How long would an astronaut survive if he/she was exposed to the vacuum of space?
I’m pretty sure the man would have died in that situation, but would not have exploded. Humans exposed to a vacuum will lose consciousness after a few seconds and die of hypoxia within minutes, but the symptoms are not nearly as graphic as commonly shown in pop culture. Blood and other body fluids do boil when their pressure drops below 0.9 psi the vapor pressure of water at body temperature. This condition is called ebullism. The steam may bloat the body to twice its normal size and slow circulation, but tissues are elastic and porous enough to prevent rupture. Ebullism is slowed by the pressure containment of blood vessels, so some blood remains liquid. Animal experiments show that rapid and complete recovery can occur for exposures shorter than 90 seconds, while longer full-body exposures are fatal and resuscitation has never been successful. Decompression sickness, also known as ‘the bends’ arises from the precipitation of dissolved gasses into bubbles inside the body on depressuri
