It makes my Blood boil!!

[AdamW]

It makes my Blood boil!!

Just thought I would use this as an excuse to dispell a myth...

Contrary to popular belief, if you were up in space, and climbed out of the airlock au natural, your blood would not in fact boil. The reason being, our circulatory systems are under pressure and are contained by bloodvessels, skin, muscles etc. You only need to maintain a pressure of 47mm of Mercury (about 0.9 PSI) to prevent it boiling at body temperature.

In fact, providing you don't try to hold your breath, 30 seconds unprotected in space is unlikely to cause injury. See, so the writer of Event Horizon got his facts straight.

 

[kendor]

And 2001

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

In fact, providing you don't try to hold your breath, 30 seconds unprotected in space is unlikely to cause injury. See, so the writer of Event Horizon got his facts straight.

I don't think you've thought this through though Adam. So before jumping out of the Mig 25's cockpit on that vacation you've just booked. You may want to consider the effects of radiation and extreme cold before doing anything to rash!

 

[AdamW]

You may want to consider the effects of radiation and extreme cold before doing anything to rash!

Well, of course I considered these two factors :

Radiation: There are currently no manned space vehicles with the capability of flying in an orbit high enough to cross the Van Allen Belt, thus VA radiation wouldn't be a problem. One is also well within the magnetosphere shielded from the solar wind and much of the cosmic rays flitting about.

Extreme cold: When one runs around outside, naked, during winter, the reason you get cold is due to conduction of heat away from your body by the air. You wouldn't get that in space. Now, you would get evaporative cooling due to sweat on your skin, but let's assume you aren't sweating too much. Despite floating in space naked. The radiative loss of your body heat wouldn't be any different between naked in winter on Earth, and naked in space.

It does beg the question though, would floating in the vacuum of space cause a "swedish-made" effect on certain parts of your body, or would this not occur because the same pressure would be acting on all parts of your body?

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

Radiation: There are currently no manned space vehicles with the capability of flying in an orbit high enough to cross the Van Allen Belt,

Was that named after a famous rock band?

 

[big-all]

could be van hallen and "jump"

big all

 

[AdamW]

Yes. You see, what happened was, in the 1980s the band "Van Allen" were playing a gig. Dave Lee Roth did one of his famous high kicks, but accidentally caught Eddie Van Allen's belt on the end of his foot. Being one of Dave's amazing super special high-kicks, the belt ripped off and headed off at a trajectory and speed sufficient to allow the belt to orbit the earth in a toroidal shape at around 4000 miles altitude.

Now, that would be the end of the story, but unfortunately as a hard-rocking type, Eddie Van Allen's belt buckle was a studded one made of Plutonium 238. Due to the relatively short half-life of Pu-238, the intensity of the radiation given off by the belt is quite high, thus harmful to satellites and people.

When charged particles produced by the belt's radioactivity hit the earth's upper atmosphere, we get the Aurora Roth-ealis.

 

[mildmanneredjanitor]

I really shouldn't encourage you should I!!!

 

[pipme]

Imagine being hit by a droplet of iced secondhand scrumpy - from some old Rusky space debris - when stepping from the module ... cue 'Stranger on the shore' ...

P

 

[kendor]

Extreme cold: When one runs around outside, naked, during winter, the reason you get cold is due to conduction of heat away from your body by the air. You wouldn't get that in space. Now, you would get evaporative cooling due to sweat on your skin, but let's assume you aren't sweating too much. Despite floating in space naked. The radiative loss of your body heat wouldn't be any different between naked in winter on Earth, and naked in space.

I'd have to question that, why do the astronauts have to have heating in their suits then?

 

[pipme]

Watch the shady parts !!

P

 

[AdamW]

I'd have to question that, why do the astronauts have to have heating in their suits then?

Same reason they have cooling: it's cold on the dark side, bloomin' warm on the sunlit side.

However, they aren't the kind of temperature conditions that would kill you in less than a couple of minutes. Just as you could run around naked in Siberia for a couple of minutes, hypothermia free, or wear a big heavy coat in the desert without passing out.

 

[IanDB]

But, correct me if I'm wrong, you would need a good thick coating of Factor 65 sun block. As there's no layer between your skin and the sun you'd get a b****y good tan and very quickly!

 

[AdamW]

Well, burn time on the Earth's surface goes down to about 20 minutes in summer in the UK...

So after 30 seconds naked in space you would hopefully get away with a minor burn. Face the earth and only the less important extremities will get burned

 

[IanDB]

Some people will do anything for a tan. There could be a market for this one. Why spend all that time on a sunbed when you could get roasted in 30 secs?

Might be included in the package that Richard Branson offers:-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3693020.stm