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We've all witnessed the scenario in science fiction: A character is sucked out of a spaceship and cast into the void of space. While many films portray this, they often get it wrong. The truth about what happens to a human exposed to space is stranger and more bizarre than you might think.
10. The Void of Space
To start with, if your spacecraft's exterior is breached (maybe by a passing asteroid), the pressure inside the cabin will rapidly decrease, and you will be pulled into the empty vacuum of space.
The spacecraft would initially be pressurized to simulate Earth's atmosphere, ensuring a breathable environment. However, if the ship is damaged, the air inside would rapidly expand, creating a vacuum and forcefully pulling everything—including you—into the emptiness. If you're fortunate enough to survive the flying debris, you'd still find yourself in an incredibly dire situation, drifting aimlessly in the vastness of space.
9. Extreme Swelling
Remember Veruca Salt from *Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory* who swelled up like a giant blueberry? In space, the human body would undergo a similar transformation. Without Earth's atmospheric pressure, the water in our bodies, which makes up 70% of us, would no longer stay liquid. It would expand until it turns into water vapor, causing severe internal swelling. A person could swell to roughly twice their normal size. While the vapor wouldn't cause the skin to burst, you'd undoubtedly experience significant discomfort.
8. Exposure To Sunlight
A day at the beach can quickly be spoiled by a painful sunburn—especially if you forget to apply sunscreen. Now, picture being exposed to the full intensity of the sun without Earth's ozone layer to block the most dangerous ultraviolet rays. The results would be catastrophic for the human body. A person drifting through space would suffer severe burns on any exposed skin. Staring directly at the sun would also burn your light-sensitive retinas, causing permanent blindness. Even if you managed to survive, your risk of developing skin cancer would skyrocket.
7. Suffocation Due to Hypoxia
In the vacuum of space, a person would be completely deprived of oxygen, but not in the way you might imagine. This condition, known as hypoxia, occurs because, without the pressure of Earth's atmosphere, the oxygen in your blood will begin to escape. Your cardiovascular system will fail, and no oxygen will reach your muscles or vital organs. The fact that you can no longer inhale fresh oxygen only worsens the situation. This lack of oxygen would also cause your skin to turn blue. A person can remain conscious for about 10 seconds before losing consciousness.
6. Rapid Cooling
On a hot day, our bodies sweat to cool down. As the sweat evaporates from the skin, it absorbs heat energy, creating a cooling effect. In space, this process is drastically intensified. Normally, humidity in the air slows down cooling since it's harder for sweat to evaporate in air already saturated with moisture. However, in the vast emptiness of space, there's no humidity. This absence allows bodily fluids to evaporate and cool rapidly. Any exposed fluids—like your eyes, mouth, or respiratory tract—would freeze.
5. Decompression Sickness
As we've already observed, the low pressure of space prevents oxygen from remaining dissolved in your blood. This vacuum-like environment has the same effect on other gases, like nitrogen, leading to the formation of tiny nitrogen bubbles throughout your circulatory system (the definition of the bends). These bubbles can cause severe joint pain, but the real danger comes when they create blockages in your veins and arteries. Bubbles in the brain can lead to strokes and seizures, while a bubble in the heart can result in sudden heart failure and death.
4. No Blood Pressure
By now, it’s clear that space wreaks havoc on the human body. From internal to external changes, you’re stretched, bloated, and deformed. As a result, your altered body would struggle to maintain normal blood pressure. For example, it’s easy to drink soda through a regular straw. But imagine the straw’s diameter being 10 times bigger. Similarly, your heart would struggle to pump blood through your enlarged veins, causing your blood pressure to drop to zero, ultimately leading to death.
3. Cellular Mutation
Even if you somehow survived exposure to the vastness of space, you wouldn't be free from danger. Along with the many other hazards, space is filled with invisible threats. During your brief exposure, you would be bombarded with a range of harmful subatomic particles, such as gamma rays, high-energy protons, and x-rays. These particles are so tiny that they interact with your cells and even change your DNA. But this wouldn't give you any superpowers, as some comics might suggest. Instead, you'd likely face radiation poisoning or cancer in the years that follow.
2. Boiling Blood
In environments with lower pressure, the boiling point of liquids also decreases. This happens because less pressure means the molecules are freer to move, requiring less heat energy to turn the tightly packed molecules of a liquid into the more spread-out molecules of a gas.
This is why water boils more easily at higher altitudes. In space, the boiling point of your blood could drop to the point where it matches your own body temperature—at that moment, your blood would start to boil. While the temperature of your blood itself wouldn't change, in the vacuum of space, that could be enough to cause it to boil.
1. Explosive Decompression
One deadly mistake you could make while being sucked out of your spaceship would be to take one final, deep breath. You might think that extra air would give you a few more moments of life, but it would actually make things worse. Holding that air in your lungs in the vacuum of space would cause explosive decompression—of your lungs. Just think about that for a moment.
The air would rapidly expand in the low-pressure environment, causing your lungs to rupture like balloons. If you ever find yourself in this scenario, it would be wise to exhale as much as possible to prevent this catastrophic damage.
