Why is Space a Vacuum

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
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.

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. 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.