Re: The Love Thread (Or Just Warms and Fuzzies)
Really? Wow. I always thought you popped like a balloon.
That's a common misconception, mostly due to hollywood. The three most dangerous thing in space are the temperature, the negative pressure, and solar radiation. The temperature actually isn't much of a problem compared to the other two, as it's much harder to leak heat into a vacuum than into atmosphere, simply because there's nothing there to leach it into. The negative pressure is the most immediate problem. If you don't exhale as soon as possible, your lungs will asplode from the expanding gases. This obviously limits the time you remain conscious, but if your drifting in space, being able to think probably isn't a good thing. Your eyeballs are usually the first to go, but your eyelids are strong enough to keep them in place for those 8 minutes, though I can't imagine how. The radiation is incredible dangerous, but you can survive a 22 minute dose, provided there's no solar flare activity. If you are out there that long, however, you might as well be dead anyway. You will suffer from the bends the entire time, and you will have serious but treatable rad burns on any exposed skin, but 8 minutes or less and anything you suffer will be fixable, provided you exhale and don't open your eyes.
In other news, I love chairs. I get double the recommended daily excercise quota in my first four hours of work, its nice to have a sit down and put a post up while I'm working.