Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Why is Space a Vacuum

Forgive this obviously stupid question but I really do not understand this. Why is space a vacuum? How is it a vacuum? Is everything being sucked into something creating a vacuum? I am serious, I honestly do not understand the principle, albeit I am sure, a simple one.

Say you open an oxygen tank in space, the pressure in the tank is far greater than the pressure out side of it so yes, the gas will escape. But what happens to it afterward? Does it form an oxygen bubble or simply dissipate? If it dissipates, where does it dissipate to?

Could someone please explain the concept of vacuum of space for me? I would enjoy reading it.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Space is a vaccum because there is little to nothing -there-. Vaccum is just lack of pressure. Nothing there, nothing to exert pressure..

Given enough time and nothing external to stop it, gas will expand to fill any available space. In the case of your oxygen bottle, that amounts to the entire UNIVERSE. So the pressure is very low even when there is something there.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

i think what you are asking is, does the air exert presure on the container or does the vacuum actually suck?

i would say that the air exerts presure becuase there is 'nothing' in space to suck, although i have wondered about this to. i mean, how come nobody seems to wonder about this?

so, Phoenix-D, why does it exert pressure?

[ January 28, 2004, 03:37: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

The air exerts the pressure. Or tries to.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

why?

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Since space is so expansive, endless really, we could never hope to fill it with anything that we can breath.

So if oxygen occurs on our planet, whey does it now occur naturally in space?

How do we over come the obvious danagers that make space space? I have read about things like cosmic winds, megnetic storms and microscopic particle currents and such, so space is not devoid of gasses and such. Just look at a nebula. They are not dispersed into nothingness to fill the void, so if a nebula can exsist as a nebula, a collection of gasses, why can there not be a oxygen Nebula?

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

There could be an oxygen nebula. Of course, the pressure there would still be far too low to support human life, to say nothing of the tempature.

Oxygen occurs naturally wherever it collects due to gravity, or where it is created by fusion reactions (or supernova)

EDIT: air exerts the pressure because its a bunch of N2 and O2 molecules bouncing around. Those hitting the container are what creates the effect we call pressure.

[ January 28, 2004, 03:49: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

When molecules move and collide with something, they exert force on it, transfering some kinetic energy. This is what pressure is, a measure of the average force that the matter is exerting upon a surface, an object, a probe, etc.

[ January 28, 2004, 03:49: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

The gas itself is exerting the pressure, as seen from a macroscopic scale. What's really happening is all the little gas molecules are moving about randomly, bouncing off each other, etc. There is almost no matter in the surrounding volume to resist the expansion, the 'bubble' will spread out rather quickly.

Think of the air molecules as little balls in a room, bouncing around. Now, if you removed most of the energy loss from collisions, gravity, and air resistance, the balls would mimic the behavior of air molecules (eg, toss a ball at the wall, it will bounce back with nearly the same speed, bounce off the opposite wall, and continue back and forth for a length of time). Now, if you think of the same thing only take away all the walls, you will have the situation of escaped gas in space. The only thing that might keep molecules in the same volume are the molecules themselves (eg, molecule in the 'center' starts moving out, but hits another molecule, and is sent back towards the center). But the probability of such collisions are small, so the gas spreads out.

The reason that there can be a concentration of air around the Earth is the gravity holding it down. So on Earth, the forces of gravity act like a spherical 'wall' containing the gas molecules.

Naturally occuring gasses in space are due to gasses being lost by planets and stars. So with the above example, Earth has a 'wall' blocking off escaped gasses, but it has 'holes', where any molecule gaining enough force can break through and escape into space. Same with stars, only molecules are helped along by the fact that stars are really just explosions being held in by gravity.

Nebulae are gas clouds, yes, but they also contain several stars inside. The combined forces of the gravity of these stars and of the cloud itself allows it to stay together. Theoretically, there could be an oxygen nebula, but it is highly improbable that it would consist of largely oxygen. There would also be hydrogen, helium, lithium, berelium, boron, carbon, etc, etc. The gasses would also not be at the correct pressure to breathe, if that's what you're wondering.

--edit: a much longer-winded Version of what they said... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

[ January 28, 2004, 04:04: Message edited by: Will ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

The amount of matter in the universe is just very small compared to its volume.
On the order of 10^-28 kg per cubic meter.
The mass of a proton is 1.67 x 10^-27.

