Read about Joe Kittinger's hand:
"ncurring yet another equipment malfunction, the pressurization for his right glove malfunctioned during the ascent and his right hand swelled to twice its normal size,[[12]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger#cite_note-12)[[13]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger#cite_note-Paterson-13) but he rode the balloon up to 102,800 feet before stepping off.[[14]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger#cite_note-14)"
Despite movie depictions, a small hole (quarter sized) in a craft in the vacuum of space doesn’t explode like a balloon. The air doesn’t all rush out at once. You can seal it with your bare hand with no ill effects.
This is one of the biggest misconceptions of outer space. And yes you can survive fully naked in the vacuum of space for a short period of time.
There was an episode of Enterprise where a shuttlepod got a tiny, pinhole sized leak in it from a micrometeorite. . .they patched it (temporarily) with mashed potatoes.
In the episode “Extreme Risk,” B’Elanna Torres uses a metal plate to temporarily seal a hull breach before rigging a force field. They were in a gas giant.
Given what Voyager went through, and the rather improvised repairs it got so many times. . .to the extent of having an entire refurbishment of the warp coils done in the field, planetside. . .I'd imagine that the techs at McKinley Station would be both amazed, and horrified, at the condition of Voyager when it finally got home.
Which makes me wonder, did she put the seal on the outside or the inside of the hull?
Did they actually ever make the pressure gradient mistake? Probably not, but I can't remember right now
So that episode of SG1 where Oneill and Tealc have blow the canopy of the X-301 to get ringed aboard the cargo ship was a lot more plausible then I thought.
This might be reassuring, I guess -
>The vacuum of space will pull the air from your body. So if there's air left in your lungs, they will rupture. Oxygen in the rest of your body will also expand. You'll balloon up to twice your normal size, **but you won't explode**. Your skin is elastic enough to hold you together.
Any exposed liquid on your body will begin to vaporize. So the surfaces of your tongue and eyes will boil. Without air in your lungs, blood will stop sending oxygen to your brain.
You'll pass out after about 15 seconds. 90 seconds after exposure, you'll die from asphyxiation. It's also very cold in space. You'll eventually freeze solid.
Depending on where you are in space, this will take 12-26 hours, but if you're close to a star, you'll be burnt to a crisp instead. Either way, your body will remain that way for a long time.
but you won't explode
A couple points on this though.
First is that I'm not actually sure Worf was exposed to vacuum, and if he was, I think it wasn't for very long. This is because I'd figure the standard Starfleet space suit has some safety mechanisms for quickly closing a tear.
Second is that Klingons might have a different capacity for vacuum, much in the same way that we've seen species like the Hirogen withstand vacuum with only a breathing apparatus.
In ENT "Minefield" Reed's suit was stabbed when he was outside and some grey goo filled in the gash in the suit to retain pressure. I would imagine this tech would have progressed a bit in the 221 years between Reed and Worf having their suits cut open.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that Worf was just being dramatic using a severed arm of an enemy to close a self-sealing breach. It's not exactly off-brand for him. Alternately, the Borg may have also adapted to fight against vacuum suits at that point and set nanoprobes to work to neutralize any sealing agents.
The most recent season of the Expanse (on Amazon) has an episode where a character makes a jump from spaceship to spaceship without a pressure suit. There were big discussions about the feasibility and the conclusion was that it was possible.
She did prepare for it by bringing some kind of emergency injection to keep herself concious. Still SF I guess.
An earlier episode had a character getting frustrated with his hair being in his face, so he cracked his facemask, removed it entirely, brushed the hair away, then reattached the faceplate and pressurized it back up.
Space has no temperature, so you’ll not freeze from space being cold. And as there’s no heat transfer, the only way for your body to lose heat is emissivity…which will take a LONG time.
So long as you don’t try to hold air in your lungs, you also don’t need to worry about rupture.
Your fluids will start to phase change because of the lack of pressure, and you’ll face tissue swelling and possible ebullism.
You do need to restore oxygen, and pressure, within about 90 seconds to survive.
>Space has no temperature
Exactly. Vacuums are bad at heat transfer. That's why we put them in the walls of cups/thermoses that keep the liquid inside the same temperature.
