Comments on: Video and photos of spacewalks

Video and photos of spacewalks

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:31:40 -0800

The environment does terrible things to the human body and it smells. Many people go for that walk anyway.

Found these while looking for video of the spacewalks from Gemini 10, 11 or 12 or any of the Apollo spacewalks (not the moonwalks), but nothing much exists, not even photos.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:42:37 -0800

The first link is misleading; I thought it would have had to do with the hazards of just being in space (how certain wavelengths pass through the craft and fuck with our DNA. Still an interesting article, though, and something to think about next time I forget my suit before opening the airlock. And space has a smell? That's news to me! Thanks, BB.

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:44:03 -0800

Eeep... meant to say "...just being in space, fully protected by a suit or aspacesehip," And to close the parentheses somehow.

By: George_Spiggott

George_Spiggott — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 11:01:32 -0800

I suspect the so-called "smell of space" is in fact the smell of manufactured items that have just been exposed to hard vacuum and possibly direct sunlight unfiltered by an atmosphere. When you place objects in a vacuum, absorbed atmospheric gases begin leaching out of it. When you expose paint and metal and plastics to the full force of the sun or the shade in empty space, I think it's fair to assume that temperature changes are involved which would leave them emitting some sort of smell for a while.

By: thecaddy

thecaddy — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 11:21:12 -0800

Wow. So Dave really could have reentered the Discovery. Awesome. Also, throwing people out the airlock is a terrible way to die.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 11:27:10 -0800

CAUTION: Objects in a vacuum smell worse than they appear...

By: blacklite

blacklite — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:21:47 -0800

Some crazy 20-something, someday, will be tooling along in some rented spacecraft, and decide, "hey, I bet I can pop the hatch and poke out and stare at the sun completely unprotected with absolutely no filter, right out in the vacuum, just me and the TERRIBLE SECRET OF SPACE." It sort of sounds like he would survive. Which is both incredible and really shows how dated all of our goofy space dramas will look in a hundred years. (if we don't kill ourselves before then, etc etc.)

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:27:40 -0800

"When a person exposes themselves to zero-pressure atmosphere, there's not a whole lot left to inspect."

By: not_on_display

not_on_display — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:38:09 -0800

Thanks, ^Dave. That link, which I won't watch, is probably the one that gave me nightmares just seeing a snippet of it on cable TV when I was a kid. (It's probably much funnier now, but still... {{shuddder}}

By: panamax

panamax — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:39:50 -0800

ie. "the Big Hickey"

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:45:14 -0800

Oh, it's just the trailer to the 1981 movie, Outland. I mean, it was bad, but I don't think it would give anyone but Sean Connery nightmares.

By: grouse

grouse — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 12:55:33 -0800

Watch that trailer? I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:01:17 -0800

uhm... 0.o Whatever happened to that bit where the pressure inside someone's body would be greater than the pressure outside his body if he were somewhere with no pressure, like a vacuum? So that rather than just a little bloating and turning blue, the human body would effectively explode as the mass tried to fill the vacuum of space..? The links made it sound like that'd only happen if you inhale first, and it wouldn't be immediate. Nature abhors a vacuum, so if there's no pressure on your body, like it is here on Earth, the pressure inside your body's gonna wanna fill up what little of the vacuum it can, at the expense of your continued existence. Two whole minutes? This writer honestly thinks a human being can survive in outer space for two whole minutes? I think we should test the writer's theories by shooting him up in space and seeing if he survives two whole minutes.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:15:45 -0800

The first link is misleading; I thought it would have had to do with the hazards of just being in space (how certain wavelengths pass through the craft and fuck with our DNA. Hey, YOU can worry about whether your kids will have birth defects once your suit punctures if you want. Me, I'll just scream to get rid of all that extra oxygen in the hopes of surviving those critical 10-15 seconds.

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:22:08 -0800

I saw Darph Bobo explode into confetti when he was ejected into space, so this article is clearly full of shit.

By: isopraxis

isopraxis — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:32:57 -0800

A good chance to turn up the smell and watch Space Wolf again.

By: isopraxis

isopraxis — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:34:00 -0800

(oops, I only meant to go to the thread and not point to. . . uhm. It was just my way of finding it quick like.)

By: CheeseburgerBrown

CheeseburgerBrown — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:44:33 -0800

The smell bit is very interesting. It's just the sort of thing we'll all know when Web 4.0 comes, complete with the cross-browser scent output libraries.

