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furrykef t1_jdmovyk wrote

Reply to comment by The_Flurr 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

Vacuum kills pretty quick. If you try holding your breath, you'll rupture your lungs, so the best thing to do is actually exhale before exposing yourself to vacuum. You can imagine this doesn't give you very much air left to live off of. You will lose consciousness within seconds, and you won't have much longer than that before you start suffering irreparable brain damage.

EDIT: I may be wrong about this; read the replies.

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The_Flurr t1_jdmrdc5 wrote

You generally have about three minutes before brain damage due to oxygen deprivation.

You'll also not lose consciousness that quickly. Most estimates give up to 30 seconds, which will depend on how oxygenated your blood is at the time.

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Metalsand t1_jdn6v7c wrote

> Vacuum kills pretty quick.

No, it doesn't. The overwhelming majority of instant death scenarios would be collapsing of the lungs. If not, you have consciousness for about 15 seconds since your bloodstream still has oxygen in it which we have evidence of, not to mention rough calculations of oxygen saturation in the blood.

If you still have your lungs though, it's estimated that you can survive in space for about 2 minutes without permanent damage (ie significant loss in function).

Though, with regards to brain damage - generally you can survive 5-10 minutes deprived of oxygen without significant loss of brain function. The upper limit of avoiding brain death from oxygen deprivation is around 20 minutes.

However the dangerous bit here is primarily that you'd be on a spacewalk, meaning it would be near impossible to retrieve you in time. Not only does putting on a spacesuit take a significant amount of time, but they operate at a far lower atmospheric pressure than the space station, so they'd be fighting severe decompression sickness at the same time. It's hard to say though, because I don't know if they have any sort of procedure for that type of thing.

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