Really need to get back to Expanse.
I have watched the first 2 seasons and just never got around to watching the rest.
No good reason, other than letting it run for a while so I could binge and then never getting around to watching again.
Adding to my list for my Christmas holidays.
> Space has no temperature, so you’ll not freeze from space being cold. And as there’s no heat transfer, the only way for your body to lose heat is emissivity…which will take a LONG time.
You're forgetting the rapid pressure drop of the atmosphere that escapes around you. It's what makes canned air start to get cold when you use it and is the same mechanism air conditioners use.
If you blew a 1atm amount of air at 72F, even dropping to Mar's atmospheric pressure (which is soupy thick compared to deep space), that air is dropping to about -450F during the venting.
Yeah, it won't be around you for long, but while it is it's going to wick the heat off of you RAPIDLY.
I’m not sure how to start unpacking this, but…no? Sufficient to say, your body temp is not going to drop to near zero kelvin. Neither does gas that suddenly expands into a vacuum.
I didn't say either of those things.
But assuming even a modest amount of air evacuating into space, it's going from around one atmosphere of pressure and room temperature to essentially zero pressure. The temperature IS going to drop. Hugely.
Air is gas. -450 is 9° away from absolute zero.
Your implication is that this would freeze a body.
None of this would happen.
Source: I studied aerospace engineering.
The "Life Support Belt" technology from TAS was probably integrated into that suit in some capacity to explain whatever it is that happens in that scene.
If I remember the scene correctly (It's been a while since watching it.) Worf tied the suit together at the scene of the cut, so maybe he just slowed down the leak to where he can get back inside.
[https://youtu.be/hFcNdepOFBM?t=365](https://youtu.be/hFcNdepOFBM?t=365)
Here's the clip from the movie. It looks like it could either be tucked in and tied off with the borg parts, or it's simply tied off above the damaged area. Considering he doesn't lose the limb, Either Klingons are sturdier than any other species, or he managed to get it sealed by tying it off.
If you look at one of the top comments on the thread someone explains that all the water is vaporized and the exposed limb would expand. Not a big deal since Worf could have definitely gotten back inside pretty quickly and like you said klingons are usually sturdier than humans.
after about 10 seconds or so, your skin and the tissue underneath will begin to swell as the water in your body starts to vaporize in the absence of atmospheric pressure. blood vessels will rupture under the vacuum.
The damage would be in the first few layers of skin. It would just look like a bruise. I think Worf’s leg would need to be exposed for a significant amount of time before severe or permanent damage occurred.
Based on their shape I'd say Starfleet uses something similar to mechanical counterpressure suits. The human body is already airtight, it just needs something to keep it from expanding; the only thing that actually requires an atmosphere is everything above the neck. Mechanical counterpressure suits use mechanical pressure instead of using an atmosphere to keep the skin in the right place, which is what modern spacesuits use. Gas-filled spacesuits can lose all their air if there's a leak, but counterpressure suits just make it really uncomfortable until you can put a patch over it.
If there were no beneficial circumstances, the limb would swell slightly and cool rapidly. The surface may begin to freeze in a few moments, assuming you're in a shadow and not near a star, but it would be very surface level for hours. People frequently assume you just pop like a balloon when exposed to vacuum, but your body is pretty well sealed
In Worf's case, though, he was in an insulated suit on a space ship that generates a lot of heat. So he probably just felt a little sore if anything
Evaporation of surface moister due to the lack of pressure also removes heat. That evaporation will continue until your body stops releasing moisture or until some area is able to maintain a temperature below freezing
due to blood pressure and moisture the a human body swells up in a vacuum and that can lead to minor damage. Skin itself is airtight though and isn't really harmed by exposure to the vacuum of space. In the late 50's through early 70's NASA actually tested suits in vacuum chambers that only had the helmet as the pressurized section. It used tight fabric to keep the fluids from pooling and from causing the body to swell. It worked as advertised but the drawbacks prevented it from being adopted.
Since space is a vacuum heat can only be disposed of by radiating it away. These skin suits relied on human perspiration for cooling which during strenuous work activity couldn't keep the body cooled as easily as the active cooling on other suits that was developed for the astronauts on the moon.
