and explode, because the body is a surprisingly contained system. The air in your lungs and digestive track would quickly rush out, meanwhile, your body's soft and moist tissues would lose water, making your eyes dry out and swell up. As more and more water (and blood from the popped blood vessels) is pulled to the surface of your eyes, it would vaporize, and the decrease in pressure would bring your eyes and lips's temperature down to near freezing. Your body would then inflate to about twice it's normal size as gasses in your blood came out of solutions and slowly evaporating away, cooling your skin considerably. Within about fifteen seconds, you would go unconscious because of the fact that no oxygen would be reaching your brain. For about ninety seconds or so, you would still technically be alive, but you wouldn't be experiencing anything. That would be the end of your life, for all intents and purposes. For a while, your dead body would stay quite warm, internally speaking, because in the near vacuum of space, there isn't much matter to conduct or convect heat away from you. Instead, you would only really lose heat from radiation from the sun, a much less efficient method. it would take hours for your body to cool down to the temperature of space, and at that point, you would be nothing but a dried-up, desiccated piece of slightly bloated and stretched human jerky.

Answer 4

Believe it or not, this has been a raging controversy on many sites including Urban Folklore and such. Apparenly, you do not "blow up" in a vacuum, as depicted in many SF films, (the last one being Alien: Resurrection. Neither do your eyes pop out or your blood boil. OTOH, it's not good for you either. Well before you died of oxygen deprivation, it is likely your lungs would haemmorhage and your ear drums burst. But it is not as radical as some suppose.

Answer 5

Actually they die. Its bcos there is no Oxygen there. This stops the oxidation process of the body. The live for a very short period of time

Answer 6

They die because of intense heat,cold or no air. You should expand because there is air in you and none outside your lungs might burst

Answer 7

Unless they had empty lungs and were breathing out, their lungs would explode, and even if they were, their blood would boil, and they would soon die.

Answer 8

think freeze-dried

Answer 9

they die.