Imagine you were thrown
out of the space station airlock without a spacesuit. You can panic and
desperately trying to escape. How much time do you have to find the source of
air and atmospheric pressure needed? Spoiler: very little. But more than you
think.
The first is to say
that you did not explode and your blood boils. Your body does not lose its
integrity just because of the fact that you are in a vacuum. You may have
noticed something useful that covers you from head to toe - it's your skin. It
perfectly copes with his work: keeps your insides in. It is elastic and very
durable, so you can not worry about that burst like a balloon. In addition,
your skin will maintain the internal pressure at a sufficiently high level to
ensure that your blood does not boil.
Temperature - or
rather, lack of it - and do not immediately kill you. The cold water is not
subcooled person quickly because the water temperature and due to the fact that
it is a very good conductor of heat. All the heat generated by your metabolism
immediately "pulled" out of your body. In vacuum there is no
convection - and heat conduction are not. The only way to lose heat radiation
remains. Everyone glows in the infrared spectrum, the heat radiating capacity
of about 100 watts. The light bulb was a beautiful analogy of human generated
energy until we switched to energy-saving and LED light bulbs; but the meaning
you still understand. Usually we do not even notice the loss of this energy:
wrapped in a layer of insulating air, heated by the Sun above his head and the
ground beneath their feet, we get back all the heat that is lost. So we can
happily radiate energy day long.
In space, as you have
nothing to isolate, so that in the end you will freeze to death. Fortunately,
the loss of 100 watts of heat is very small compared with the mass of your
body. The vacuum will pass a lot of time before you turn into a Popsicle.
The weakest link is
your treacherous circulatory system. In space there is no air and, therefore,
there is no oxygen. But your blood does not know. It circulates through your
lungs to pick up a "hitchhiker" - another batch of O2 - and continues
on his way, with or without a passenger. Your heart keeps beating, and devoid
of oxygen the blood disperses throughout the body. In particular, it goes to
the brain.
If your oxygen
starvation "the CPU" goes into power-saving hibernation mode. After
about 15 seconds after you leave the Gateway Space Station, you lose
consciousness. Nevertheless, you will still be alive. If any Good Samaritan
pick up your space and within a minute or two will bring to a safe place,
you'll be fine. It's not very nice, but you can live.
If you stay in space
for more than two minutes, the other organs and "Cuts" due to lack of
oxygen - in medical terms, this is called "death."
And again, in the name
of Armstrong, do not hold your breath! Your lungs and airways are not designed
to contain atmospheric pressure in a vacuum. If you hold your breath, you will
encounter the same problem faced by the divers at too rapid ascent to the
surface: the broken light.
It sounds terrible, but
nobody thought that a walk in the open space will be nice, right?
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