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MedicalJargon-itis t1_jdmn54o wrote

Reply to comment by Meior in TIL: Thanks to poor internal communication at NASA, information about a spacesuit water leak wasn't properly communicated. Later, Astronaut Luca Parmitano almost drowned on a July, 2013 ISS space walk, his helmet filling with several liters of water before they could get him back inside. by OvidPerl

It would flash boil. Water boils at lower and lower temperatures as pressure decreased. That's why there are different cooking instructions on the back of the box for "high altitudes". Takes longer to cook something in Denver because things boil at a lower temperature.

In space the pressure is basically zero, so water just immediately boils.

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SteveMcQwark t1_jdmo73i wrote

Boil doesn't mean hot, however, whereas evaporation causes cooling. The rapid evaporation of some of the water would cause the rest of the water to freeze.

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ahecht t1_jdnbj2m wrote

It would do both. Some of the water would flash boil, which would suck the heat out of everything around it, causing the rest of the water to freeze. Once the boiling stops you'd be left with a bunch of ice which would slowly sublimate away.

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Oro-Lavanda t1_jdn4isa wrote

yo this makes so much sense. I visited a mountain town in colorado once for a ski trip and I was trying to boil some ramen on the stove. pacakge said like 3-4 minutes but it took me 7-9 minutes or more just to boil it properly! I thought the stove in the place I stayed at was just a low quality one.

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Dubanx t1_jdqmigl wrote

The process of boiling is endothermic, meaning the boiling water would rapidly cool without a source of heat. Which is probably what they're referring to.

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