Now, most of the mass is also concentrated in stars, planets and whatnot, so the matter left to spread over deep space is even less.
Interplanetary space has a bit more than deep space, mot not too much.

-----

The oxygen molecules from your tank are all travelling quite fast in random directions, and since there are no longer any walls to hold them in, the random motions cause them to spread out quite quickly. Gravity will deflect them somewhat towards the nearby large bodies, but the velocity of those oxygen molecules is surprisingly high.

After they rapidly leave your immediate vicinity, they'll spread out around the solar system and the concentration drops to undetectable levels again.

A kilogram of oxygen has 2x10^25 molecules, but a cubic AU (radius of earth's orbit) has 3x10^33 cubic meters in it.
Evenly spaced and at orbital speeds, you'd bump into those lost molecules rarely enough to count each meeting.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Gases such as oxygen exist in nebula's due to the nova's or supernova's that created the nebula's. During the final years of a star's life, progressively 'heavier' elements are combined via fusion to create even more, "heavier" elements. That is to say, at first hydrogen is fused to form helium. Then, once the hydrogen supply becomes a little short, the helium at the core of the star begins to fuse together to form other elements. Through this chain of events, the "heavy" elements are formed, elements like oxygen, lithium, etc.

So when the star goes nova, those elements are dispersed into interstellar space, forming a nebula. However, these nebulae are constantly expanding due to the forces that created them in the first place. So eventually, the elements that form them are dispersed until the elements are spread as evenly as possible.

So basically, what a vacuum is is all the atoms that form the universe trying to spread themselves as evenly as possible throughout the universe, trying to create a uniform pressure. So the gas escaping from the tank is simply trying to equalize its internal pressure with the pressure of space. However, the pressure of space is very low, and space is so huge, so the tank becomes virtually empty, except for a few molecules that remain.

Also, gravity does overcome the drive to equalize pressure on both large and small scales. Planets on the small scale, and galaxies on the large. And galaxy clusters and superclusters if you want to go that far.

But I've probably confused you enough already, so I'll stop there. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

The densest nebulae have about 10,000 molecules per cm^3.
The air we breathe has 10^19.

If they get too dense or cool, then they'll collapse into star clusters.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Fully understand the vacuum is because there is a lack of any heavier elements hydrogen and helium making up 99.999% of the volume of interstellar space.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Umm... invert that number and then divide some really huge exponentials into it and you have a more accurate number on the volume of space taken up by hydrogen and helium. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif Now, the vast majority of matter is made of those 2 elements, but the vast majority of space is empty.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">ah, that explains it. so, if you froze something to near 0 kelvin, you could compact it alot?

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Fyron is correct..if this was true, letting oxygen out into space and then lighting a match would result in an explosion. It doesn't.

Hydrogen and helium make up the majority of elements because they are the simplest and take the least mass. For every, oh, carbon atom you could have TWELVE hydrogen atoms. For the metals and heavy radioactive elements, it gets even worse.

EDIT: and yes, things near 0K can be more compact. Note the can. Because as you compact them you decrease the volume and increase the pressure. The result of -that- is an increase in heat.

[ January 28, 2004, 05:13: Message edited by: Phoenix-D ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, because the molecules would not hardly be moving at all. And what P-D said. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif The increase in heat from compacting stuff comes from the increase in the kinetic energy transfered per unit area/volume, hence increased pressure. Same amount of energy, just in a smaller area/volume. But then the increased heat causes the molecules to move faster, so they get away from each other and decrease the volume again, unless you keep them trapped. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Keep in mind that temperature is a measure of the average root mean square velocity of the molecules in a given volume, which is a direct result of their average kinetic energy.

[ January 28, 2004, 05:22: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Ok the reason I brought this up was A) I honestly did not understand the nature of space as a vacuum, that being explained now, and thank you all, I move on to my other thought.

Nebula's are basically gasses being held in place by a gravitational force or other. These nebula can be pretty much any gas combination. So to turn this toward an SEIV topic, would it be possible to make a component that could use the inherent gasses of a nebula and convert them into energy for a ship or say stationary Starbase where a Q-reactor was not present?

The idea I have in mind is to make nebula system even more of a strategic asset then they currently are.

If you could mine a nebula for resources and use those resources for production or supply generation depending upon the component used, then nebula systems become far more useful in a game. You would want to protect them from nebula busters or other.

