Chefelf.com Night Life: Cho'ak Sondyk - Viewing Profile

Has this been discussed before, and if so, why hasn't it been corrected?


There' s no point in throwing numbers around if you don't understand the physics. Yes, there are small amounts of gas, as well as radiation in space. Yes, these gasses have an average temperature of 2.7 degrees. No, that doesn't mean space is cold. There is so little gas in the vacuum (tip: this is why it's called a vacuum) that virtually none will be in contact with your body. While you are warmer than the surrounding space, there is no adequate medium in that space to conduct heat away from your body. You will only lose heat slowly by radiation. Conversely, if there's a star pointing at you, you can gain heat very rapidly the same way - often fatally.

Which is beside the point, because when you're standing by a leak in the ship with air rushing past you, you're surrounded by warm air. Mixing that warm air with the tiny pressure of cold gas outside is like mixing a thimble full of cold water into a boiling kettle.

As to whether you can hold onto something, I'm not sure. The vacuum of space isn't like the constant mechanical vacuum of a vacuum claner. It doesn't suck, rather the atmosphere of your ship is constantly trying to expand to fill it. Once all the atmosphere has rushed past you there won't be any suction at all. Once some of it has rushed past you the pressure will drop and the strength of the wind will diminish. If you know the volume and pressure of the ship it should be possible to work out the forces involved, but for the purposes of critiquing star wars I'll say that I expect it would be possible for a Jedi to hang on.

All of this is leaving aside the speculation that the reason we observe sound and fire during SW space battles is that 'space' in their galaxy has a great deal more ambient gas pressure than ours. The movie still sucks, but the writer shouldn't go crowing about 'common myths of science fiction' and then go on to perpetuate just that.