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Asante
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Space Nudism
#7785077 - 12/21/07 10:38 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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OK so you're halfway to Pluto in your cramped little spaceship and you want something else. How about some skinnydipping in the vacuum of space?
We've all seen Arnold Schwarzenegger's head just about explode in the Martian atmosphere in the movie Total Recall and on hindsight it might have been better if it had.
But is it really like that?
Suppose you got nekked and hooked yourself up to a small device that feeds oxygen directly to your hemoglobin, thereby relieving you of the requirement to breathe for a living. You smear your body with a barrier cream to keep it from drying out quickly in the vacuum of space, and apply fluorocarbon eyedrops for the same purpose. Outside your craft you have set up all sorts of heat lamps, so the local temperature will be subtropical instead of damn near to absolute zero.
You get in the decompression tank, evacuate the gases from your bowels, cavities and the nitrogen from your blood like any deep sea diver would, and then you get out there, skinnydipping among the stars.
You're a liquid/solid mass with no gas-filled cavities that cant be evacuated. your body should be able to resist zero atmospheres. You got the barrier cream and the eyedrops so all water loss will occur through your lungs - you'll take a lot of ice tea with you You're damn far from the sun so radiation is cool even without an ozone layer. The heat lamps assure that you won't freeze solid in minutes.
Anyone know any solid reasons why this can't happen? It's a bit counterintuitive but.. know any variables that prohibit space skinnydipping?
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RoosterCogburn
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Asante]
#7785086 - 12/21/07 10:42 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Radiation and gamma rays and shit?
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Asante
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Quote:
Radiation and gamma rays and shit?
That's only if you happen to be close to a star or other source of radiation, like a Jupiter-sized gas giant. Perhaps halfway to Pluto is too close by, but how about halfway to Proxima Centauri? Interstellar space is too big to be a hellhole of radiation, methinks.
There isn't much of anything in interstellar space, right?
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trendal
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Asante]
#7785118 - 12/21/07 10:54 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I don't think so...while I have heard you can survive for short exposures to such a vacuum (seconds) I don't think you would survive long.
Do me a favor...put your mouth on your arm and suck as hard as you can. Look at the bruising after just 5 seconds. Now imagine what the vacuum of interstellar space would do (around 1 femto-Pascal of pressure).
Not to mention the effects on your blood...reduce the pressure on anything enough and it will boil. Not good.
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Asante]
#7785134 - 12/21/07 10:59 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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There isn't much of anything in interstellar space, right?
Exactly 
When building a low vacuum system, it has to be specifically designed to avoid "outgassing" - where many things that seem solid in our wonderful atmosphere actually give off large amounts of gases when under low pressure. All kinds of rubber are horrible outgassers...which would lead me to think that all organic substances would, too. Like skin
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ApJunkie
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: trendal]
#7785184 - 12/21/07 11:13 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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however, it may be possible to develop an extremely thin, invisible spacesuit so it would LOOK like space nudity 
either way, Zero-G sex would be the best thing EVAR
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Seuss
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Asante]
#7785199 - 12/21/07 11:15 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I can't but help think... pv=nrt ... hope you don't mind bruising... what temperature does blood boil at in a hard vacuum? Heat lamps you say?
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Annom
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Asante]
#7785527 - 12/21/07 01:02 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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The only way to transfer heat is by radiating it into empty space. I don't think you need the lamps as long as your body produces some energy. Maybe you even need large radiators to loose enough heat.
I don't think your blood would boil because your blood vessels keep the pressure up, but I'm not sure and want to know!
Where can I sign up?
Edited by Annom (12/21/07 01:04 PM)
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trendal
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Annom]
#7785643 - 12/21/07 01:36 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I don't think your blood would boil because your blood vessels keep the pressure up, but I'm not sure and want to know!
Problem is, what keeps the pressure up on the outside of your blood vessels?
Don't forget we are made of water, to a large extent (think it's something like 70%).
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Diploid
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: trendal]
#7786760 - 12/21/07 07:17 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Problem is, what keeps the pressure up on the outside of your blood vessels?
Exactly.
Try this: put some 98.6F water (or blood) in a syringe, block the exit, then pull the plunger back to form a vacuum over the bit of water.
It will boil. Naked in space you'd end up with a full-body hickey.
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Annom
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: trendal]
#7787130 - 12/21/07 08:56 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Problem is, what keeps the pressure up on the outside of your blood vessels?
Nothing. It would come from the tensile strength of the vessel. Vessels could act as liquid nitrogen storage tanks. I can however imagine that they are not strong enough. And blood will come through your skin, as you can test yourself.
"ABSTRACT Eight chimpanzees , used in nine separate tests, were decompressed from 179 mm Hg (breathing 100 per cent 0,) to less than 2 mm Hg (270 N/m^2) in 0.8 seconds and remained at this altitude from 5 to 150 seconds. After recompression to 179 mm Hg (again breathing 100 per cent Os), the subjects were kept at this altitude for 24 hours. Performance by all animals, on a complex operant schedule presented during and following rapid decompression, reached a baseline level of performance within a 4-hour post-decompression period. No central nervous system damage (as measured by performance) could be detected and all subjects survived in good health.
Cortical EEG, ECG, and respiration were recorded before, during, and following decompression. Visual analysis of recorded physiological parameters was conducted and correlations with performance were attempted. EEG fast activity (lo-12 cps) always preceded the end of the period of total behavioral impairment, while total behavioral recovery followed the return of normal EEG patterns. Surgical procedures for implanting chronic cortical leads were developed. All subjects showed slight neutrophilia, increased transaminase, and facial edema which returned to normal within 72 hours after decompression. All subjects survived in good health and no lasting effects of rapid decompression to a near vacuum could be detected." - source(pdf)
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RoosterCogburn
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Annom]
#7787141 - 12/21/07 08:59 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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That still sounds bad. I'll take the spacesuit please.
