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[CrimsonFALKE]

Did violent decompression kill those two umaki? If so is their exoskeleton that durable?

As I understand it, animals will lose consciousness and die from lack of oxygen long before they succumb to other effects of low pressure (like ruptured wet membranes and gas coming out of solution to form bubbles in bodily fluids, or eventually such fluids boiling off), so I don't think it matters whether the decompression is rapid. As far as I'm aware, macroscopic organisms don't explode in low pressure, nor do their organs or body structures. One might think that a sealed organ like an eyeball would explode in vacuum, but apparently not -- there have been many tests of primates (including some humans, I believe) exposed to vacuum who later made a full recovery, without their eyes or organs exploding. I've also seen tests of insects in vacuum chambers (see one below), and aside from losing consciousness from lack of oxygen, they seemed otherwise unaffected by the lack of pressure.



(The spider in particular just did not give an f.)

Explosive Decompression usually happens under speeds like mach 0.75 and up. They are still traveling right, or did the ship stop entirely? According to documentation ear drums and sinus cavities are the most suseptable to ED. It also happens in a space of about .1 to .5 seconds http://aupress.au.af.mil/digital/pdf/bo ... ce_age.pdf

[Arioch]

Explosive Decompression usually happens under speeds like mach 0.75 and up. They are still traveling right, or did the ship stop entirely? According to documentation ear drums and sinus cavities are the most suseptable to ED. It also happens in a space of about .1 to .5 seconds

The ship is in space; its velocity has no effect on decompression.

Anyhow, the Umiak in this page were killed from the effects of low pressure (hypoxia, the bends and/or boiling phenomena) and not specifically by the decompression event.

[Demarquis]

"Well, even if Beryl were the distrustful sort, she needs to lead the way, since Alex doesn't know where they're going. And even if he were not a male, and triggering her protective instincts, I don't think she'd want him blocking her shot against any random enemy that might appear."

It isn't that they took him a long that demonstrates trust (quite the opposite, actually), but that they gave him a pistol. Even if he means well, accidental discharge is very dangerous, even under ideal conditions, let alone the stress of battle. They are literally placing their lives in his hands. No competent human military would go that far.

[CrimsonFALKE]

Explosive Decompression usually happens under speeds like mach 0.75 and up. They are still traveling right, or did the ship stop entirely? According to documentation ear drums and sinus cavities are the most suseptable to ED. It also happens in a space of about .1 to .5 seconds

The ship is in space; its velocity has no effect on decompression.

Anyhow, the Umiak in this page were killed from the effects of low pressure (hypoxia, the bends and/or boiling phenomena) and not specifically by the decompression event.

Is that caused by the boarding action or is the safety standard for their ships that low?

[Arioch]

Anyhow, the Umiak in this page were killed from the effects of low pressure (hypoxia, the bends and/or boiling phenomena) and not specifically by the decompression event.

Is that caused by the boarding action or is the safety standard for their ships that low?

It was the result of carefully arranged sabotage by Tempo.

[QuakeIV]

I'm not exactly an Arioch simp so I think I can safely say this is lampooning for its own sake and is kindof pointless and moronic.

For instance:
low safety standards? its established they don't value individuals particularly at all, two dead guys in the hallway is kindof unfortunate at worst. frankly, the loss of the whole ship would be kindof unfortunate. its also not like somebody slipped on a banana peel and hit the 'decompress the ship' button on accident.
'speeds like mach 0.75 and up' give me a break, thats obviously not how it works. its about the size of the hole, vs the internal volume and pressure. its not even said if that was how it was depressurized either, or if they evacuated the chamber some other way.

[Demarquis]

Beryl already stated that the Umiak would scuttle the ship (while still being on board it, I assume) if they knew who was now on it.

Now we see the reason why.

[avatar576]

Regarding eyeballs: Eyeballs are exceptionally resilient. In school during a biology class we where given cow eyes to dissect. That was HARD to do, that eyeball resisted the scalpel a lot. On the other hand, I had eye surgery a few years back to replace one of my lenses with an artifical one. It was painful but I was fully awake during the operation. I suppose that skill and sharper scalpels help.

