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If I float in space naked, what will be the consequence for my wellbeing? What will happen to my skin? What will happen to my body due to the zero pressure surrounding me? Will the air be sucked from my lungs? Will my blood stream out of my poors, after having destroyed my capillary veins? Will the content of my mouth to anus tube be sucked out? What will happen to my ears? Will something burst?
And what about my temperature? Will it drop significantly before I die of other causes? Or can I prevent this by moving wildly?
Can I be rescued in time, if I accidentally took the wrong door after taking a shower in a space station (if you could take a shower)? In the movie "Event Horizon" a guy is rescued when he entered space without a suit (his eyes bleeding and blood coming out of his mouth).

Deschele Schilder
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    Welcome to Space! Several answers to What are the consequences if an astronaut's helmet gets damaged during a spacewalk? specifically address how much time one could survive, whether without the helmet or the entire suit. This question is a duplicate. – DrSheldon Jun 17 '21 at 05:35
  • @DrSheldon Hi there! I can't find the answer though. The only thing coming close is that it is stated that you don't freeze instantaneously because you only radiate energy away (no conduction). It is said that space is very cold (it is, 2.7(K)). I don't address the question of pressure effects, only heat transfer. – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 07:49
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    Darkdust's answer there cites less than 20 s to lose conscious, and 90 s to avoid permanent body swelling. KathleenPierson's answer there notes passing out in 15 s. There are also additional questions on this topic. This is not a new question. – DrSheldon Jun 17 '21 at 12:42
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    @DrSheldon But there is no reference made to or calculation made of how long your body can stay warm without too much hets lost. And that is what I'm asking. Not if your body swells. I'll edit. – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 13:19
  • @Methadont I tried to fit your question based on your last comment, is this okay? – BrendanLuke15 Jun 17 '21 at 13:39
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    @BrendanLuke15 Sure! It's better like this! More real. I've done a minor edit again though to exclude the possibility of suffocating. – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 13:45
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    Please DO NOT change your question. If you have more than one question to ask, then ask them in separate postings. By changing the content of this posting, you have invalidated all of the comments and answers that were posted here up to that point. These questions and answers are not here just for your benefit. They are here for the benefit of anybody who searches the same topic on this site or in a public search engine. – Solomon Slow Jun 17 '21 at 17:25
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    @SolomonSlow My question was originally about what will happen due to the drop in temperature. This was misunderstood. I explicitly stated that the zero pressure must not be taken into account. – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 17:27
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    Your original question asked how long you could survive without a suit, and that's the question that people spoke to. When you realized that it was not the question you wanted to ask, you should either have deleted it and started fresh, or let it lie. What you have here now is a whole bunch of comments, and one answer to a different question than the one that is asked by your newest text. That's going to confuse anybody who happens to find this page. – Solomon Slow Jun 17 '21 at 17:32
  • @SolomonSlow No, my original question asked about the heat exchange due to being naked in space. I didn't speak of a suit altogether. This was later added by someone else. My question was misinterpreted. – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 17:40
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    Your original version said, "...I have been robbed of my spacesuit during a spacewalk. So I'm naked..." – Solomon Slow Jun 17 '21 at 17:46
  • @SolomonSlow I don't remember that exactly. The point is that I didn't wear one after and that the question was about the cooling (or not) of my body. Anyhow, I'll take your advice. The question was wrongly interpreted. That's not my fault. It's clear now :) – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 17:49
  • @Methadont I see you've edited your question, and that's usually the recommended procedure when an unanswered question is closed and the OP would like to improve it or distinguish it from another question. However, once answers are posted we don't change the question such that the answer no longer applies. It's not fair to the answer author (wastes their time) and makes their answer less findable to future readers. You should roll back to the previous version that the answer addresses and consider, if possible, how to write a new question. – uhoh Jun 18 '21 at 06:57
  • @uhoh Yes, the same was already said by someone else. The point is though that the question was misinterpreted. I didn't ask for the effects of pressure (I even stated that in the original question). It's no duplicate either and that's why I edited. – Deschele Schilder Jun 18 '21 at 06:59
  • @Methadont you can access the edit history by clicking the word "edited" under your post or here's a link. I think you should click roll-back somewhere between edits #5 and #7. – uhoh Jun 18 '21 at 07:00
  • @Methadont yes I see what you mean, this is a challenging case as you did explain the answer author that you felt they'd misinterpreted it. Okay let's see what happens. Still, one way out of a complex situation like this is to find a way to ask a new and arguably different question. If that's possible, then it's a more efficient way to get an answer, but it's up to you! – uhoh Jun 18 '21 at 07:02
  • @uhoh That's not my edit. – Deschele Schilder Jun 18 '21 at 07:03
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    I considered it (a new question). But when typing I thought, this is exactly the same question. It will be marked a duplicate. Of my own question! :) A double duplicate... – Deschele Schilder Jun 18 '21 at 07:05
  • @uhoh I think that the point is that the situation is a bit unreal. Maybe the physics site is better for that. But I'm banned there... – Deschele Schilder Jun 18 '21 at 07:08
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    @Methadont Oh I like your latest edit much better! You might add that you'll try to hold as much breath as possible (which won't be much, we can't really hold much differential pressure). Okay I'll vote to reopen. – uhoh Jun 18 '21 at 07:12
  • Why is your pressure suit a perfect heat conductor? That doesn't sound like a good idea. You want to lose some body heat, but not too much. And don't forget that the air / oxygen cools as it expands from tank pressure to breathable pressure. – PM 2Ring Jun 18 '21 at 09:20
  • @PM2Ring I want to know if I can generate enough heat to counter the energy loss by radiation. The suit is merely meant to protect me from the low pressure. It's not my intention to survive... Let's assume the oxygen tank to be in my lungs and my mouth is shut off by the suit. Pretty unrealistic I know... – Deschele Schilder Jun 18 '21 at 09:26
  • So why are you adding additional heat loss by conduction? Also, lungs aren't hollow spaces, they're full of fractal lung tissues, so they're more like sponges than balloons. You can't just stick a pressure tank in there! – PM 2Ring Jun 18 '21 at 09:36
  • Which additional heat loss do you mean? The loss through the suit? Let's say I put the tank in my mouth. The meaning of this "experiment" is to find out if I can generate enough heat to keep myself warm. That's what the heat loss is for. – Deschele Schilder Jun 18 '21 at 09:37
  • Ok. You won't get heat loss via conduction if your suit isn't actually touching anything that it can conduct the heat to. And being conductive allows it to distribute evenly to all parts of your body. – PM 2Ring Jun 18 '21 at 09:56
  • @PM2Ring Indeed. You can see it as my second skin. – Deschele Schilder Jun 18 '21 at 09:58