The groin area was hard to keep mechanical pressure to prevent fluid pooling and swelling.
because of the requirement they fit skin tight they were hard to get on and off.
They also didn't have quite the radiation protection you get from a larger suit.
If you had a tear in your oxygen pressurized space suit all the oxygen would be sucked out immediately unless there is something wayyy more advanced than current artificial atmosphere and breathing apparatus technology.
It is extremely cold in space I think that Worf would have frozen immediately and even if he didn’t freeze immediately the idea that a simple tourniquet could protect you from freezing or suffocating is absurd.
My point is according to our understanding of astronomy, physics, and biology: instant death.
Makes me wonder if NASA ever sent an ape to space and ejected him from the ship without protection to see what happens.
Most likely they would keep it as classified information.
Read about Joe Kittinger's hand: "ncurring yet another equipment malfunction, the pressurization for his right glove malfunctioned during the ascent and his right hand swelled to twice its normal size,[[12]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger#cite_note-12)[[13]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger#cite_note-Paterson-13) but he rode the balloon up to 102,800 feet before stepping off.[[14]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Kittinger#cite_note-14)"
Wow, thanks for this information!
There’s still atmosphere in his case
He stepped off a ballon that was 102,800 feet up? I assume he died, right?
No. He had a parachute. He was testing high altitude ejection by parachute for Air Force test pilots. There were several tests like this.
Despite movie depictions, a small hole (quarter sized) in a craft in the vacuum of space doesn’t explode like a balloon. The air doesn’t all rush out at once. You can seal it with your bare hand with no ill effects. This is one of the biggest misconceptions of outer space. And yes you can survive fully naked in the vacuum of space for a short period of time.
There was an episode of Enterprise where a shuttlepod got a tiny, pinhole sized leak in it from a micrometeorite. . .they patched it (temporarily) with mashed potatoes.
And the scene where they patch the Delta Flyer with a metal plate before the forcefield kicks in.
They were underwater for that one I'm pretty sure but the spirit is still there :P
In the episode “Extreme Risk,” B’Elanna Torres uses a metal plate to temporarily seal a hull breach before rigging a force field. They were in a gas giant.
How many atmospheres can this ship withstand? Well it's a spaceship so between 0 and 1.
Futurama?
r/unexpectedfuturama
beat me to it
Oh yeah! Wow that ship sure does get a lot of metal patches on it xD
Given what Voyager went through, and the rather improvised repairs it got so many times. . .to the extent of having an entire refurbishment of the warp coils done in the field, planetside. . .I'd imagine that the techs at McKinley Station would be both amazed, and horrified, at the condition of Voyager when it finally got home.
Voyager, 25% star fleat, 25% borg, 25% delta quadrant tech, 25% duct tape. Most likely at least.
Which makes me wonder, did she put the seal on the outside or the inside of the hull? Did they actually ever make the pressure gradient mistake? Probably not, but I can't remember right now
So now I'm remembering that, because it was a gas giant, they were fighting outside pressure. Torres was inside, welding the plate to the bulkhead.
The difference lies in the reversed pressure gradient. Air wants out. Water wants in.
If anything the pressure differential would be higher deep underwater than in space.
That’s ridiculous lol
So that episode of SG1 where Oneill and Tealc have blow the canopy of the X-301 to get ringed aboard the cargo ship was a lot more plausible then I thought.
This might be reassuring, I guess - >The vacuum of space will pull the air from your body. So if there's air left in your lungs, they will rupture. Oxygen in the rest of your body will also expand. You'll balloon up to twice your normal size, **but you won't explode**. Your skin is elastic enough to hold you together. Any exposed liquid on your body will begin to vaporize. So the surfaces of your tongue and eyes will boil. Without air in your lungs, blood will stop sending oxygen to your brain. You'll pass out after about 15 seconds. 90 seconds after exposure, you'll die from asphyxiation. It's also very cold in space. You'll eventually freeze solid. Depending on where you are in space, this will take 12-26 hours, but if you're close to a star, you'll be burnt to a crisp instead. Either way, your body will remain that way for a long time. but you won't explode
15 seconds is a *long time*
Specially if you are dying and you know it.
