John Surviving in Space?

[Zantar]

Hey in LATP part 2 John shoots himself off into space, and actually makes it to the transport pod. HOw does that happen? would not the vacuumn kill him?!

[RescueFarscape]

It is possible for a human to survive in a vacuum for a very short time. I promise.

:)

[RescueFarscape]

Q: How would the unprotected human body react to the vacuum of outer space?

A: If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get a very bad sunburn.

[grapeshot]

Yeah, and if your skin is as tough as krandeck, then you could survive even longer!

[Doc Holiday]

Cool I though that you would surely be killed from the pressure say like when you are a mile under water.

[zen98034]

Nope, no pressure at all. Astronauts breathe pure oxygen for hours before a space walk so they can flush all the nitrogen out of their body. When they go out into space their suits have no pressure, and if they had nitrogen in their body it would cause all kinds of problems. Know about this pretty well as I have been SCUBA diving for years. Wondering if the atmosphere in this universe that John has found himself in has something in the air besides Nitrogen. Our Atmosphere is about 79% Nitrogen.

It was also thought that being exposed to the cosmic radiation would kill you instantly. Think that they have discovered that this is not the case. Don't know for sure.

Mitch

[TalynLives]

It was obvious that he did sustain injury alright, you can see him in a regenerative mask down on the planet after it happened.

[jerseygirl]

Q:
You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. .

Oh well, so much for that whole issue in Outland - those guys exploding in the airlock without their suits on. Even so, for me, John's litte EVA stretches the notion of suspension of disbelief. But hey, this is Farscape we're talking about. If it's even in the neighborhood or plausible, I'll buy it.

[Darth Buddha]

I don't know how many times this question will be asked... it seems to crop up every couple of months or so.

Yep, your skin and circulatory system work pretty well if you are going from 1 ATM to essentially zero. It does pretty well when you do a free dive too to several ATM.

But if you are coming from deep see pressures, you CAN blow up. So if the outpost on Io in Outland were at more than 1 ATM for whatever reason, you could indeed blow up. Bigger changes can out do our natural "pressure suit".

Moreover, in space the bigger concern would be boiling or freezing. Night side, you freeze. Day side, you boil. Fortunately the freezing process is pretty slow (space is a vacuum, and therefore a pretty good insulator). Boiling doesn't take long... because all that heat has nowhere to go (again, space is a pretty good insulator).

John's advanture got it right... they were on the ngiht side as I recall. In Space 2001, day or night side didn't matter much... they were much further from the sun than an inhabitable world would be.

Nice to know that 'scapers are so curious and thoughtful about science!

[TalynLives]

I thought it was a brilliant moment, especially with Scorpius voice ringing in his ears saying "you will survive", it was almost like Scorpius was egging his body not to explode/freeze etc.

[Doc Holiday]

Yeah it was a nice moment.

[jerseygirl]

I thought it was a brilliant moment, especially with Scorpius voice ringing in his ears saying "you will survive", it was almost like Scorpius was egging his body not to explode/freeze etc.

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I might be), but isn't that the first time we get a hint of Scorpy's clone in John's brain?

[Dangermousie]

Well, there's the Scorpy appearance at CDM, even though Crichton just thinks it's a result of Traltixx.

[Doc Holiday]

Danger is right. I really liked this arc because it felt like farscape and was just as dramatic as some of the effects driven arcs. Shows Farscape can mantain that intensity in all locations.

[AmanoJyaku]

I saved this from a newgroup post a while back:


At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson
Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near
vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit
in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained concious for about 14
seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go
from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard
vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds.
The subject regained conciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent
altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air
leaking out, and his last concious memory was of the water on his
tongue beginning to boil.

Aviation Week and Space Technology (02/13/95) printed a letter by
Leonard Gordon which reported another vacuum-packed anecdote:

"The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum
for a significant time while the pilot went about his business
occurred in real life on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his
ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in an open gondola, lost
pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue the
mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would
expect. However, once back to lower altitudes following his
record-breaking parachute jump, the hand returned to normal."


References:

Frequently Asked Questions on sci.space.*/sci.astro

The Effect on the Chimpanzee of Rapid Decompression to a
Near Vacuum, Alfred G. Koestler ed., NASA CR-329 (Nov
1965).

Experimental Animal Decompression to a Near Vacuum
Environment, R.W. Bancroft, J.E. Dunn, eds, Report
SAM-TR-65-48 (June 1965), USAF School of Aerospace
Medicine, Brooks AFB, Texas.

Survival Under Near-Vacuum Conditions in the article
"Barometric Pressure," by C.E. Billings, Chapter 1 of
Bioastronautics Data Book, Second edition, NASA SP-3006,
edited by James F. Parker Jr. and Vita R. West, 1973.

Personal communication, James Skipper, NASA/JSC Crew
Systems Division, December 14, 1994.

[MALCOLM XERXES]

Hey in LATP part 2 John shoots himself off into space, and actually makes it to the transport pod. HOw does that happen? would not the vacuumn kill him?!WED. OCT. 5/2004/21:08 E.S.T.

ZANTAR,

Aside from the bitter cold of hard vacuum, it is possible for Homo sapiens to survive for approx. 30 sec. without a pressurised environment suit, something which the desperate professional astronaut JOHN CRICHTON would have known.