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If your lungs are filled with oxygen at suit pressure of about 0.3 bar, you are not able to hold breath as you want. The pressure difference from inside the lungs to the bare skin in vacuum is too big for the delicate and soft lung tissue.

There was a technician wearing a spacesuit when working inside a vacuum chamber. His suit got a leak and lost pressure, he was unconscious within a few seconds. His colleagues outside the chamber rescued him very fast and he survived.

See http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/aerospace-engineering/space-suit-design/early-spacesuit-vacuum-test-wrong/

Uwe
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  • I'm not sure I get you on this. How can the air (or oxygen) in my lungs know what the pressure outside of my body is? – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 08:14
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    It doesn't "know" it applies the pressure it always has. What's changed is the pressure outside your body which has dropped to zero so there is now a pressure difference – Slarty Jun 17 '21 at 08:17
  • @Methadont The air does not know but your body does. Many years ago, the air within my lungs had a pressure of 5.0 bar, no problem my body was in decompression chamber at a pressure of 4.9999 bar. So the pressure difference was less than 0.1 mbar, – Uwe Jun 17 '21 at 08:29
  • @Methadont, tangental to your question as edited now but the ugly things pressure does to you is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barotrauma. Advice in this situation is in fact to not attempt holding your breath since it will just add lung injury to your list of problems. – GremlinWranger Jun 17 '21 at 08:37
  • @GremlinWranger If there is no outside pressure and you hold your breath, what will happen? Will your lungs collapse, as the air in it is sucked out? – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 08:40
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    @Methadont per the wikipedia link a whole bunch of unpleasant things will happen, your lungs will not be sucked out - the sealed volume in your lungs at one atmosphere will try to expand until the pressure inside is equal to that outside (vacuum), where each doubling in size halves the pressure, so nominally your lungs are trying to get several times larger and your body is trying to hold them together. Your ribs would be strong enough but diaphragm/stomache would not so your lungs would push everything down and out. Digestive system would also void itself as well. – GremlinWranger Jun 17 '21 at 09:10
  • @Methadont if you want a visual model for this take a balloon or cling film, seal it the end of a length of pipe and submerge the pipe into the deepest water you can conveniently access (a bucket works, swimming pool is better) - it will be inverted into the pipe and if pushed deep enough, burst. Scale this to 10 meters and you have the same pressure differential on the pipe as if you took it to space with sea level air in it. – GremlinWranger Jun 17 '21 at 09:30
  • But if a balloon is strong enough it will not explode in space. Can the air in your lungs push your shit out? – Deschele Schilder Jun 17 '21 at 10:03
  • Air pressure is surprisingly strong and lungs are not. If a balloon is strong enough it could withstand a vacuum on the outside, but it would have to be a strong balloon not a thin plastic effort. the problem is you lungs and body are not strong enough to resist air pressure trying to force its way out of you into the vacuum of space – Slarty Jun 17 '21 at 10:47
  • Re, ...all of the above..., which means that if you try to hold your breath, you will feel intense pain in your chest. If you can somehow ignore the pain and hold your breath anyway, you will suffer life-threatening air embolisms as air escapes from your lungs by entering your blood stream. If you release your breath, then all of the oxygen (and other dissolved gasses) in your blood will exit through your lungs so quickly that within 10-15 seconds you will be unconscious, and if somebody doesn't rescue you within a couple of minutes after that, you will be brain dead. – Solomon Slow Jun 17 '21 at 13:38
  • @SolomonSlow I thought it wasn't even possible to hold your breath this way. – Loren Pechtel Jun 18 '21 at 00:41
  • @LorenPechtel, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31828750/ – Solomon Slow Jun 18 '21 at 03:08
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    @SolomonSlow Which doesn't say whether he succeeded in holding his breath, only that he died in the attempt. My understanding of the situation is that if you try it the air forces itself out anyway with lethal results. – Loren Pechtel Jun 18 '21 at 22:51
  • Lungs don't have muscles. Instead you have a diaphragm. One mighty howl as well as a monumental fart and the free gas in your body will be vented. Then you will die. No point fighting it, it just leads to what? Frozen snot and tears, frozen stone hard on your face? Your last act in life should be to wipe that stuff off of your face, and resolutely stare into the darkness. That way if they find you, maybe you'll end up in a exhibit or something, inspire the youth etc. "With his last breath, he whipped out his phone, got it together and sent the lads one last selfie, and a text 'Stars ours.'" – chiggsy Aug 10 '21 at 03:19