Sunshine

Grudaire

I'm not sure if anyone saw the Film Sunshine....

But it was am insult to reality, You cannot go into space without a space suit, and not just because it's cold, which is what the film basically said...

Anyone else not like the complete science fiction it jumped in and out of?

Crucifix

I haven't seen the movie, but the idea that you'll instantly explode in a total vaccuum isn't true. Blood vessels may rupture and so on, but your skin is actually quite strong. AFAIK it's the oxygen loss that actually kills.

humbert

You get a pretty vicious case of the bends too, I would imagine. Can't imagine what having the air sucked out of your lungs would be like!

ApeXaviour

Hmm... Lungs collapsing, pretty instant blindness, all sorts of internal things rupturing. I can imagine it'd be fairly quick though. But what would get you first I don't know.

breadmonkey

What a great film though!

enda1

I can't imagine that it would be that cold in space. You can only lose thermal energy by radiation, not through conduction or convection. I really cant imagine that it would be at that hihgh a rate either even if you were say in the shadow of a spacecraft. It think its more likely, in the solar system anyway that it would be far hotter, (never mind the high frequency radiation) than on earth!

Though this film amy be based in deep space, i havent seen it.

Professor_Fink

While the film wasn't necessarily accurate, it is worth baring in mind that they were forced out of a pressurized chamber (the air lock) over what is essentially a very small distance. You would expect them to have been surrounded by a pocket of low density gas, so the vacuum wouldn't have been as strong as if they had just materialized in an empty region of space.

Also, being surrounded by gas would have seriously increased the rate at which they lost heat.

Again, I'm not saying it was accurate, just that it is certainly justifiable.

andy1249

Wasnt that stunt in Battlestar Gallactica as well , a couple of weeks ago ?

Professor_Fink

Enda1: It is much much colder once you leave the Earths atmosphere.

ixoy

Actually I thought the science in this was fairly decent for a sci-fi flick. The instant without the space suit was very short - they held in their breath and were propelled across a small distance. The guy without the spacesuit also suffered damage from the intense cold and

the one who missed the airlock, died as his blood vessels were ruptured.

.

They made a point also, in terms of temperature, of it being -273C outside.

Some of the basic concepts there were fairly sound too - the difficult in altering trajectories, using a hydroponics bay for O2 supply, the concept of re-igniting a star with fissile material is even not too far-fetched (even if the sun being so cold stretches it).

humbert

holding your breath in a near vacuum would be impressive!

nesf

They had some astrophysicist involved in it to help maintain realistic physics from what I read (well, everything physics related but the ending). I don't know since I've not seen the film, but I'm not well up on astrophysics stuff anyway so I probably wouldn't notice anything but basic mistakes.

Mellor

enda1 wrote:

I can't imagine that it would be that cold in space. You can only lose thermal energy by radiation, not through conduction or convection.

Its not that you lose heat, its that there is nothing in space to hold the heat, no mass to conduct heat, no liquids or gas to move heat through convection,
radiation pass straight through.
There is no heat anywhere, no heat energy, so you body becomes a radiating source, and you lose it far quicker than on earth,
think of the temp difference on the moon

ixoy wrote:

The instant without the space suit was very short - they held in their breath and were propelled across a small distance.

The fact that they held their breath makes it worse, if they tried to do it, the gas in lungs would expand a great deal if they went from 1 bar to near vacuum.
If they blew evrything out and tried it empty it would be more believable

Professor_Fink

Mellor wrote:

There is no heat anywhere, no heat energy, so you body becomes a radiating source, and you lose it far quicker than on earth,
think of the temp difference on the moon

Just to be accurate, it's about 3 Kelvin due to the CMB.