Well, I did it again: led the Seven-Sentence Short Story workshop (created by science fiction and fantasy author James van Pelt) at a writing conference, this time, Wordbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. Here’s the story I …
It’s time for this year’s Kickstarter to fund Shapers of Worlds Volume V, the fifth in the series of anthologies featuring science fiction and fantasy by authors who were guests on my Aurora Award-winning podcast, The …
It takes money to publish books, and most of that money flows out the door before the book is released and sales begin, so my publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, is turning to Crowdfundr to help …
Shapers of Worlds Volume IV, the fourth anthology featuring authors who were guests on my podcast, The Worldshapers, is now available everywhere, including directly from Shadowpaw Press. Here’s a handy universal URL with links to …
My publishing company, Shadowpaw Press, has three great titles coming out in the first two months of 2024, all of them science fiction or fantasy. The first two, The Good Soldier by Nir Yaniv and …
Here’s another seven-sentence short story! I ran the workshop again at Ganbatte, an anime convention in Saskatoon. It went well, and here’s the one I created, again with the instructions, created by noted SF short-story …
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How long can an unprotected human survive the vacuum of space?
It may not be a question you’ve ever asked yourself, but it’s certainly germane to any number of science fiction writers. Turns out you’ve got about 10 seconds of consciousness, and if air pressure and oxygen are restored within a minute and a half, you can be revived without serious consequences.
Beyond that, what with the blood boiling and the heart stopping, etc., you’re out of luck.
I have a vague memory of Arthur C. Clarke working against the stereotype of humans somehow exploding if exposed to a vacuum by having characters leap unprotected from one vessel to another. Not a clue what book or short story it would have been in, though. (Not even sure it was Clarke, but it sounds like something he’d come up with.) I seem to remember him giving them more than 10 seconds of consciousness, though.
Permanent link to this article: https://edwardwillett.com/2006/11/how-long-can-an-unprotected-human-survive-the-vacuum-of-space/