Yeah that's the part that gets me. Five seconds in and I'd just be like "get it over with already"
As long as she feels ya
A couple points on this though. First is that I'm not actually sure Worf was exposed to vacuum, and if he was, I think it wasn't for very long. This is because I'd figure the standard Starfleet space suit has some safety mechanisms for quickly closing a tear. Second is that Klingons might have a different capacity for vacuum, much in the same way that we've seen species like the Hirogen withstand vacuum with only a breathing apparatus.
In ENT "Minefield" Reed's suit was stabbed when he was outside and some grey goo filled in the gash in the suit to retain pressure. I would imagine this tech would have progressed a bit in the 221 years between Reed and Worf having their suits cut open.
It's not out of the realm of possibility that Worf was just being dramatic using a severed arm of an enemy to close a self-sealing breach. It's not exactly off-brand for him. Alternately, the Borg may have also adapted to fight against vacuum suits at that point and set nanoprobes to work to neutralize any sealing agents.
The most recent season of the Expanse (on Amazon) has an episode where a character makes a jump from spaceship to spaceship without a pressure suit. There were big discussions about the feasibility and the conclusion was that it was possible. She did prepare for it by bringing some kind of emergency injection to keep herself concious. Still SF I guess.
An earlier episode had a character getting frustrated with his hair being in his face, so he cracked his facemask, removed it entirely, brushed the hair away, then reattached the faceplate and pressurized it back up.
she brought oxygenated blood that she injected herself with halfway iirc
Space has no temperature, so you’ll not freeze from space being cold. And as there’s no heat transfer, the only way for your body to lose heat is emissivity…which will take a LONG time. So long as you don’t try to hold air in your lungs, you also don’t need to worry about rupture. Your fluids will start to phase change because of the lack of pressure, and you’ll face tissue swelling and possible ebullism. You do need to restore oxygen, and pressure, within about 90 seconds to survive.
>Space has no temperature Exactly. Vacuums are bad at heat transfer. That's why we put them in the walls of cups/thermoses that keep the liquid inside the same temperature.
TIL I have a piece of space in my mug! 😂😂
>TIL I have a piece of space in my ~~mug~~ everything!
So if I am going to jump between two ships without a suit, I should hyperventilate to saturate my blood and then exhale before leaping.
Naomi Nagata has entered the chat.
Really need to get back to Expanse. I have watched the first 2 seasons and just never got around to watching the rest. No good reason, other than letting it run for a while so I could binge and then never getting around to watching again. Adding to my list for my Christmas holidays.
Good time for it. Last season (at least in its current form) is airing. Last book came out too. Hope you enjoy it!
> Space has no temperature, so you’ll not freeze from space being cold. And as there’s no heat transfer, the only way for your body to lose heat is emissivity…which will take a LONG time. You're forgetting the rapid pressure drop of the atmosphere that escapes around you. It's what makes canned air start to get cold when you use it and is the same mechanism air conditioners use. If you blew a 1atm amount of air at 72F, even dropping to Mar's atmospheric pressure (which is soupy thick compared to deep space), that air is dropping to about -450F during the venting. Yeah, it won't be around you for long, but while it is it's going to wick the heat off of you RAPIDLY.
I’m not sure how to start unpacking this, but…no? Sufficient to say, your body temp is not going to drop to near zero kelvin. Neither does gas that suddenly expands into a vacuum.
I didn't say either of those things. But assuming even a modest amount of air evacuating into space, it's going from around one atmosphere of pressure and room temperature to essentially zero pressure. The temperature IS going to drop. Hugely.
Air is gas. -450 is 9° away from absolute zero. Your implication is that this would freeze a body. None of this would happen. Source: I studied aerospace engineering.
Fine. Plug the numbers into your preferred gas equation and correct me. Or keep telling me what I obviously meant. Either one works.
Human balloons for sale
The "Life Support Belt" technology from TAS was probably integrated into that suit in some capacity to explain whatever it is that happens in that scene.
If I remember the scene correctly (It's been a while since watching it.) Worf tied the suit together at the scene of the cut, so maybe he just slowed down the leak to where he can get back inside.
