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Airlocks are for losers


Vestnik

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What kind of biological modifications would be required for a human being (or other similar organism) to survive for an extended period (say, hours or days) in deep space?

 

As I understand things, as things stand, you would lose consciousness in a few seconds (why I'm not sure), and the killer would be lack of oxygen in a few minutes. Damage by decompression is more gradual. So the main problem for the short term could be overcome by an ability to retain oxygen for a longer time (as whales do for instance). What about later decompression?

 

I understand also that vaccum is a great insulator, and so heat loss is not as extreme as one might think. But would you eventually freeze, or is body heat enough to make up the difference? What about radiation?

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

I'm not really versed in the specifics of this. This is just my general assumption from the little knowledge i have.

 

-You would need something to counteract the bends (pressure change sickness)

- You would need to regulate your own temperature, i believe if you are in a shadow of a planet it's cold if you are in the open you are getting all the heat/UV energy from the sun that our atmosphere helps cut down, which would make you very hot.

- some way to keep the air in your longs from being expelled to the vacuum of space or just a way to exist without needing oxygen for a time.

 

As for the radiation i'm not exactly sure, alot of that i believe depends on your proximity to a star and how much radiation that star is pushing out. unless you want to spend time looking it up i'd just deal with the UV.

 

I don't have star hero just the core hero book (although i ordered the star hero bundle so i should be getting my books soon *is excited*) but i'd probably just let my player do what Thia has suggested. I couldn't see paying more points than that being worth space walking without a suit.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

Well yeah, but I want a rationalization. :)

 

Hmm, wgat happens in Hero terms if a character is dumped out an airlock?

 

It depends on:

 

a) are they a PC

B) are the they a cool villain that you want to bring back latter

c) are they a redshirt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Helpful ain't I :D

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

What kind of biological modifications would be required for a human being (or other similar organism) to survive for an extended period (say, hours or days) in deep space?

 

Modification 1: Be freaking huge. The bigger you are, the more oxygen you can hold and the more surface area you can use to photosynthesise. Obviously there's a problem with this plan, but in realistic terms a human sized critter is going to be limited in it's oxygen storage and recycling capability. Dolphins can hold their breath for 15 minutes. Sperm whales for over an hour.

 

Modification 2: Be mostly mechanical. The less biomass you have, the less need you have for oxygen. You can have some kind of onboard electrical battery or generator powering your systems especially that air recycler.

 

Modification 3: Have a glacially slow metabolic rate. Sure you won't be getting things accomplished very fast, but it will multiply your cruising endurance several-fold. In fact since space is fundamentally a very boring place being engineered to have long periods of self-induced hibernation is a viable concept.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

sealable nostrils and *remarkable* sphincter control would also be a must.

 

Plus, you can say goodbye to your eardrums.

 

Wrong approach. Just let it out. The tiny amount of air in your lungs isn't going to last you more than a minute anyway.

 

From my understanding of the matter, the only thing necessary for a human being to survive unaided in space for about fifteen minutes would be the ability to store oxygen in the blood or muscles, like a dolphin.

 

You would need something to keep internal pressure, that's about the extent of my knowledge. So, a rigid dermal layer of some nature would need to be evolved.

 

If you let the air out of your lungs, your internal pressure goes down to the vapor pressure of water at body temperature, which is low enough that your skin can already handle it with ease.

 

The bends can be avoided with the same technology that we already use for that: breathe an air mix with no nitrogen in it; use helium instead.

 

Temperature control is going to be a big problem, as mentioned earlier. Chromatophores allowing you to vary your skin color from brilliant white to dead black would help, but would likely not be enough.

 

Another problem would be dessication of various tissues by the water freeze-drying out of them. Nictitating membranes might help, and the above-mentioned sealable orifices would also come in hand here.

 

Finally, you've also got the issue of supplying oxygen to and removing carbon dioxide from the blood with no atmosphere to exchange with.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

As I understand it, the worst thing to do in a vacuum is try to hold your breath. The lack of air pressure on the outside of your body would allow your lungs to overexpand, damaging the tissues and causing you to drown in your own blood even if you got back into a pressurized atmosphere.

 

On the other hand, regular respiration works because the oxygen content of the air is higher than the oxygen content of the blood, and vice versa for CO2. Not holding your breath would expose that gas interchange in the lungs to an environment lower in both O2 and CO2 than the body normally has, so it would actually draw oxygen out. You would have less time conscious in a vacuum than you would in a pressurized environment.

 

Although if you can keep your lungs from expanding too far, you should be okay for a few minutes.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

Radiations are a considerable hazard too. If it doesn't kill you outright, you will suffer some metabolical damages the rest of your life, wich may then be much shorter.

 

Most of radiation damages are done when water in the body gets ionized (as it represents about 75% of a human body's mass). Water then go to H+ and OH- wich are very nocive for any other molecule of the body. It has roughly the same effects oxydizers have. Tissues "corrode" and "get older". The presence of a protein that shields from the negative effects of H+ and OH- could cancel much of radiation poisoning effects, besides, it would probably allow human beings to naturally live longer, like 120 or 130 years, and in better health.

 

To avoid cancers and mutations that occur when the DNA molecule is damaged by radiation, a cell could tap into the genetic material of another, sane, cell to fix its own DNA instead of fixing it more or less approximately.

