posted
Easy, just observe far enough away with a really powerful telescope and since space & time are curved you'll eventually see the back of your own head...zoom out a bit and you can see the galaxy in which said head resides. I haven't slept in a while.
Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
We're such precocious little scamps. Trying to define great big clumps of matter we don't even understand. "Hey that spirally thingy is spinning differently than that dead guy said it should!" 'Well it must be surrounded by invisible stuff that doesn't react with anything except gravity!' "Yeah! Wait what's gravity?" 'Well that other dead guy was talking about curvature of space but...its a bit over my head really...' "That dark matter idea was cool, though."
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
What a pickle if you where to suddenly find yourself at the spot where that picture was taken. Would you even be able to see the galaxy like in the picture, or would it just be black?
Wonder if ISS- or Mir-personnel have taken rats and gerbils up in orbit, attached electrodes and stuff to them and put them out in vaccuum, just to see what happens. Someone should have by now, you'd think.
Hell, I'd do it as a last act of my old life if they paid the trip. Go up there, sleep one night there, have one sex in weightlessness with some sturdy astronaut woman, then drink something expensive and just go EVA. With all the shit on, of course. Even one of those pin-helmets from Ghostbusters.
If you have a sealed helmet with air tube on your head, but your body is naked, would you still die? Would space drag the atmosphere from the shuttle through your nose out your ass? Would it hurt? Or would it just be the world's rarest fetish?
Registered: Aug 1999
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
The vacuum would most likely boil your blood while you were alternately frozen and fried depending on which side of your body the sun landed on.
Not sure about the ass venting though. It would probably hurt. But it would sound funny as hell.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Nope, Da Bang's assumption of hellafunniness may still be valid. If you where right behind the guy and your head was aligned with the air, you could get some seconds worth of air and soundwaves, perhaps? Say it took 3 seconds for all the air of the ISS to force itself through that brave man, without any deviation in course (alternate escape routes).
I don't have any hard figures on airjet acoustics, but maybe those guys on stardestroyer.net who calculate turbolaser travel speed and "gigajoule" strength could make themselves useful. Unlike the things they work with, this scenario has hypothetic testability!
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
I always wondered what would happen if you could get close enough to the sun where the space is warm enough for the human body to just live with a helmet and air.(and lets just say they developed anti-cosmic-radiation sunscreen for the sake of arguement).
That would be neat.
-------------------- "Its coming on. I just saw the wall move..."
Registered: Feb 2008
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posted
That could never happen since you would be exposed fully to the heat and radiation of the sun without any sort of protection. Unless you like bacon of course.
Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Um, "space" in itself can't be warm since space is nothing, there's just objects reacting with sun beams. As for sun strength, I think just at the surface of the moon your skin would start blistering from unobstructed sun glare. Ignoring the vacuum effects, if there is any boundary where you won't get burned by the rays, it's maybe between Mars and Jupiter?
But to be frank, I really believe the esophagus could make or break the whole project.
If one learns to loosen it, say by pencil-stabbing beer cans and drinking without gulps, you might have a shot at this. If your esophagus clenches, all that incoming air might go out through the sternum. Which is an entirely different project (Amish Iron-Man) but ruins our work here and now.
Maybe some sort of speculum...
Registered: Aug 1999
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Daniel Butler
I'm a Singapore where is my boat
Member # 1689
posted
In the 60's a NASA scientist was in a vacuum chamber that accidentally got turned on. The air pressure was just barely above total vacuum; it took several minutes for the chamber to be repressurized. He survived with minimal injuries. I think it mostly depends on how *quickly* the air is evacuated from your environment - if you survive the decompression itself, you'll survive until you suffocate. Your blood won't boil - this guy's didn't - it's in a closed system. It'd only boil if it was open to the vacuum. Hence your spit will boil off your tongue.
Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I never quite got the blood boiling thing, myself... though I imagine that the capillaries (i.e. near the eyes, etc.) might still suffer. Certainly the eyes could dry out quickly. And if your lungs were completely depressurized, wouldn't the blood maybe boil out through the alveoli? (Wow, I actually spelled that right. Hooray for me remembering biology class!)
However, aside from the boiling, I have a feeling that the cold would also have a severe effect on a person in space. That NASA guy was probably still in room-temperature conditions; I'd bet that your capillaries could freeze. I guess that would depend on how fast heat could be exchanged. And yeah, sunburn would be a bitch.
I've always wondered why there's never been more research about what would actually happen to someone exposed to space. Especially because it's bound to happen sooner or later, and being prepared would help prevent or mitigate the effects to a person. Maybe the Russians could find a death row inmate to volunteer to take a walk outside the ISS or something? (Kidding, kidding...)
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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