Justice in early Starfleet

[WarpGirl]

I just can't really get a picture in my head of what would happen. I do know this... I ain't tryin it.

[Snorpenbass]

Don't ask me why I automatically assumed this but I always thought that if someone got "spaced" they'd suffocate and be frozen almost right away. So they'd be a like corpse in a freezer.

Well, best description I've gotten is that it's more like a living person in a combination of a low-effect microwave oven and freezer, with no air to breathe. The pressure difference isn't great enough to make anything explode, but the temperature and radiation and eventually lack of air will kill you. Studies made have suggested a human might survive up to a minute or two in outer space unprotected, but will be irreparably damaged by the experience even so, down to the genetic level.

One thing to remember is that any surface moisture on your skin will rapidly evaporate or turn to frost, which ironically will protect you for a few moments more.

SPOILERS for Event Horizon!

SPOILER!!!:

In Event Horizon, the young crew member I mentioned is spaced, and suffers these effects before they bring him in (their suits are fast to put on because they're rescue workers and need such gear, and one crew man was already gearing up before the airlock cycled open): severe bleeding to the softer membranes such as eyes, throat, ears, possibly elsewhere, extreme hypothermia, damage to his lungs (he was screaming in agony which rescued him from the worse effects of having air in his lungs), skin, and some radiation burns. They're in Jupiter and the ship's shadow at the time, though, otherwise he would likely have been flash-broiled instead.

...the kid lives, actually, and is put in stasis-pod storage. He even survives the movie through, which is kind of rare for a horror film.

[WarpGirl]

Horrifying! I wonder if a Vulcan would react differently I mean alien and everything.

[Ulva]

"Where's Tolaris?"
"...I think ensign Rodriguez mentioned him floating past her quarters yesterday. Why?"

*snerk* I'm sorry but that made me burst in to laughter. Also? Corpsicle satellite? Another giggle there.

I honestly think that laws in space weren't fleshed out for humans at that time and that Archer wasn't quite sure how to handle this. There's politics in this, diplomatic consequences and Vulcan on top of that. Though he recognised it as an assault or a rape, it's not certain the Human legal system would. He didn't know where the Vulcans stood on this either. I just think he let them fly off in to the unknown because he didn't know what to do and what implications it could have. I don't know what the diplomatic agreements could have been, but I'm pretty sure that Earth couldn't keep this from the Vulcan authorities and still have good relations with Vulcan. And once they knew they would get involved, pointing out what they thought Earth should do.

Archer didn't want to deal with Vulcans and in his opinion they could get all over this and again shriek that Humans can't handle space. He didn't want that. So what would he do? In the light of season 1 I'd say it was pretty predictable that he didn't do much at all. He would probably make a different decision in season 4.

[Kotik]

Well, best description I've gotten is that it's more like a living person in a combination of a low-effect microwave oven and freezer, with no air to breathe. The pressure difference isn't great enough to make anything explode, but the temperature and radiation and eventually lack of air will kill you. Studies made have suggested a human might survive up to a minute or two in outer space unprotected, but will be irreparably damaged by the experience even so, down to the genetic level.

Not quite true. If an airplane at normal cruise levels of FL350 (35.000 feet) suffers a decompression, pilots have less than 30 seconds to don the oxygen masks, before they loose consciousness. That's why planes go into an emergency vertical dive, if a decompression occurs - every meter of height less, is seconds of useful consciousness more. They usually level off at 10.000 feet, which is the highest altitude that untrained humans can go without suffering from oxygen deprivation. If a person was to be spaced, they'd lose consciousness in a matter of seconds, as all air would be expelled from their lungs.

[Cogito]

Not quite true. If an airplane at normal cruise levels of FL350 (35.000 feet) suffers a decompression, pilots have less than 30 seconds to don the oxygen masks, before they loose consciousness. That's why planes go into an emergency vertical dive, if a decompression occurs - every meter of height less, is seconds of useful consciousness more. They usually level off at 10.000 feet, which is the highest altitude that untrained humans can go without suffering from oxygen deprivation. If a person was to be spaced, they'd lose consciousness in a matter of seconds, as all air would be expelled from their lungs.