By: agentofselection

agentofselection — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:48:29 -0800

Well, ZachsMind, the human body isn't a plastic bag, it's somewhat porous. Also, the big bag of air in the middle opens right onto the outside, so no worry there. And while we do stay somewhat pressurized inside, the body has a fair bit of structural integrity to it. Your argument seems to indicate that any pressurized container in space should automatically explode, but that turns out not to be the case. Also, the author has scientific support for his view, consisting of lots of testing by government agencies. Your view seems to rest on an imperfect understanding of physics, plus sci-fi movies (which, of course, go hand in hand.)

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:04:13 -0800

Oh, it's just the trailer to the 1981 movie, Outland. I mean, it was bad, but I don't think it would give anyone but Sean Connery nightmares. That's nothing next to the Schwarzenegger protruding-eyeballs decompression from Total Recall. Sean Connery and decompression seem to go together alot. Remember when James Bond threw a bad guy in a bariatric chamber and then chopped into it with a fire axe so that the dude exploded?

By: hal9k

hal9k — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:23:07 -0800

Wow. So Dave really could have reentered the Discovery. Awesome. Also, throwing people out the airlock is a terrible way to die. Aw jeez here we go again...

By: Kikkoman

Kikkoman — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:52:06 -0800

Funny. I remember a short story by Arthur C. Clarke concerning the effect of vacuum on the human body titled Take a Deep Breath (the founding of the vacuum-breathers club?). Geoffrey Landis wrote a rather nice essay on the subject of Human Exposure to Vacuum which references NASA studies and validates a lot of Clarke's assertions.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:58:29 -0800

Well AgentOfSelection, right or wrong, this is definitely something I'd like to see... Darn shame ASavage doesn't lurk in these parts anymore. MythBusters could make an analogous dummy with pig flesh and ballistics gel and depressurize it in microgravity to see what would happen. My money's still on the boom.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:18:50 -0800

the human body would effectively explode No: You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. But hey, what would the folks at the Goddard Space Flight Center's High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center know?

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:23:16 -0800

Oh, and there's a pretty neat scene involving direct exposure to outer space in the underrated movie Sunshine.

By: agentofselection

agentofselection — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 15:25:34 -0800

ZachsMind: but the article talked about people being exposed to vacuum by accident, and the effects. The people who underwent short-term vacuum were fine, and the cosmonauts who rode down from space with no pressure died, but not messily--they appeared to be asleep when the capsule was opened. These experiments have been done with people and with live animals, and no one exploded--why try it with less funding with dead animals and gelatin?

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:39:08 -0800

There's a good article about that scene from Sunshine (and surviving in space) over at Slate.

By: Tube

Tube — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 16:57:36 -0800

Space smells? I thought it was vacuumed packed for freshness.

By: XMLicious

XMLicious — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 17:01:29 -0800

Wow! It's still got that new universe smell!

By: moonbiter

moonbiter — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 03:07:13 -0800

You know, considering the number of stars that have died in the history of the universe, it doesn't surprise me at all to learn that space smells burnt. Of course, George_Spiggott's explanation seems likely to me, so I guess that's just a bit of fanciful thinking.

By: bwg

bwg — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:49:33 -0800

Also, throwing people out the airlock is a terrible way to die. You mean the very act of throwing people out of an airlock could kill you? Guess I'd better not do that, then.

By: Brandon Blatcher

Brandon Blatcher — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 07:56:15 -0800

You mean the very act of throwing people out of an airlock could kill you? Well no, if you act it out, it won't kill you. It has to be done for real.

By: quin

quin — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:41:43 -0800

How completely weird. I just spent a good portion of yesterday looking up this very subject, and here it is on the blue. Odd. Anyhow, one way to understand what the human body is capable of enduring is to consider the people who do ultra-deep diving, who subject themselves (albeit briefly) to extreme depths with just a lungful of air. In these cases, the body is undergoing massive external pressures and surviving. Going the other direction, where the body is exposed to an absence of pressure is probably much less detrimental. As I understand it, you are much more likely to die from exposure and asphyxiation than any kind of pressure related issue if you step out an airlock. Though it sounds like the sum of our practical, experienced based knowledge on the subject is derived from a couple of accidents where people were unintentionally exposed to near vacuum environments. Or as my wife put it: "They aren't sure? You mean they didn't fire hamsters off into space just to see what would happen? That seems like something scientists would have done."