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Riff316 t1_jdnscit wrote

Reply to comment by marsokod 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

Chris Hadfield was told by Houston to vent his helmet when his eyes were blinded by contaminated tears on an EVA. I assume you could do something similar here.

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VoxEcho t1_jdoi153 wrote

Yeah all the comments acting like instant death would occur if any part of your body is exposed to vacuum are exaggerating a lot. It would certainly be unpleasant, possibly damaging to tissue, but the mortal danger of exposure to vacuum is way overexaggerated by popular media.

The actual danger of removing his helmet in the situation above is that it wouldn't solve the problem, because the water would just linger there with no outside force directly clearing it off from him. It'd be pushed in all directions due to venting gas from his suit presumably, but the water would be expanding at that point anyways. If he just slaps his helmet back on it would, presumably, still contain a large amount of water and continue filling with water.

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Riff316 t1_jdoia44 wrote

The Hadfield vent might work though, since it creates a directional pressure differential. It actually did work to remove the ball of contaminated water from Chris’s eyes.

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VoxEcho t1_jdojv0g wrote

I assume it would depend on the amount of water. I feel like if it is enough water to fill a helmet to the point of threatening to drown, the expanding water itself would probably block up any small vent or opening in a helmet before a meaningful amount of it was evacuated. I'm not a space man though so it very well may work.

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Dubanx t1_jdqm4ox wrote

>The actual danger of removing his helmet in the situation above is that it wouldn't solve the problem

Without pressure, wouldn't the water immediately boil away? There literally wouldn't be anything holding the bonds together anymore.

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VoxEcho t1_jdr2tj6 wrote

Boil is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. It wouldn't disappear -- it has no where to go. It would just get very cold, which is essentially what you would expect of anything exposed to the vacuum of space. It wouldn't turn to ice, though, it would turn to vapor -- thus the "boiling". It would still, for any functional purpose, be a large amount of water lingering around the immediate vicinity of his head.

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