That being said, why not consider the possibility of mining the entrance to a black hole. We all know that matter is pulled into a black hole and super compacted to extremely dense material, so why can we not mine that material? Of course this would require a means to remain neutrally buoyant against the gravitational event horizon of a gravity well, and components to mine for resources at an accelerated rate. The cost would be high, but the pay off would be well worth it.

Also, as a twist to the normal use of a nebula, have breathable ones where you could establish colonies similar to ring worlds, but more along the lines of platforms or rafts that a colony can be built upon. So long as the nebula was breathable gas, IE hydrogen, oxygen, etc it could support a limited number of these colonies.

What about randomly forming nebula? Basically from what I recall from the discovery channel, a nebula is could be formed when a star explodes and the gasses within it are released. There is still enough density from the Stars core to keep the ever expanding gasses held together via gravity, thus creating a nebula. Kind of like a big bag of sun gasses held together and prevented from dissipating by what was left of the stars core and its gravity. So a nebula is formed, why can it not be used as a source for material or a home for a race that can live off of the gasses contained within?

These were just some thoughts I had about trying to make nebula a more useful part of the game.

Edit: Spelling error, thanks Narf for pointing it out. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif I owe you one.

[ January 28, 2004, 07:06: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Mining black holes is propably Last thing mankind ever learns to do, if ever. As we know, black holes are virtually everLasting (but not practically. There are few events caused by laws of quantum mechanics, which result that even black holes will lose mass and vanish in time and I am not talking about millions of years, but 10^90 years) and nothing can escape from there.

However, even if we could extract some material from a singularity, I doubt it could be of any use. Basically it is assumed that it consists of only protons and neutrons which would combine combounds with the nearby matter (atoms, electrons, neutrons, other protons) at the very same moment they would be taken off from the high gravity area. However this is interesting theoretical discussion

[ January 28, 2004, 07:50: Message edited by: Karibu ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Also known as ramscoops.

The element mix you'll find is essentially pure hydrogen with a tad of helium mixed in. Fly through at high speed, and scoop up those 10,000 molecules per cm^3
You'll have to sweep 3x10^17 cubic meters before you've got 1 gram of hydrogen though, so you need a big scoop.

---

And the densities of nebulae are so very low, only "none" races could consider it breathable.
Plus, there are no convenient ways to move around, since the material is so very thin, and there aren't even any stars around to sail by.

Black holes are a bad idea to mine for matter.
Jupiter would be uneconomical to pull material up from.
Stars are much worse, and hotter too. Solar wind is too thin to bother with.
Neutron stars, well your digging equipment would be compacted into neutronium and join the star, and the gravity is much worse.
Black holes are insanely bad.

They do evaporate, though, and emit radiation like a blackbody. As they get smaller, their effective temperature goes up and they emit more, and shrink faster until boom.

In the Last second of its existence, according to theory IIRC, it will lose 1000 tons of mass as energy. Enough to sterilize the entire solar system from anywhere nearby.

Any decent sized hole has an effective temperature lower than the surrounding universe, and will just pull in photons and stray atoms to grow.
Eventually, as space expands, the surroundings will approach emptyness, and the huge hole will begin to evaporate.

----

The scale of time you are talking about is many millions of years.
If the race is waiting for nebulae to form randomly, they'd be an incredibly ancient race.

-----

PS:
Fun trumps all! If it would be fun to play, go ahead and do it!

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Where is nothing can stop you from nebula mining. But only for organics. I doubt that minerals and rads are so widespread in nebulas. The only exception - it was formed by supernova bLast. When about 10e-1 percent (approximately) of heavy elements could be found in such system.
Btw, is it possible to give new Ability for Storm 1,2,3 system, e.g. "Planet - Change Organics Value" or a kind of this?

