How long can you last in space without a spacesuit? What will happen in outer space without a spacesuit? The air in the lungs will burst

Hollywood has made a huge number of films about space, but we still haven’t received an answer to our main question: “What will happen in outer space with a man without a spacesuit? Let's try to figure this issue out today.

1. A person won’t instantly turn into an ice cube?

Heating or cooling occurs either through contact with a cold external environment or through thermal radiation.
In a vacuum there is no medium, there is nothing to contact with. More precisely, in a vacuum there is a very rarefied gas, which, due to its rarefied state, gives a very weak effect. In a thermos, vacuum is used precisely to retain heat! Without having contact with a cold substance, the hero will not experience burning cold at all.

2. It will take a long time to freeze

As for radiation, then human body, once in a vacuum, it will gradually give off heat by radiation. In a thermos, the walls of the flask are made mirror to retain radiation. This process is quite slow. Even if the astronaut is not wearing a spacesuit, but he has clothes, they will help keep him warm.

3. Get fried?

But you can get a tan. If this happens in space near a star, then you can get a sunburn on bare skin - like from excessive tanning on the beach. If this happens somewhere in Earth's orbit, then the effect will be stronger than on the beach, since there is no atmosphere there that protects from hard ultraviolet radiation. 10 seconds is enough to cause a burn. But still, this is also not a burning heat, and besides, clothing should also protect. What if we're talking about about a hole in a spacesuit or a crack in a helmet, then you don’t have to worry about this topic.

4. Boiling saliva

The boiling point of liquids depends on pressure. The lower the pressure, the lower the boiling point. Therefore, in a vacuum, liquids will evaporate. This was discovered in experiments - not immediately, but saliva boils, since the pressure is almost zero, and the temperature of the tongue is 36 C. Apparently, the same thing will happen with all mucous membranes (in the eyes, in the lungs) - they will dry out, if only from the body will not receive new mucus.

By the way, if you take not just a liquid film, but a large volume of water, then, probably, there will be an effect like “dry ice”: evaporation occurs on the outside, heat is quickly lost with evaporation, due to this the inside freezes. It can be assumed that a ball of water in space will partially evaporate, but otherwise turn into a piece of ice.

5. Will your blood boil?

Elastic skin, blood vessels, and the heart will create sufficient pressure so that nothing boils.

6. The champagne effect is also not expected.

Scuba divers have such a nuisance as decompression sickness. The reason is what happens to the bottle of champagne.

In addition to boiling, there is also the dissolution of gases in the blood. When the pressure drops, the gases turn into bubbles. Dissolved in champagne carbon dioxide, and for scuba divers - nitrogen.

But this effect occurs at large pressure differences - at least several atmospheres. And when you get into a vacuum, the difference is only one atmosphere. The article says nothing on this topic, does not describe any symptoms - apparently, this is not enough.

7. Will the air burst from the inside?

It is assumed that the victim will exhale it - and therefore will not tear it apart. What if he doesn’t breathe out? Let's assess the threat. Let the pressure in the spacesuit be maintained at 1 atm. This is 10 kg per square centimeter. If a person tries to hold his breath, the soft palate gets in the way of the air. If there is an area of ​​at least 2x2 cm, then the load will be 40 kg. It is unlikely that the soft palate will withstand it - the person will exhale on his own, like a deflated balloon.

8. Will the person suffocate?

This is the main and real threat. There is nothing to breathe. How long can a person survive without air? Trained divers - a few minutes, an untrained person - no more than a minute.

But! This is during inhalation, when the lungs are full of air with residual oxygen. And there, remember, you have to exhale. How long can a simple person hold out while exhaling? 30 seconds. But! When you exhale, the lungs do not “shrink” completely; a little oxygen remains. In space, apparently, there will be even less oxygen left (as much as can be retained). Specific time The time it takes for a person to lose consciousness from suffocation is known to be about 14 seconds.

For those who don't want to watch the video

No one doubts that a person without a spacesuit will die in outer space. But how exactly? There are many versions, but which one is true?

Hypothermia

The temperature in outer space is minus 271 degrees Celsius. The higher the temperature of a body, the faster the molecules in it move. Fast molecules of a hot body hit molecules of a cold body and lose their speed - while the body cools down. However, space has a very low density, at an altitude of 400 kilometers - this is less than one quadrillionth of a gram per cubic centimeter(0.000000000000001). So there will simply be no one to transfer heat to a person, so he will not freeze in space, but will only feel a slight coolness.

Solar radiation

You can get a severe burn or overheat from the Sun, because there is a lot of ultraviolet radiation in space, which on Earth is retained by the atmosphere. Therefore, you can get a burn on exposed parts of the body within 10 seconds. But clothing can completely protect against this. As for overheating, even if you absorbed all the solar radiation, it would take at least 24 minutes to reach a lethal temperature of 43 degrees Celsius.

