If it doesn't have a suit on?
Like say you have a problem and have to exit your space shuttle and (fly) and get into another space shuttle, if your wearing like a snow suit and a thick coat and you hold your breath will you survive like say, 30 in space?

I meant 30 seconds.

I think it is wierd, cause I have always heard that humans would 'boil' away. so is it saying that a person could survive being in outer space without a space suit?

Originally posted by katt06
I think it is wierd, cause I have always heard that humans would 'boil' away. so is it saying that a person could survive being in outer space without a space suit?

If you put them close to the sun, they will.

Closer to the sun would be worse, due to far greater damage from solar radiation. The heat-loss isn't really that great as there is nothing to transfer the heat away from the body, only thermal radiation. So really its far less heat-loss than being in an ice-bath, its probably less heat loss even than swimming in cold water.

Read the link above by jp1111, it covers all these points extremely well, a snippet:

At NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center (now renamed Johnson Space Center) we had a test subject accidentally exposed to a near vacuum (less than 1 psi) in an incident involving a leaking space suit in a vacuum chamber back in '65. He remained conscious for about 14 seconds, which is about the time it takes for O2 deprived blood to go from the lungs to the brain. The suit probably did not reach a hard vacuum, and we began repressurizing the chamber within 15 seconds. The subject regained consciousness at around 15,000 feet equivalent altitude. The subject later reported that he could feel and hear the air leaking out, and his last conscious memory was of the water on his tongue beginning to boil.

If you have oxygen, then you can be exposed to very low and very high pressures, the key is graduality.

If I was suddenly under 200,000 Billion lbs of water, I'd die. Just, you know, crushed. If I was suddenly in space, I'd die. Just, you know, popped. Well, not actually popped, I'd just have blood-bubbles hitting my brain and popping vessels, causing some massive hemmorages. Damn, I missed an 'h' in hemmorages, but don't know where it should have gone, and am not interested in finding out. Oh well.

The point is, I could slowly, VERY painstakingly slowly, have the pressure around me raised to such an EXTREMELY high point that it would be amazing that I was alive - the reason I'd be fine is that the pressure from the inside of my body would be the same level as the pressure from outside - the longer the change takes, the more time the body can change internal pressures to be comfortable. Same goes for vacuums. If you were gradually depressurised over a month to vacuum level, breathing only from oxygen or air tanks, you could survive, but the thing is that you're currently in an area with about 15,000 lbs of pressure pushing in on every square inch of your body. You also, luckily, have that same pressure pushing out on them, so you're fine. If you were just suddenly in an area with 0 lbs of pressure pushing in, you would still have 15,000 lbs of pressure pushing out on every square inch of your body. Nothing pushing back. Bad spot to reside in.

Within seconds, less than 30, you'd go BOOM! Simple as that... (as I understand it...) The aforementioned issue of your blood expanding due to lack of pressure in the vacuum... Not a pleasant way to go I'd bet....

The link was interesting in how is stated that you have like 30 seconds before the really major injuries start adding up. I guess this kinda supports all those movies where the hero has to go out of the airlock to save something and still lives.

Originally posted by Gazrok
Within seconds, less than 30, you'd go BOOM! Simple as that... (as I understand it...) The aforementioned issue of your blood expanding due to lack of pressure in the vacuum... Not a pleasant way to go I'd bet....

Like Kano said, jp's link explains it well:

How long can a human live unprotected in space?

If you don't try to hold your breath, exposure to space for half a minute or so is unlikely to produce permanent injury. Holding your breath is likely to damage your lungs, something scuba divers have to watch out for when ascending, and you'll have eardrum trouble if your Eustachian tubes are badly plugged up, but theory predicts -- and animal experiments confirm -- that otherwise, exposure to vacuum causes no immediate injury. You do not explode. Your blood does not boil. You do not freeze. You do not instantly lose consciousness.
...
The reason that a human does not burst is that our skin has some strength. For instance compressed oxygen in a steel tank may be at several hundreds times the pressure of the air outside and the strength of the steel keeps the cylinder from breaking. Although our skin is not steel, it still is strong enough to keep our bodies from bursting in space.

Think about it, pressure difference is only one bar.
And when divers go down every ten meters (30 feet) means 1 bar more external pressure to which your body adapts. In 30 meter total pressure is 4 bar and your body adapts to that but do you think that diver would explode if he would make rapid ascend to surface where external pressure is 1 bar and his internal pressure of his body 4 bars?
(meaning 3 bar pressure difference)

Apparently, I misunderstood this completely...hehe... I'll have to visit that link....see....never believe what you were taught until you check it for yourself....