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by tokenadult 4816 days ago
A famous scene in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey showed this. (The actor, Keir Dullea, almost was badly injured in the shot showing him entering the spaceship airlock without his helmet on, by the way.) But as the article points out, such survival is only

"for at least a couple of minutes. Not that you would remain conscious long enough to rescue yourself, but if your predicament was accidental, there could be time for fellow crew members to rescue and repressurize you with few ill effects."

So be sure to practice a buddy system if you are going into outer space without full protective gear on at all times. There's a reason that the full title of the article submitted here is "Survival in Space Unprotected Is Possible--Briefly."

2 comments

Event Horizon from 1997 also had a scene where someone survived a short trip through space.
That was the first thing I thought of when the author mentioned exploding eyeballs.
Also the movie Sunshine.
2 minutes isn't much time to accomplish anything in a space suit. Your buddy needs to recognize what's happened, get to you, drag you into the airlock, and repressurize the airlock. Unless this happens directly next to the airlock door, I think you're done for.
Your conscious time is more like 15 seconds, according to the article. All you're going to accomplish is hitting a panic button.
Or patch the hole, if there is a hole. But your points is valid that its not a lot of time.
Or, they throw you into a rescue ball. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Rescue_Enclosure