What happens when u get physically exposed in space without any protective gear?

Question

Be a little bit detailed.

Answer 1

You won't explode, your connective tissues are strong enough to hold your body together, but you may bloat up. You'll lose consciousness within 15 or so seconds. If the decompression was rapid and you held your breath, your lungs may rupture which could accelerate your death.

Air bubbles would form in your tissues and your blood. Your blood wouldn't all boil because the blood vessels would contain the gasses which would provide counterpressure to keep it all from evaporating. Some capillaries may burst and some blood may seep from these areas. Your eyes won't pop out or spew blood everywhere.

You won't freeze to death either. Space is "cold" but not in the traditional sense. There is no air in a vacuum to carry heat away from your body so you will only lose heat through radiation which is fairly slow. You will die from asphyxiation long before the cold becomes dangerous. Any moisture on your skin may become like frost but this is no real danger to you. In fact, if you happen to be in sunlight during the exposure you'd probably warm up rather than freeze. Generally speaking if you are not brought back into normal conditions within about 90 seconds or so you will suffer irreversable damage and die quickly after that. Since you will lose consciousness within 15 to 20 seconds you will often need the assistance of someone else to save you.

if you have a supply of air while your body is exposed to vacuum you can survive for much longer but it is not good for you.

Answer 2

You suffocate very quickly, and then your body freezes. Eventually the water sublimes out of you and you wind up sort of like a mummy. It's a fairly quick death. Something similar happens every now and then in farm country when someone goes down in a manure pit without turning on fans to blow air in and collapses. Another goes in to get him and collapses. Soon you have five dead people in a manure pit and someone figures out we better stop sending people in and call the fire company.

In the case of high altitude flight, impairment occurs within seconds. You find this cited at the end of the accident report of the jet that crashed with golfer Payne Stewart aboard in 1999, "Timeliness in Donning Oxygen Masks."

http://www.ntsb.gov/publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm

Answer 3

I've wondered about this myself. I believe you would lose water through your skin, all the air would be quickly pulled out of your lungs, your capillaries would burst, as the outside pressure suddenly drops to zero... You would pretty much leak all the fluids in your body, quickly and violently. It's pretty much the opposite of all that is good in the universe.

The only detailed cinematic depiction of this, that I know of, was in the film 'Event Horizon', from 1997. When he saw that he was about to be ejected into space, he blew ALL the air out of his lungs and shut his eyes tight. Still, blood started pouring from his eyes, and all the veins in his body began to surface. Pretty gruesome stuff. It's all theoretical, unless we want to try it out with animals, which we definitely, absolutely should not (but I wouldn't be surprised if we did anyway, if we haven't already which, again, I would not be surprised by).

Answer 4

The air would rush out of your lungs.
All the moisture in your body would begin to evaporate immediately.
Bacteria wouldn't account for much they are vulnerable to empty space also.
Enzymes, ptomaines would begin to mummify your body,you would start to shrink and in a short time you would be a little hunk of leathery material that may resemble a shriveled up human body.

Answer 5

You would die very fast.

WHY ???

1. There are not oxygen. You need to breath Oxygen
2. When the pressure is reduced, water boiling point is lowered. In the space the pressure is zero, and your blood would boil unless you would be frozen
3. There are high energy radiations (UV, X rays) that destroy your DNA and kills your cells.
4. There aren't gravity. To be in a gravity free environment, a special training is necessary or you get dizzy. If you be in a zero gravity too much time, your bones become fragile, and you would need a re-adapting time before return to the Earth.

Answer 6

I heard they actually tested this during the early NASA astronaut experiments. Search google. The answers are pretty acurate. Suffication would occur first and would be the primary cause of death. It would be a lot like being attacked by a Python on a freezing cold night underwater...yikes.

Answer 7

You can die by:
- asphyxiation - no oxygen in space
- freezing (if you're in shadow) or boiling (if you're in sunlight)
- hemorrhaging - the absence of air pressure outside your body will cause the internal pressure inside your body to rupture blood vessels (such as in the eyes and nose), and if your skin is particularly weak in one area that could blow out (like a balloon)

Detailed enough?

Answer 8

This might be the next form of capitol punishment. What a way to go huh? Lethal injection? Hanging? forget that.. the vacuum of space!

Answer 9

The end result is you blow up. Internal pressure verses vacuum
equals explosive decompression.

Answer 10

Plain and simple, you explode.