• About Me

    I’m an opinionated Grumpy Old Man. I enjoy the intellectual give and take that goes along with that, but have very little patience for stupid people (Note: there is a big difference between “stupid” and “educated”. Some of the stupidest people I’ve ever met have a PhD…). Beside arguing, I like to build things in almost any media. Right now I’m mostly building in wood, Lego, and a bunch of different electronic media. I teach in a number of different venues - from preschool all the way through graduate school. Subjects range from talmud to neuroscience to engineering.

    For fun, I like to bash people with swords (OK, so they’re made of foam. It’s still fun). Although I spend a lot of my time in a wheelchair, I manage to keep pretty active (Like bashing people with swords). I am a libertarian, and have a hard time finding anything good to say about government or politicians. OK, politicians might make good sausage, but that's about as good as it gets.

    Cope

Would I explode or implode in space?

Organic Mama asks:

Would a person IMPLODE or EXPLODE if suddenly transported into the vast emptiness of space? Every time someone tells me the answer, it evaporates from my mind 

You’d explode.

Here’s how to remember it. Space is a vacuum. Your body has internal pressure (if you don’t think it does, try holding in a burp or fart for a while). When you suddenly transport yourself to space, the internal pressure will make you swell up like a balloon - at least until your skin reaches it’s breaking point,then you’d pop (more or less).

NASA did some studies back in the 60s when they were trying to develop comfortable and functional space suits, and made the interesting discovery that you only need a little bit of extra support to keep from popping in a vacuum (space). Pretty much a heavy nylon/lycra body suit would work. Problem is, it won’t protect you from the cold or the radiation, so you still need that bulky space suit……

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