 

Advanced Human Metabolism, the name given to genetically modified human beings... :nonp:

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

What kind of biological modifications would be required for a human being (or other similar organism) to survive for an extended period (say, hours or days) in deep space?

 

As I understand things, as things stand, you would lose consciousness in a few seconds (why I'm not sure),

Shock caused by extremely rapid drop in pressure.

 

and the killer would be lack of oxygen in a few minutes. Damage by decompression is more gradual. So the main problem for the short term could be overcome by an ability to retain oxygen for a longer time (as whales do for instance). What about later decompression?

Oxygen retention is key. Decompression can be solved by purging nitrogen before exposure.

 

I understand also that vaccum is a great insulator' date=' and so heat loss is not as extreme as one might think. But would you eventually freeze, or is body heat enough to make up the difference? What about radiation?[/quote']

The big problem with the insulating effect of vacuum is getting rid of the excess heat. As it is, on earth, if you do not get fresh air (at below body temperature) into contact with the skin, you can die of your own heat. Effects resemble extreme fever. Thus, for your space-adapted creature you have to find some way to radiate the heat, without any help from convection or evaporation. That with be the biggest problem.

 

Radiation can be reduced by being high albedo. Radiation damage will be a bigger problem; redundant DNA or something similar would be needed.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

 

The big problem with the insulating effect of vacuum is getting rid of the excess heat. As it is, on earth, if you do not get fresh air (at below body temperature) into contact with the skin, you can die of your own heat. Effects resemble extreme fever. Thus, for your space-adapted creature you have to find some way to radiate the heat, without any help from convection or evaporation. That with be the biggest problem.

.

 

I shouldn't worry about it. It's an easily solved problem (Fins! You can make them look like wings and be doubly cool!) and won't be significant unless you actually get hours of endurance in space somehow.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

It's an extraordinarily conjectural topic.

 

Except in the form of spores, and not all of those, there aren't any living examples to study that come close to surviving the conditions required.

 

While a few extremophiles and transients thrive at great depth (whales), high pressure (squid), exceptional temperature ranges (tube worms) and even quite rarified atmospheres (spiders), nothing lives in vacuum, or survives exposure to it without crippling outcomes except for the briefest of stints... and that's just vacuum, without considering radiation, navigational issues like how to deal with super accelerated collisions, temperature not just of the organism itself but of physical objects it encounters that don't happen to be whizzing by so fast as to shred it...

 

The rarifaction of blood gases, embolism, processes which regulate based on chemical, mechanical, and electromagnetic conditions of the environment,..

 

In short, the simple answers, "can't know" or "pressurized shell" appear the best.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

The big problem with the insulating effect of vacuum is getting rid of the excess heat. As it is' date=' on earth, if you do not get fresh air (at below body temperature) into contact with the skin, you can die of your own heat. Effects resemble extreme fever. Thus, for your space-adapted creature you have to find some way to radiate the heat, without any help from convection or evaporation. That with be [b']the biggest [/b] problem.

 

I shouldn't worry about it. It's an easily solved problem (Fins! You can make them look like wings and be doubly cool!) and won't be significant unless you actually get hours of endurance in space somehow.

 

I suspect you'd need really, really big fins. A few square meters in fact. Big enough to get in the way a good deal. And don't forget, if such a critter got on the sun-lit side of a high albedo object (like a space-habitat) that it would no longer be able to radiate it's heat and would risk heat-shock. It would definitely be a huge problem.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

I suspect you'd need really' date=' [u']really[/u] big fins. A few square meters in fact. Big enough to get in the way a good deal. And don't forget, if such a critter got on the sun-lit side of a high albedo object (like a space-habitat) that it would no longer be able to radiate it's heat and would risk heat-shock. It would definitely be a huge problem.

 

Retractable fins on a big critter?

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

There are two ways to lose heat in space.

 

1) The efficient way, eject hot mass. This obviously only lasts as long as you have something to heat up and eject. You have to pick up a reservoir of cold stuff to heat up and spray out at regular intervals.

 

2) The slow way, radiate infrared energy. This isn't as easy as it sounds, since you have to find a way of stepping up biological levels of heat (which radiate poorly) to the radiant heat range. You can somewhat enhance this effect with large surface area, so long as the entire surface points away from you, so sails/fins/extremely long tails as opposed to gills or lungs.. but it's still not a perfect solution. And... the things that work to enhance radiant cooling also are most vulnerable to driving gases out of liquid solution, which is fatal to all known forms of life.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

I think everyone is overestimating the cooling problem. Remember you are going to be losing H2O as well as O2 and CO2. The water outgassing from every sweat gland should provide enough cooling for the four minutes it takes anoxia to set in.

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Re: Airlocks are for losers

 

Modification 1: Be freaking huge. The bigger you are' date=' the more oxygen you can hold and the more surface area you can use to photosynthesise.[/quote']

 

Other way around. You want to be small if you are trying to maximize surface area for a given mass. Surface area goes up as the square of the size, but the volume goes up by the cube.

 

If creature A is twice as big as Creature B, then it has 4 times the surface area, but 8 times the mass. Hence it has half as much (photosynthetic) surface area per volume (biomass).

 

As for holding your breath, that depends on a lot more than size. Some creatures are just more efficient. I weigh more than a sea otter, but it can hold it's breath many, many times longer.

 

Keith "I'd just form a spore casing and wait." Curtis

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