What happens if you open your mask in space?

Question

I thought I heard your eyes would pop out, then I was watching the Mission to Mars movie and the guy froze to death. So I'm curious if we took our mask off in space what would happen?

Answer 1

All liquids turn to gas at zero pressure.  If you opened your suit, your blood would boil just as fast as the air ran out of the suit.

Answer 2

You could survive for about 30 seconds:

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_as...

Ask an Astrophysicist -- Goddard Space Flight Center

"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."

"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. "

Answer 3

How-should-you-say....the best sun-tan!

Answer 4

the aliens would slap you with a glove like an old english lady and hit you with his man-bag.

Answer 5

umm. lets put it this way, humans need to breath o2 or air

in space there is no air and it is very cold and you will Die!!!

thats you dont want to remove your helmet and yes probably i dont work4 nasa your face will frezze

Answer 6

no, no, no.

you will NOT die instantly. it takes up to two minutes for you to actually die.

NASA experimented with this in a vacuum. they put an astronaut in a small vacuum pod with his mask open.

now, despite space being faaaaar below freezing, it's the vacuum that causes harm. the cold of space really does nothing to you. you don't get frostbite, or even get cold.

because of the lack of pressure, the saliva in your mouth will instantly vaporize. in fact, that's he last thing the astronaut in the vacuum remembered, because he passed out after a minute and a half. you of course suffocate, because the vacuum pressurizes the inside of your body, which causes your circulatory system to dump oxygen.

so, after 1 and 1/2 minutes, you pass out. much longer, and THEN you die.

don't, for the love of Buddha , believe what happens in hollywood movies! those are fake!

Answer 7

If you held your breath, your lungs would rupture and you'd freeze to death. If you didn't, you'd simply freeze to death.

You'd die very quickly.

To respond to Zachy, you will most certainly freeze to death. If there is less heat outside of your (hitherto opening your mask, closed) system, the laws of thermodynamics dictate that the heat contained within your spacesuit will quickly exit into space. This will leave you very cold.

Answer 8

I figure that since space is a vacuum and your eyes probably have some amount of air behind them, then the air will be sucked into space. If not, then your face would freeze and you will suffocate, much like drowning.

Answer 9

This exactly the sort of question space scientists should be trying to answer, in all seriousness. Perhaps suitably knowledgeable  biologists should offer collaborate with them. Gifted artists could then create vivid representations of their findings, in paint and music. I would be against animal testing, however.

Answer 10

You die..simple.

Answer 11

The air would be sucked out of your lungs and you would suffocate within a short period of time. Nobody knows for sure how short.

The suffocation would kill you much faster than the freezing.

Answer 12

you will get dusted

Answer 13

You would die, instantly!  No one wants to do that, so therefore, "they" have a tendency to keep their masks on.  Unless I'm mistaken, they train, specifically to learn how to do that very thing, putting on a mask.    

Movies have a tendency to dramatize "things", that is to say, since I've been watching them, only about 50 years, or so.  This is a long time, to some people.  However, there is a possibility that a human being would freeze, since it is very, very "cold" in space, there is no atmosphere, or air for a human to breathe, which is necessary to us, as a species.  So, you would gasp for air, and then just die.