Wednesday, November 28, 2012 9:37:30 PM
Well, I looked it up...
You'd start to lose consciousness from oxygen deprivation in about 15 seconds - the process is highly accelerated by the lack of pressure making your lungs work in reverse, taking oxygen out of your blood.
That`s assuming that you did as I suggested and breathed out. If you don`t, you`re probably dead from internal injuries in that 15s. Your lungs can`t expand *that* much.
Surface water will boil very quickly (water will boil at skin temperature in vacuum). Close your eyes and mouth - plenty of water on the surfaces.
You`ll get the bends. Bad times.
But the startling thing is that if you breathe out you won`t die for maybe as long as 90s. You`ll be unconscious in 15s, but if you breathe out and get medical attention in 90s you`ll recover. Probably. Although you`ll be blind for a while.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012 9:22:43 PM
But you'd definitely die from suffocation before you froze.
Hence my comment about rapidly dying being more of a problem (than whether or not you could get an erection).
The lack of pressure would kill you even before the lack of oxygen would, though technically it could still be classed as suffocation. Although I think you might die from internal injuries if your lungs were full of air (which would expand a lot).
But definitely dying rapidly, one way or another. You could jump to the airlock of a very nearby rescue ship, but you`d better make it on the first attempt.
Hmm...would your corpse rot? It would be warm for many years, but I think it would rapidly become sterile too because I think that bacteria that can live in humans wouldn`t survive in a corpse in space.