Highest, fastest freefall attempt

Yup
So divide by 100, do what? Because you are dividing pressure by 100 or so.
 
Thugscub said:
A gas can not expand to over 100 times its volume in 1 atm change if it can please refer me to which gas law you are using.
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??? Yes it can and does. -1ATM from sea level in a standard system is a vacuum in other words gas can expand infinatly accourding to the math.

Sinbad you are exaggerating a bit on those symptoms tho.

How long can a human live unprotected in space?

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.

Various minor problems (sunburn, possibly "the bends", certainly some [mild, reversible, painless] swelling of skin and underlying tissue) start after ten seconds or so. At some point you lose consciousness from lack of oxygen. Injuries accumulate. After perhaps one or two minutes, you're dying. The limits are not really known.

You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly. Loss of consciousness occurs only after the body has depleted the supply of oxygen in the blood. If your skin is exposed to direct sunlight without any protection from its intense ultraviolet radiation, you can get a very bad sunburn.

At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

Aviation Week and Space Technology (02/13/95) printed a letter by Leonard Gordon which reported another vacuum-packed anecdote:

"The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect. However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute jump, the hand returned to normal."
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Ref: http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970603.html
 
Question - what is the "base" pressure that they're basing these findungs on? It's all about ratios and pressure gradients. For instance, the guy who went down to 1psi with the leaking suit - at what pressure is the suit actually pressurised? Same with the hand guy. What pressure was the rest of his suit at? Because basically the blood and soft tissues would have been exerting that exact outward pressure on his vacuum-exposed skin...

Sure in a decompression, blood won't "boil" but gas bubbles will come out of solution. There is a risk there of gas embolism - the bubble moves into a blood vessel in the brain and causes a mini "stroke". But again, it all depends on by how much the pressure drops relative to what it was before.
 
Sinbad said:
Question - what is the "base" pressure that they're basing these findungs on? It's all about ratios and pressure gradients. For instance, the guy who went down to 1psi with the leaking suit - at what pressure is the suit actually pressurised? Same with the hand guy. What pressure was the rest of his suit at? Because basically the blood and soft tissues would have been exerting that exact outward pressure on his vacuum-exposed skin...

Sure in a decompression, blood won't "boil" but gas bubbles will come out of solution. There is a risk there of gas embolism - the bubble moves into a blood vessel in the brain and causes a mini "stroke". But again, it all depends on by how much the pressure drops relative to what it was before.
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For you saliva to start to evaporate you need to be really low psi. NASA also did test with chimps surviving 3.3. minutes in near vacuum conditions and a person was exposed almost 3 minutes before as well but had to get intensive care. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=survival-in-space-unprotected-possible

The bubbles in your blood they already referred to as the Bends.
 
Moosedrool said:
For you saliva to start to evaporate you need to be really low psi. NASA also did test with chimps surviving 3.3. minutes in near vacuum conditions and a person was exposed almost 3 minutes before as well but had to get intensive care. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=survival-in-space-unprotected-possible

The bubbles in your blood they already referred to as the Bends.
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Nah. Bends is when you get bubbles coming out of solution in synovial fluid, joints or other soft tissue causing severe pain. You can have blood bubbles without any bends-like symptoms. We had a diver with an arterial gas embolism who had complete paralysis/numbness of one half of her body with no pain whatsoever...


Lots of info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompression_sickness
 
OK I didn’t know that, thought they were one in the same. I’m not a diver or anything.

But out of the data already gathered during accidents due to decompression I do believe it is safe to say, exhale all the air in your lungs and you might survive a couple of seconds before acquiring major injuries. 15 seconds is actually a long time given the circumstances but it also needs to be taken in account what the circumstances are. The body is stronger than some people think. Just like a shuttle your body can actually hold in expanding air to a degree. You won’t explode but might and I repeat might rupture an organ holding oxygen. Space itself is also cold but cold in a different way. No air means no vibrating molecules, stuff doesn’t cool down as rapidly in a vacuum as they will in actual -270 C air as the air actually helps with dragging on the opposing materials molecules.

You will die within a minute or so no doubt but not instantly.
 
I guess the problem is, instinct would be to hold your breath if you perceived that your oxygen supply was running out... Key = lots of training :)
 
I really hope he makes it, cause if he doesn't I can already see all the "Redbull doesn't give you wings" jokes coming already :o
 
Guys guys guys...

It's not the change in pressure that is the problem. Our bodies adjust to pressure perfectly if even time to adjust. The problem is the rate of change in pressure. That is the black and white of it, no need to dig so deep into it :p
 
[video=youtube;dYw4meRWGd4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYw4meRWGd4#t=52[/video]
 
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