I remember a similar experience in 5th grade. I think it was a sheep's eye that we dissected, but I remember our teacher coming by my table to show our group how to extract the vitreous humor (the gel-like substance that fills the eyeball). Then she threw it on the floor and instead of splattering all over, like we expected, it bounced right back to her hand. Totally bizarre, but does help to explain why your eyes wouldn't explode in a vacuum. The gel has properties that are more like a very elastic solid than liquid.

[Overkill Engine]

There was a scene in "Earthlight" by Clarke (1955) that sticks in my memory. A warship's crew evacuated to a passenger liner of the opposing side, despite not having enough spacesuits. Clarke wrote that the main danger from the brief exposure would be sunburn, so they did as much of it as possible in the shadow of one of the ships. I've wondered how accurate that was.

Solar radiation is no joke when there is no planetary atmosphere or other shielding to help mitigate it. Also, while solar radiation can cause objects exposed to it to heat up, heat transfer away from those objects is impaired due to them being in a vacuum. So it's possible to get a bit cooked depending on how close the sun is.

[Arioch]

There was a scene in "Earthlight" by Clarke (1955) that sticks in my memory. A warship's crew evacuated to a passenger liner of the opposing side, despite not having enough spacesuits. Clarke wrote that the main danger from the brief exposure would be sunburn, so they did as much of it as possible in the shadow of one of the ships. I've wondered how accurate that was.

Solar radiation is no joke when there is no planetary atmosphere or other shielding to help mitigate it. Also, while solar radiation can cause objects exposed to it to heat up, heat transfer away from those objects is impaired due to them being in a vacuum. So it's possible to get a bit cooked depending on how close the sun is.

It depends on how close you are to the sun. If you're just in orbit around the Earth, the thermal component of sunlight is not significantly more intense in space than it is on the surface of the planet. The danger would be from the kinds of radiation that are normally blocked by Earth's atmosphere, but a modern spacesuit doesn't block those anyway, and the amount of exposure you'd get in the few minutes it would take the lack of pressure to kill you would, I think, be the least of your worries.

[Demarquis]

If you want to leave a lovely looking corpse...

...don't go to space.

[Moon Moth]

It depends on how close you are to the sun. If you're just in orbit around the Earth, the thermal component of sunlight is not significantly more intense in space than it is on the surface of the planet. The danger would be from the kinds of radiation that are normally blocked by Earth's atmosphere, but a modern spacesuit doesn't block those anyway, and the amount of exposure you'd get in the few minutes it would take the lack of pressure to kill you would, I think, be the least of your worries.

To avoid misrepresenting Clarke (and a book I'm quite fond of, I looked at a copy today, and here's the core bit:

"Now," he continued, "you're probably wondering about the pressure drop. That's the only uncomfortable part, but you won't be in a vacuum long enough for severe damage. We'll open the hatches in two stages; first we'll drop pressure slowly to a tenth of an atmosphere, then we'll blow out completely in one bang and make a dash for it. Total decompression's painful, but not dangerous. Forget all that nonsense you may have heard about the human body blowing up in a vacuum. We're a lot tougher than that, and the final drop we're going to make from a tenth of an atmosphere to zero is considerably less than men have already stood in lab tests. Hold your mouth wide open and let yourself break wind. You'll feel your skin stinging all over, but you'll probably be too busy to notice that."

The M. O. paused, and surveyed his quiet, intent audience. They were all taking it very well, but that was only to be expected. Every one was a trained man--they were the pick of the planets' engineers and technicians.

"As a matter of fact," the surgeon continued cheerfully, "you'll probably laugh when I tell you the biggest danger of the lot. It's nothing more than sunburn. Out there you'll be in the sun's raw ultra-violet, unshielded by atmosphere. It can give you a nasty blister in thirty seconds, so we'll make the crossing in the shadow of the Pegasus. If you happen to get outside that shadow, just shield your face with your arm. Those of you who've got gloves might as well wear them."

Another point of interest is that they've got a hyper-oxygenated atmosphere (twice Earth oxygen, even at fractional pressure) and hyperventilate first, to get about 5 minutes without breathing.

[Demarquis]

I believe that the most immediate danger of vacuum exposure is asphyxiation.