Pressure difference

In space there is very low pressure, it is almost equal to zero, and inside a person there is only one atmosphere. However, this is too insignificant a difference - our fabrics are strong enough to withstand such a load. A person can swell, but not burst. However, this swelling will cause the blood vessels to compress and within 90 seconds the blood flow may stop, leading to death. But what can kill a person even earlier?

Blood boiling

As pressure decreases, the boiling point of any liquid decreases. But even if there is zero pressure outside, it will remain inside the blood vessels. At a pressure of 75 mmHg, blood will boil at a temperature of 46 degrees Celsius. But initially it has a body temperature of 36.6 - so it will not be hot enough to boil.

Caisson disease

All liquids can dissolve gas. Blood is also capable of dissolving the nitrogen and oxygen that we inhale. With a sharp decrease in pressure, the following effect is possible: this dissolved gas is released back in the form of bubbles, which can clog blood vessels and lead to death. This is called decompression sickness. Divers are most exposed to this danger. At a depth of 40 meters, the pressure is five times greater than on the surface, so if you ascend abruptly, symptoms of decompression sickness may appear.

But when we are in space, we are dealing with a pressure difference from one to zero atmospheres. With these parameters, the diameter of the resulting bubbles is less than eight micrometers, and the diameter of the smallest vessels is from 8 to 12 micrometers. It turns out that this effect in space does not entail any serious consequences.

Lack of oxygen

Is it possible to hold your breath in space? - No. The pressure in the lungs is quite high and the force with which it will burst out is very large, so this cannot be prevented. As a result of a very large exhalation, a person will lose all his oxygen supply, and he will have about 10 seconds left before he faints. So it is precisely the lack of oxygen that is the most likely cause of death for a person in space without a spacesuit.

The first effect that a person in outer space will feel is the expansion of air in the lungs and digestive tract, caused by a drop in external pressure. A victim of sudden decompression can significantly increase his chances of survival simply by exhaling. If you do not release the air from your lungs within the first seconds, they can simply rupture, large air bubbles entering the bloodstream - both of which lead to inevitable death. Most likely, the life-saving exhalation will be a cry uttered by an astronaut who has realized his position. However, this scream is unlikely to be heard by anyone - as you know, sounds do not propagate in airless space.

In the absence atmospheric pressure The water will begin to evaporate quickly, so all moisture will disappear from the surface of the victim's eyes and mouth. The water in the muscles and soft tissues will begin to boil, causing some parts of the body to increase to approximately double their normal volume. The expansion will cause numerous capillary breaks, although not enough to break the skin. After a few seconds, nitrogen dissolved in the blood will also begin to form gas bubbles, causing the “caisson disease” that divers suffer from: these bubbles clog small vessels, complicating blood circulation throughout the body and thereby causing oxygen starvation of tissues. Ultraviolet burns will appear on all exposed areas of the body exposed to direct sunlight. Despite the terrible cold, the victim is not in danger of instant freezing, since in the absence of an atmosphere, heat will be removed from the body very slowly.

For ten whole seconds, a person will maintain a sober mind and the ability to take active action. In principle, this may be sufficient to take urgent rescue measures. Otherwise, within a couple of moments the brain will begin to experience an acute lack of oxygen, and loss of vision and orientation will occur. In the absence of an atmosphere, the gas exchange process in the lungs will proceed reverse side: oxygen is removed from the blood and released into space, which, together with the caisson effects, accelerates the onset of deep hypoxia - oxygen starvation of tissues. Complete loss of consciousness will occur a few seconds later, and by this time the victim’s skin will take on a distinct bluish tint.

Despite the profound collapse, the victim's brain will still remain intact and his heart will still beat. If within one and a half minutes the victim is placed in a cell with oxygen atmosphere, he will most likely come to his senses quite quickly, having escaped with only minor damage to the body (although blindness caused by hypoxia may persist for some time). After the 90-second period, the pressure in circulatory system will drop so much that the blood begins to boil and the heart stops. After this, returning to life is no longer possible.

Thus, the survival time of an unprotected person in outer space is measured not in seconds, but rather in minutes. This amazing fact Once again testifies to how resilient the human body is.

Many people often wonder “What would happen if...?” This article will tell you what happens to a person who finds himself in outer space without a protective suit. There are several erroneous versions, based not on real experimental data, but rather taken from science fiction films. The article will help you distinguish truth from fiction and understand cause-and-effect relationships.

The peculiarity of outer space is an almost complete vacuum. In a vacuum there is no atmospheric pressure; it is a highly rarefied gas. But how does this affect a person? How much time is left for salvation and does it exist in principle?