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Diploid
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Annom]
#7787264 - 12/21/07 09:35 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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2 mm Hg is a far cry from hard vacuum, though. It's only 2 mm, but those last few make a big difference. It's not linear.
Edit: my reference on Everest was wrong...
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RoosterCogburn
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Diploid]
#7787276 - 12/21/07 09:37 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I suppose 0 mm would be much worse than. Is it like magnitudes of difference?
I've always thought with ZERO pressure, humans wouldn't last long at all. Eyeballs? pop?
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lIllIIIllIlIIlIlIIllIllIIl
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if they got facial edema at that pressure then i guess they would get severe facial edema in a vacuum
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Legend9123



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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Asante]
#7787896 - 12/22/07 01:58 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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According to http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html living for a short while would not be out of the question provided you didn't try to hold your breath. There are cases on there of astronauts surviving being depressurized in vacuum chambers for 15-20 seconds and returned to normal immediately afterwards. Given the changes to the circumstance W_S suggested the only threat that should still be a problem is radiation. Even at a distance like that I think it would still be a considerable threat.
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Annom
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Diploid]
#7788034 - 12/22/07 03:58 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Diploid said: 2 mm Hg is a far cry from hard vacuum, though. It's only 2 mm, but those last few make a big difference. It's not linear.
Pressure doesn't vary linear with altitude, but a pressure of 270 N/m^2 is very close to vacuum if you compare it with 100000 N/m^2 at see level. This 270 N/m^2 doesn't help the blood vessels much at all. That's only a few g per cm^2.
Quote:
Edit: my reference on Everest was wrong...
Yeah, my ISA table gives me 270 mm Hg for the mount everest.
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Asante
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: trendal]
#7788398 - 12/22/07 09:59 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
put your mouth on your arm and suck as hard as you can. Look at the bruising after just 5 seconds.
Most of that is caused because the rest of your body is pressurized and the spot is not.
If you were in a pressure chamber at 2 atmospheres and it sprung a leak, which you quicky plug with your arm, you'd get the same painful hickey, caused by atmospheric pressure on that one spot.
If you depressurize a small area (think penis pumps) blood will surge towards it to try equalize the preesure, resulting in high local bloodpressure and a hickey. If you depressurize the whole, this will not happen.
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trendal
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Asante]
#7788481 - 12/22/07 10:27 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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"Without intervention in those first ninety seconds, the blood pressure would fall sufficiently that the blood itself would begin to boil, and the heart would stop beating. There are no recorded instances of successful resuscitation beyond that threshold."
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=741
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Sillicybin
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: trendal]
#7795487 - 12/24/07 12:26 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Well, here's my question:
If there's no air around your body, how are you going to stay warm?
If you're facing the sun, only the front of you is going to stay warm as the light hits your skin and turns to heat. Your backside would fairly quickly turn to ice, if I'm not mistaken...
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DieCommie


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There are two kinds of heat. The heat from 'light' which is what you feel when you put your hand in the sun. There is also the heat from atoms, which is what you feel if you put your hand in a hot oven.
Now your question is about air around your body. Air around your body doesnt keep you warm (unless the air is hot). It actually takes heat from you. Your skins atoms have more energy than the airs atoms. So if there is no air, where is the heat from your body going to go? There is nowhere for it to go, so the vacuum acts as an insulator. (real insulators that go in houses have many little pockets of vacuum for the insulation).
But your body can still gain and lose heat in the 'light' form. This would take a while for your body to radiate away. You would freeze, but it would take a while.
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Sillicybin
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: DieCommie]
#7795609 - 12/24/07 12:57 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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You're right - vacuum does act as an insulator - but isn't the air around you very warm compared to space? The air around you doesn't warm you, I agree (if it's below 99* anyway) - but it's close enough to your body temperature that it can't take away heat faster than your metabolism generates it...
Wouldn't heat radiate off of you in wave form though? I'm guessing you're right in that it would take awhile....
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Seuss
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> If there's no air around your body, how are you going to stay warm?
Spin is your friend. (Though the original post mentioned heat lamps.)
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ApJunkie
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Seuss]
#7796870 - 12/24/07 10:32 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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I mean... if you're having sex out there, you're going to be spinning anyway.
Can't make all that whoopie and not expect a little equal-opposite motion on the side
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Seuss
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: ApJunkie]
#7797324 - 12/25/07 02:21 AM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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> I mean... if you're having sex out there, you're going to be spinning anyway.
By what logic? Sir Newton would disagree with you, as would I.
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ApJunkie
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Seuss]
#7798322 - 12/25/07 01:35 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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you're not a very creative lover, are you?
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Annom
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Re: Space Nudism [Re: Seuss]
#7798560 - 12/25/07 02:52 PM (16 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
Seuss said: > If there's no air around your body, how are you going to stay warm?
Spin is your friend. (Though the original post mentioned heat lamps.)
I estimated the energy radiated by the human body with the stefan boltzmann law: 1000 W when the human body is a near perfect black body (which it is in IR as far as I know).
The human body generates only 100 W (when relaxed), but the sun also has an input on half of the body (1m^2) of 1300 W.
400 W surplus power.
You will need to spin, but may also need part of the sun blocked or some radiators or active cooling.
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