The Battlestar airlock: Sucks to be you

Posted by Dan April 30th, 2008 at 11:32am In Battlestar Galactica

No one likes to get sucked out of the airlock. It’s not a very nice way to go.

So far, the people we’ve seen meet their demise that way include at least one cylon body, a few people deemed traitors by the New Caprica vigilante jury and, most recently, our beloved Cally.

I’ve always thought that when you get sucked into the vacuum of space that you just blew up immediately. Your body has air in it, so I thought that there would be a big bloody explosion. This can probably be traced back to my sophomore year in high school when we read The Cold Equations — which is a pretty wrenching story about an ill-fated space stowaway. My teacher, a mustachioed veteran who was more excited about snow days than a teacher should really tell his students, told us that’s what happened to you in space and I think that violent image has stuck with me.

I’ve asked the oracle of the Internet and found some answers.

Says one article:

When the human body is suddenly exposed to the vacuum of space, a number of injuries begin to occur immediately. Though they are relatively minor at first, they accumulate rapidly into a life-threatening combination. The first effect is the expansion of gases within the lungs and digestive tract due to the reduction of external pressure. A victim of explosive decompression greatly increases their chances of survival simply by exhaling within the first few seconds, otherwise death is likely to occur once the lungs rupture and spill bubbles of air into the circulatory system. Such a life-saving exhalation might be due to a shout of surprise, though it would naturally go unheard where there is no air to carry it.

A writer for Slate tackles the issue in the context of the Danny Boyle movie Sunshine (which was great for the first two-thirds until it decided to become 2001: A Nightmare on Elm Street). He mentions that the body undergoes ebullism when exposed to the vacuum of space, which means that the reduced pressure makes your bodily fluids’ boiling point reduce.

Slate writes:

An astronaut who fell unconscious from lack of oxygen would last for a few minutes more before dying from asphyxiation or the effects of the pressure reduction. Ebullism would result in the formation of bubbles in the moisture found in the eyes, mouth, and skin tissue. One NASA test subject who survived a 1965 accident in which he was exposed to near-vacuum conditions felt the saliva on his tongue begin to boil before he lost consciousness after 14 seconds.

Both articles seem to indicate that you’d probably live for at least ten to fifteen seconds without a space suit, which is a hell of a lot longer than I thought you could. The first article states you could even last a minute or two.

That article also claims that frostbite probably isn’t as big an issue because heat leaves the body slowly in a vacuum. Not being protected from the sun’s UV rays, though, could be a problem.