I think you mean an emergency descent, not a vertical dive. The autopilot ought to prevent you going into a vertical dive, but if you managed it you'd exceed Vne very quickly which would lead to the aircraft breaking up.

In the event of pressure loss pilots and passengers are provided with supplemental oxygen which is sufficient to prevent them from blacking out due to hypoxia. The oxygen systems have limited capacity but are designed to last long enough for the aircraft to complete an emergency descent from the cruise altitude down to 8000 ft. Even with the oxygen supply keeping people conscious those reduced pressures are pretty unhealthy, hence the emergency descent to a safe cabin altitude.

[Silverbullet]

I am going back a hell of a long time since I sstudied this crap. Back then it was thought that getting spced you would be flash frozen and as Kotik said all air would be explelled from your lungs along with the lungs going out through your mouth. In direct sunlight in space with no Air cover to protect one. A person would br broiled like a steak on a BBQ. Either way you would be dead in a hell of a hurry. No living for a few minutes. they were figuring that on the ground you have so many pounds of air pressure on you and internally so many pounds of pressure to equalize that. Take away the outside pressure and the internal pressur would be too much for your body. No one knew a damned thing just guesses, some pretty wild.

Who knows, I don't.

Sb

[Kotik]

I think you mean an emergency descent, not a vertical dive. The autopilot ought to prevent you going into a vertical dive,

An airplane in an emergency descent plumments at 5K+ fpm. That's a vertical dive to the uninitiated. In fact, I managed -4.500 fpm in a single-engined Socata - it's a dive, believe me.

[Cogito]

An airplane in an emergency descent plumments at 5K+ fpm. That's a vertical dive to the uninitiated. In fact, I managed -4.500 fpm in a single-engined Socata - it's a dive.

The vertical speed would depend on the situation. Typical jumbo jets could probably achieve 10,000-12,000 fpm with speed brakes out, but if the pressure loss is due to a structural failure they may bring it down at a much slower rate. Although that sounds like a huge sink rate, you need to remember they're cruising at 500 kts or so. Rounding off to convenient metric numbers, that's roughly 14,000 meters per minute airspeed and a sink rate of about 3000 meters per minute. So even in a very rapid descent they're still got a glide angle of about 1:4. If you literally put the aircraft into a vertical dive, it'd be destroyed rather quickly.

[Snorpenbass]

Well, best description I've gotten is that it's more like a living person in a combination of a low-effect microwave oven and freezer, with no air to breathe. The pressure difference isn't great enough to make anything explode, but the temperature and radiation and eventually lack of air will kill you. Studies made have suggested a human might survive up to a minute or two in outer space unprotected, but will be irreparably damaged by the experience even so, down to the genetic level.

Not quite true. If an airplane at normal cruise levels of FL350 (35.000 feet) suffers a decompression, pilots have less than 30 seconds to don the oxygen masks, before they loose consciousness. That's why planes go into an emergency vertical dive, if a decompression occurs - every meter of height less, is seconds of useful consciousness more. They usually level off at 10.000 feet, which is the highest altitude that untrained humans can go without suffering from oxygen deprivation. If a person was to be spaced, they'd lose consciousness in a matter of seconds, as all air would be expelled from their lungs.

You're still talking about a decompression within an atmosphere, which is actually far different from a vacuum for several reasons. It's like when a guy complained that the Empire didn't use air support during the battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back, and we had to explain to him that the atmospheric conditions of a cold, very humid (if all the darn snow was a clue) planet are highly different from those of space. No risk of ice in the wrong places, for one thing. And before anyone says "Lucas isn't that bright and wouldn't think of that!" let me remind you Lucas didn't really write the screenplay (that was done by among others Leigh Brackett, whom was a long-time sci-fi author and *would* know).

Also, the difference between the vacuum of space and the one atmosphere at which most of us live and breathe aren't so great as to cause literal sucking of air out of lungs, though it's still dramatic and damaging. For one thing, it's more likely to be a slow bursting of the membranes and alveola than any kind of cinematic "whoosh"-effect.

In shorter terms, the way movies have depicted spacing and decompression for half a century is not what the guys at NASA or the Russian aerospace agencies have found it to be like. We probably can survive a couple minutes (it's far less time than most think it is), but generally the damage is so great we wouldn't want to.