There is an opinion that a person will instantly explode. This is a myth. Skin is a reliable protector. In addition, the skin perfectly helps maintain the internal pressure of the body at first, as a result of which the blood does not boil from sudden change pressure. The pressure will, of course, decrease, but gradually. Due to the decrease in pressure, ebullism will occur, which is expressed in the appearance of bubbles in the body fluids. In this case, the body can double in size.

But there are other liquids that do not have reliable protection, for example, saliva. It has been experimentally established that saliva can boil in outer space, since there is practically no pressure in a vacuum, and saliva has body temperature. But boiling will not happen instantly. In space, liquids evaporate quite slowly. In addition to saliva, other unprotected liquids from the mucous membranes and even the eyes will begin to evaporate.

Can a person freeze in space? Maybe, but this is a rather lengthy process. There is no thermal conductivity in space, it is neither hot nor cold there, so it will not be possible to transfer heat in this way. Heat is lost through radiation. A person constantly radiates heat, but ordinary life it's practically unnoticeable. People are protected by clothing, warmed by the sun and the earth, the atmosphere insulates well, as a result of which the heat given off is returned. There are no insulators in space, so heat will begin to constantly escape.

In addition, due to the lack of insulators, there is a high probability of getting burns. There is incredibly strong ultraviolet radiation in space. Literally 10 seconds are enough to cause burns comparable to the consequences of a long stay on the beach.

In outer space, under no circumstances should you attempt to hold your breath. Such erroneous actions can lead to lung rupture. The lungs and airways are not designed to hold atmospheric pressure in a vacuum. Of course, holding your breath in space is quite difficult, since the air will begin to exert enormous pressure on the soft palate. The person will not be able to stand it and will instinctively exhale. But it's better not to even try.

How long can you live in space without a spacesuit?

The main danger of outer space for humans is complete absence oxygen. As was said, in space you cannot hold your breath while inhaling, so there will be no supply of oxygen in the body. But the circulatory system will continue to function as usual, as a result of which after 15 seconds even the most trained person will lose consciousness due to lack of oxygen in the brain. In addition, shortly before losing consciousness, a person will cease to navigate in space and see. But he is still alive and can be saved within two minutes. Other organs are not so sensitive to oxygen starvation. After two minutes the person will simply suffocate.

Provided that a person who finds himself in outer space is delivered to a safe place within the first minutes, he will survive and escape with ebullism, burns from ultraviolet radiation and temporary blindness. As you can see, human body is extremely tenacious, because even in a vacuum the time for rescue is calculated not in seconds, but in minutes.

First of all, it is worth saying that you will not explode and your blood will not boil. Your body will not lose its integrity just because you are in a vacuum. You may have noticed something useful that covers you from head to toe - your skin. It does its job perfectly: keeping your insides inside. It is elastic and very durable, so you don’t have to worry about bursting like a balloon. In addition, the skin will maintain your internal pressure sufficiently high level to prevent your blood from boiling.

Temperature - or rather, the lack of it - will also not be able to finish you off right away. IN cold water a person quickly becomes hypothermic not because of the temperature of the water, but because it is a very good conductor of heat. All the heat generated by your metabolism is immediately “pulled” out of your body. In a vacuum there is no convection - and there is no heat conduction either. The only way to lose heat is radiation. Each person glows in the infrared spectrum, emitting about 100 watts of heat. The light bulb was a great analogy for human-generated energy until we switched to energy-efficient and LED light bulbs; but you still understood the meaning. Usually we don’t even notice the loss of this energy: wrapped in a layer of insulating air, heated by the Sun above our heads and the earth under our feet, we get back all the heat that we lose. So we can happily radiate energy all day long.

In space there is nothing to insulate you, so eventually you will freeze to death. But fortunately, the loss of 100 watts of heat is very small compared to your body weight. In vacuum, it will take a very long time before you turn into a popsicle.

The most weak link is your treacherous circulatory system. There is no air in space, which means there is no oxygen. But your blood doesn't know this. It circulates through your lungs to pick up the hitchhiker - the next dose of O2 - and continues on its way, with or without a passenger. Your heart continues to beat and oxygen-deprived blood is dispersed throughout your body. In particular, it goes to the brain.

When starved of oxygen, your “central processor” goes into energy-saving hibernation mode. 15 seconds after you leave the airlock space station, you will lose consciousness. However, you will still be alive. If some Good Samaritan in space picks you up and takes you to safety within a minute or two, you'll be fine. Well, not counting ebullism and unpleasant tanning from hard ultraviolet radiation. It's not very pleasant, but you can live.

If you remain in space for more than two minutes, the remaining organs will also “cut off” due to lack of oxygen - for medical language this is called "death".

And one more thing: in the name of Armstrong, don't hold your breath! Your lungs and airways are not designed to hold atmospheric pressure in a vacuum. If you hold your breath, you will face the same problem that divers face when they rise to the surface too quickly: ruptured lungs.

It sounds terrible, but no one thought that walking in outer space would be pleasant, right?