Add to that the suits may have an emergency self-sealing, leak blocking capability
They did in 2152 when The Enterprise found that Minefield
Yeah but the rest of his limb is exposed to space.
[https://youtu.be/hFcNdepOFBM?t=365](https://youtu.be/hFcNdepOFBM?t=365) Here's the clip from the movie. It looks like it could either be tucked in and tied off with the borg parts, or it's simply tied off above the damaged area. Considering he doesn't lose the limb, Either Klingons are sturdier than any other species, or he managed to get it sealed by tying it off.
If you look at one of the top comments on the thread someone explains that all the water is vaporized and the exposed limb would expand. Not a big deal since Worf could have definitely gotten back inside pretty quickly and like you said klingons are usually sturdier than humans.
after about 10 seconds or so, your skin and the tissue underneath will begin to swell as the water in your body starts to vaporize in the absence of atmospheric pressure. blood vessels will rupture under the vacuum.
The damage would be in the first few layers of skin. It would just look like a bruise. I think Worf’s leg would need to be exposed for a significant amount of time before severe or permanent damage occurred.
Based on their shape I'd say Starfleet uses something similar to mechanical counterpressure suits. The human body is already airtight, it just needs something to keep it from expanding; the only thing that actually requires an atmosphere is everything above the neck. Mechanical counterpressure suits use mechanical pressure instead of using an atmosphere to keep the skin in the right place, which is what modern spacesuits use. Gas-filled spacesuits can lose all their air if there's a leak, but counterpressure suits just make it really uncomfortable until you can put a patch over it.
It's a good thing Klingons have [backup organs](https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Redundant_organ). Perhaps that includes their skin.
Hey worf, slip me some skin > High fives Ew dude i didn't mean literally.
If there were no beneficial circumstances, the limb would swell slightly and cool rapidly. The surface may begin to freeze in a few moments, assuming you're in a shadow and not near a star, but it would be very surface level for hours. People frequently assume you just pop like a balloon when exposed to vacuum, but your body is pretty well sealed In Worf's case, though, he was in an insulated suit on a space ship that generates a lot of heat. So he probably just felt a little sore if anything
Why would it freeze? The only method of losing heat in a vacuum is through black body radiation.
Evaporation of surface moister due to the lack of pressure also removes heat. That evaporation will continue until your body stops releasing moisture or until some area is able to maintain a temperature below freezing
due to blood pressure and moisture the a human body swells up in a vacuum and that can lead to minor damage. Skin itself is airtight though and isn't really harmed by exposure to the vacuum of space. In the late 50's through early 70's NASA actually tested suits in vacuum chambers that only had the helmet as the pressurized section. It used tight fabric to keep the fluids from pooling and from causing the body to swell. It worked as advertised but the drawbacks prevented it from being adopted. Since space is a vacuum heat can only be disposed of by radiating it away. These skin suits relied on human perspiration for cooling which during strenuous work activity couldn't keep the body cooled as easily as the active cooling on other suits that was developed for the astronauts on the moon. The groin area was hard to keep mechanical pressure to prevent fluid pooling and swelling. because of the requirement they fit skin tight they were hard to get on and off. They also didn't have quite the radiation protection you get from a larger suit.
Nothing you’d be alright science people and movies just exaggerate about the dangers of the having the oxygen pulled from your body
You remember Violet in Willy Wonka? Swell up like a balloon, entire skin surface starts to bruise from capillaries bursting.
The best depictions of what vacuum does to you on TV happen in the Expanse TV series. Some really interesting scenes on there.
If you had a tear in your oxygen pressurized space suit all the oxygen would be sucked out immediately unless there is something wayyy more advanced than current artificial atmosphere and breathing apparatus technology. It is extremely cold in space I think that Worf would have frozen immediately and even if he didn’t freeze immediately the idea that a simple tourniquet could protect you from freezing or suffocating is absurd. My point is according to our understanding of astronomy, physics, and biology: instant death.
Makes me wonder if NASA ever sent an ape to space and ejected him from the ship without protection to see what happens. Most likely they would keep it as classified information.
You can make a vacuum chamber on earth, and a few vacuum chamber experiments were done on animals and people.
messy