[ January 28, 2004, 16:09: Message edited by: aiken ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

It would be nice to make a storm which would change the atmosphere of a planet. I would like to surprise my enemy to change their oxygen planet into carbon dioxide and look them suffocate in one turn (when planet size for their race changes) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

This could actually be succesfull with only one ships, if there is no fighters and/or ships around a planet and you would put your "storm ship" into "Don't get hurt" battle plan. First, get into corner in battle and stay there, then change the planet http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

- How long can a man stay in Space without suit ?
- Almost indefinetly.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Actually, if you have too much population on a planet, they do not suffocate, they just remain there. This can be seen by playing as a non-advanced storage techniques race and conquering a fully populated world of an advanced storage techniques race. Same thing happens with cargo and facilities. You can not add more until you remove enough to get something like 9/10 instead of 12/10.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">- How long can a man stay alive in Space without a suit?
- Almost 10 seconds maybe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif But it would be a very painful 10 seconds! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif

[ January 28, 2004, 16:15: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Is there an event that changes the atmosphere?

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">- How long can a man stay alive in Space without a suit?
- Almost 10 seconds maybe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif But it would be a very painful 10 seconds! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually you can survive in a vacuum about as long as you can survive under water. A couple minutes, or more if you have decent lung capacity and can fight the natural urge to gasp for breath. The idea that you would blow up if pushed out an airlock is false. You can hold your breath. You will have damage from the extreme cold though. That alone would kill you eventually, but it would take a little longer then the lack of oxygen.

[ January 28, 2004, 16:44: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't know why not, and I've been requesting this since before the official release of SE IV. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif Feel free to email MM and ask for it again. He might be press^H^H^H^H^ersuraded to add it into the final patch.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You won't 'blow up' like a frog with an M80 in his mouth, but you will suffer damage from the pressure differential. Crew escaping from submarines are taught to exhale as they ascend or else their lungs will burst -- not 'explode' with a boom, but yes, actually burst from the excess pressure. The damage can be fatal even if they survive the ascent. I can't believe that someone tossed out of a spaecraft into hard vacuum wouldn't suffer similar damage. There is or was a special 'breathing device' issued to submarine crews to let them exhale & inhale while they ascend. It's just a pLastic thingy which can fit over your mouth & nose so you can breath into it. I suppose something like that would be impossible with space, since the pressure differential is far to great. You'd need a pressurized suit to be able to breath at all.

[ January 28, 2004, 17:45: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

You can mod it so you can get resources from a nebulae instead of supply. You could setup the quadrant types so that it places asteroids in every sector of the nebula system. You can then remote mine the asteroids, even though you can't see them.

This wont work for nebulae created during the game though.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually from what sites I could google the damage from the pressure difference is slight. Although I was apparently incorrect about holding your breath. They say that might cause some lung tissue damage. I'm not sure how severe though. It might be worth losing some lung cells to hold your breath. If you can't hold your breath then you are looking at just a few seconds before unconciousness, although brain death will still take a couple minutes.

I was also wrong about freezing, since I forgot that vacuum is a very poor heat conductor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif In fact if exposed to sunlight you'd get a pretty bad sunburn in a relativly short amount of time. But if you are unconcious, and if noone was around to pull you in you'd stay that way permenantly, the burn wouldn't have much effect. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Being in a vacuum makes the gasses and liquids diffuse through your skin rather rapidly. They do have a massive number of pores, which are just holes, after all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif You will not explode or anything, but you will not Last as long as just being under water.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, that's simply not true. Going from normal pressure to zero pressure is not as bad as going from very high pressure to normal pressure. You will experience some slight effects, but not the debilitating conditions that a diver coming straight up will.

Your skin doesn't difuse liquids very rapidly at all. And your pores aren't simply holes in the skin. They are the external openings of your sweat glands. They don't diffuse any liquids under normal circumstances expect what is in your sweat glands. The vacuum of space isn't normal circumstances, but it's not going to suck your blood out your pores or anything like that.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

in one of the short stories i read, people evacuated from one ship in space to another after expelling air from their lungs. no-one was in space more than 30 seconds. feasible?

side note: the book mentioned a technique where you breath heavily a few times then expell the air from your lungs. i tried this and was able to hold my breath for 20 seconds at the start and after some practice, 35 seconds. it really is easier, despite sounding counter-productive.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Competition free divers use this technique I believe. They basically hyperventilate themselves by taking deep breaths for a couple minutes. What this is doing is it expands the lungs and makes them larger, giving you more storage for oxygen. If you do this technique too long though you could passout from the hyperventilation. I did it once and was able to extend my ability to hold my breath to somewhere around a full minute, perhaps even longer.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Geo... your skin will also rupture with many tiny holes as the molecules inside your body attempt to diffuse from areas of very high concentration to areas of 0 concentration. Skin is a very weak barrier. It is, at best, no better than going from high pressure to low pressure. Of course, it is exactly the same as divers coming up from high pressure to low pressure...

