You are having a chat with your friends about what you want to be when you grow up. One person says they want to be a doctor. Another says a food critic. Although hearing your judgy voice and ideas made them drop your dream, so they were ready to attack you when you said yours. “I want to be an astronaut,” you exclaimed. “You would explode in space without your suit which would never fit you,” one friend said proudly. It was a savage burn, but you wonder, would an astronaut’s body explode without a space suit? Let’s pop this balloon to find out!
What is an astronaut?
An astronaut is a person trained to travel and work in space. The word comes from Greek roots meaning “star sailor.” Russia calls them cosmonauts, China calls them taikonauts, and they all do the same job. Most astronauts are selected from backgrounds in science, engineering, medicine, or military aviation, and NASA typically requires a degree in a STEM field plus years of professional experience or flight hours. Training takes about two years and covers spacewalking in a giant pool, flying jets, learning spacecraft systems, surviving a landing in open water or wilderness, and usually a foreign language which is Russian when working for the International Space Station. Their work in orbit is mostly research. They run experiments in microgravity, maintain and repair the station, and go outside on spacewalks when something needs fixing by hand. The first human in space was Yuri Gagarin in 1961, and the first humans on the Moon were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. Today most astronauts live aboard the ISS for about six months at a time, where weightlessness weakens their bones and muscles, so they exercise around two hours a day to slow the loss.
Would an astronaut body explode without a spacesuit?
This myth is false. An astronaut’s body would not explode in space without a space suit. There is a pressure difference from you and the vacuum outside which makes it equivalent to one whole atmosphere. This vacuum can’t overcome the stretchy human tissue. What would happen though is you would die with suffocation. Something specifically called an ebullism would happen. It is when with no pressure pushing back, water in your tissues starts turning to vapor at body temperature after about ten seconds. You swell up noticeably. Dissolved gases form bubbles. This proves how a vacuum can’t tear you apart - it can only suffocate you. This myth mostly came from movies, even though no human has been left open in space without a space suit.
Fun Facts
You’d stay conscious and useful for about 9 to 15 seconds in a vacuum. Not instant, just a very short window. There’s no up or down, so astronauts sleep in bags strapped to a wall. Any wall. They can’t cry properly. Tears have no gravity to pull them down, so they pool into a wobbling blob on the eye. Food is often eaten sticky or with sauce, because loose crumbs float into equipment and eyes. Salt and pepper come as liquids for the same reason. Laika the dog and other animals went up before humans did. Yuri Gagarin’s first flight in 1961 lasted under two hours.