Science Feature: Space and Vacuum

Part two of what sf/f means to me will be next week. Today will be a science feature, thanks to Emily who pestered me for more of my SF novel (been focused on my fantasies for the past few months). I didn't get much added to it yet, but I did read through what I had. Since the plan is to leave this open enough to make a possible series, I made some notes on what I plan to accomplish in this book and the gist of what is to happen in later books.

Since this story is predominantly set in space with spaceships, space stations, and ship yards, I did some research on space and its effects on living tissue. No falling back on what I've seen done in other sf stories. Good thing since some of that is wrong. For instance, there is no near-instant freezing of the body. Survival of unprotected exposure to space is in terms of minutes rather than seconds. Granted, you won't have consciousness for more than about 10 seconds, but that is because of oxygen deprivation, rather than freezing.

Here are some of the links I've collected so far. Some of the information is duplicated in various articles, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. And some of the links can lead you to additional questions you may think up.

From NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center: How an unprotected body would be affected by space

From About.com: a similar question with a different movie reference

From Geoffrey A. Landis, an SF writer and NASA scientist (as of 2000): Explosive decompression and vacuum exposure

From D*** Interesting (that's me asterisking the word, by the way, the article is too interesting not to share just because of the site name): Outer Space Exposure

The third and fourth ones are my favorites. Have fun researching!