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No. 0 pressure environment is entirely different from high pressure environment. High pressure environment pushes things into the system, low pressure environment pulls things out of it.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So you say, but you are contradicting everything I can find from people that are supposed to know this stuff. If you can post something to support your assertion, fine. Otherwise, I am content with what I have found on the subject.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">well, that explains something. i only took two or three breaths.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

The reason the damage isn't as extreme as in going from depth is that the pressure difference as said isn't that big. Go down 38 feet into water..congradulations, you've just doubled the pressure. Going from here to the surface is very similar to going from the surface to space.

It's not going to be a pleasurable experience, but Fyron is exaggerating.

"If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury."

This is confirmed with experimental animals.

http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/as...rs/970603.html

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Some more literature to edify you...

http://space.about.com/cs/basics/a/bodyvacuum1.htm
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And some more of the same:

http://www.urbanlegends.com/death/bo..._in_space.html
http://www.badastronomy.com/mad/1999/space_feel.html

Nothing I have found talks about anything seeping through your skin. Long term a body in a vacuum would be desicated, that's why food is often vacuum packed. But it doesn't happen that fast, certainly not as fast as you are going to asphyxiate anyway.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Basically this is feasible, as long as someone is there to pull in the unconcious people. The technique divers use doesn't really help in vacuum. A diver will expell all the air they can, but there will still be enough oxygen there to keep you concious. And as you surface the lower pressure causes the air in your lungs to expand, which satisfys your instinct to inhale. If you don't expell the air in your lungs it will still expand, but cause damage. That's why you can't hold your breath in vaccum too, cause the air will expand and damage your lungs. The difference is expelling your lungs in a vacuum leaves you without enough oxygen to keep you concious for more then a few seconds.

So 30 seconds wont kill you or cause any permenant damage. But it will incapacitate you. You'll need someone there to pull you in.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

ok.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

I don't see how anyone could survive out in space without a full bodysuit.

Putting aside the effects (of lack of) on your lungs, the extreme cold of space would freeze any moisture on your body relatively quickly. Your skin, muscles, and internal organs would loose all body heat and the moisture would start to crystalize, and that's the kind of extensive/culmative damage that no Doctor on Earth right now can 100% correct/repair; otherwise cryogenics would be a much more valuable tool than it is right now.

I cringe at the effect exposure to space would do to your eyeballs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/shock.gif !

Unless the human body can be genetically enhanced to survive in space for short durations, I think we'll always need 100% coverage to work/survive in space.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

you must have missed it, one of the Posts or links mentioned that heat isn't lost fast in space.

my breakdown of why that might be: heat is lost two ways: radiation and transfer. your body doesn't produce much radiation and in space there isn't much matter to transfer heat to.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Even though you may be reasonably warm, the zero pressure will cause your water to both boil and freeze at the same time, at your regular body temperature.
That's not going to be nice... try not to sweat too much http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[ January 29, 2004, 02:33: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Your blood probably won't boil until after you're dead from lack of oxygen anyway. Water has a very low pressure-induced boiling point, and the cold would just push that down farther.

Remember that vaccum doesn't conduct at -all- so the only heat loss or gain would be from radiation.

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

Your blood won't boil at all unless it's exposed to the vacuum. Your own internal body pressure prevents that. If your skin were punctured any blood that escaped the wound would boil off though. If you were to sweat it would boil, and the saliva in your mouth would probably boil off. But the fluid in your body that was not exposed to the vacuum would be fine. At least for much longer then it would take for you to die from lack of oxygen anyway.

Your blood wont freeze immedietly, because of the previously mentioned fact about vacuum being a very poor conductor of heat.

[ January 29, 2004, 02:49: Message edited by: geoschmo ]

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

"If you hold a lungful of air, you can survive in the total vacuum of space for about thirty seconds. However, with space being the mind-boggling size it is the chances of getting picked up by another ship wihin those thirty seconds are two to the power of two hundred and seventy-six thousand, seven hundred and nine to one against."

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Does this mean I have to rewrite this?

Re: Why is Space a Vacuum
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hey, it is nice to see some one here who has a System Shock Avatar. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Great games.

As for abilities, that would be something to ask fyron.