Re:Jim LeBlanc Survives Early Spacesuit Vacuum Test Gone Wro...
by DoofusOfDeath on Sunday November 25, 2018 @01:54PM
(#18528233)
I'm really curious about the small structures in his lungs. I would have feared them getting totally trashed by the pressure imbalance, making his lungs useless even after the outside pressure was restored.
Re:Jim LeBlanc Survives Early Spacesuit Vacuum Test Gone Wro...
by pryce on Sunday November 25, 2018 @03:44PM
(#18528915)
That's an interesting hypothesis. The alveoli are delicate and highly vascularized, but then they are also already evolved specifically to facilitate rapid gas exchange, and geared to rapidly offload our CO2.
It would be fascinating to see empirical information about their performance in these conditions.
Re:Jim LeBlanc Survives Early Spacesuit Vacuum Test Gone Wro...
by 13of40 on Sunday November 25, 2018 @02:06PM
(#18528317)
About twenty years ago, I knew a guy who owned a snake that was fed with live white mice. Once, around feeding time, he and another guy we knew ended up making a bet about what would happen if the mouse was exposed to vacuum prior to becoming lunch. Long story short, it was put in a glass chamber from which the air was evacuated over the course of about a minute. Basically, it sniffed around for a few seconds then abruptly fell over dead, with the only external sign of damage being a small dot of blood on its nose.
Re:Jim LeBlanc Survives Early Spacesuit Vacuum Test Gone Wro...
by mannykannot on Sunday November 25, 2018 @02:01PM
(#18528284)
Could this incident have given Clarke the factual basis for the airlock scene in 2001? More than most SF authors, he liked his fiction to be broadly plausible.
I never knew a person experienced this though.
I'm curious about the temperature and it's effects inside the chamber and his suit during the test.
Initially he would probably feel warm in the in vacuum.
The evaporation of water would cool his mouth and nose.