Cowboy Bebop Session 7 - How did Spike survive?

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-06-03 05:19pm

Genetic Engineering to provide more vacuum survivable humans?

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-06-03 06:21pm

consequences wrote:Genetic Engineering to provide more vacuum survivable humans?

Bigger lungs won't help since you have to expell that air else you want your bronchioles to be ruptured.

The only way would be to have more blood with more molecules of haemoglobin and myoglobin, that or make a better molecule (good luck with that one).

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-06-03 06:42pm

I was thinking better construction to prevent the damage from holding your breath personally.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-06-03 07:09pm

consequences wrote:I was thinking better construction to prevent the damage from holding your breath personally.

Define "better construction"? Short of making your lungs out of latex, there is nothing really you can do that several million years of evolution hasn't already done and perfected.

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-06-03 11:20pm

Since when have we been selecting for the ability to not explode in a vacuum? It's not remotely a survival related trait until space travel is developed.

Smiling Bandit · Post by **Smiling Bandit** » 2003-06-04 11:28am

Since when have we been selecting for the ability to not explode in a vacuum? It's not remotely a survival related trait until space travel is developed.

People do not explode in a vaccuum. Period. The poster who said this:

Define "better construction"? Short of making your lungs out of latex, there is nothing really you can do that several million years of evolution hasn't already done and perfected.

Meant that was really no way to adapt lungs to space. Its just too far removed from our home environment. Your lungs are built to do a very different job. In some ways, humans are well adapted to space - many animal species simply can't survive or cannot function out of a strong gravity well. Humans actually find it fun!

consequences · Post by **consequences** » 2003-06-04 11:48am

Sorry, went for visual dramatics rather than accuracy. What I was going for was better lack-of-pressure support, to keep bad things from happening as fast if you do hold your breath.

Strider119 · Post by **Strider119** » 2003-06-05 01:57am

How long can a human live unprotected in space?

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.

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 conscious 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 consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious 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.

I stole that shit from a website. Hope it is informative

See Stormbringer, I went and listened to people who know what they are talking about, instead of people on this board.

space cowboy:
Strider119

Sienthal · Post by **Sienthal** » 2003-06-06 09:49pm

I actually wondered whether a vacuum would've sucked the air out of your lungs. Additionally, wouldn't the vacuum be fairly radioactive? No protective gases out in space and all that,

. Still, in that time they'd probably have something quite capable of removing radiation before any permenant damage could occur.

By the way, hello again everyone, and long time no see.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-06-07 01:00pm

Sienthal wrote:I actually wondered whether a vacuum would've sucked the air out of your lungs. Additionally, wouldn't the vacuum be fairly radioactive? No protective gases out in space and all that, . Still, in that time they'd probably have something quite capable of removing radiation before any permenant damage could occur.

It wouldn't be that severe even if it were open space rather than in an asteroid. Nothing a little aloa wouldn't take care.