Will an astronaut explode if he takes off his helmet?

Will an astronaut explode if he takes off his helmet?

Have you ever wondered what might happen to your body in space without a spacesuit? Is it really as dramatic as the movies make it out to be? Would you literally EXPLODE? Could you survive?

The most serious dangers of exposure to outer space are a lack of oxygen and ebullism. Ebullism is the formation of bubbles in body fluids due to a reduction in ambient pressure.

You’ll swell up pretty bad, perhaps even up to twice your normal size, but you won’t explode as your skin is very stretchy. Your blood will also not boil. You will, of course, be in an immense amount of pain and your blood circulation will be impeded. After around 15 seconds, your body would have used up all of the oxygen in your body and you’d lose consciousness.

Some of you may be thinking “But I can hold my breath for minutes!” The situation in space is a little different than here on Earth due to the lack of outside pressure, and if you held your breath in space without a suit you’d be in a big trouble. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending. This is because any remaining air would rapidly expand, rupturing the lungs. .

There is such a thing as "explosive decompression," but that merely refers to the sudden loss of pressure in an air- or spacecraft, not the effect on the occupants. Though your chances of surviving such an experience are slim, your body would not explode.

In sum- you’d swell up, burn, mutate, pass out and your lungs might explode. Lovely. But don’t worry, if you’re ever in this sticky situation, you’ve probably got a solid minute or two to be rescued before you die, so chin up, wannabe astronauts.

If you don’t try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. 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.

Debunked!