History Main / SpaceIsCold

Down here on Earth, the main way we transfer heat is through convection, transferring our own body heat into the air around us. Since space is a near-perfect vacuum, this is right out. (This actually makes space a very good insulator; consider the vacuum flask. ''Cooling'' is actually the biggest difficulty in designing modern spacecraft.) The only way you can get colder is by transferring heat into another object (say, by applying your face to a handy asteroid) or by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body radiating it out into the vacuum]]. Heat exchange through radiation is ''vastly'' slower.[[hottip:* : "Vastly" can be tricky. A human with surface area 1.5 meters squared, an emissivity of .85 and a skin temperature of 300 K will emit 3000 joules in five seconds which is akin to walking out naked towards the south pole on its coldest day. Using information from [[http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/human-body-specific-heat-d_393.html here]] and a few simple assumptions seen [[http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&safe=off&q=3000+J+%2F+5s+%2F+%283470+J%2Fkg%2FK* 60+kg%29+in+K+%2F+hour&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=f5d0e3cd46a35ba9 here]], you'd lose about 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Farenheit) per hour. The reason we don't feel this tremendous heat loss ordinarily is because we are ourselves receiving a comparable amount of black body radiation from the matter surrounding us.]]

* The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy averts this. It says that if you hold a lungful of air, you can survive for almost 30 seconds. [[spoiler:Which, luckily for Ford and Arthur, is all that they needed.]]
** Though the lungful of air might not have been that smart. See {{explosive decompression}}

** These people are also very, very close to the sun (close enough that [[spoiler: a slight malfunction in the solar shields tears a hole in the hull]]), so even though they're in the "shade," the temperature should probably be much higher. On the flip side, however, another couple of minutes pass before the frozen crew member is seen shattering. So they probably shouldn't have frozen, but given that they did run with that, the shattering isn't quite as silly as it may seem.
*** At one time it was pointed out on the website that the primary problem Mace should have had flying through space would have been "space hickies" from liquid boiling under his skin.

** Actually gets quoted in Episode 1 when Amidala tells Anakin that "space is cold" when he's whining about it. Of course, she's a politician and not a scientist, so she could be wrong. Also, Anakin is from a desert world, and that ship undoubtedly has AC.

** The ship also has to stop every so often while just traveling around in order to "chill out" (as the procedure becomes know on the ship).

* ''Wait It Out'' by {{Larry Niven}} has an astronaut trapped on Pluto. He decides to strip naked in vacuum and freeze as fast as possible, hoping to avoid frostbite and be cryogenically preserved for later rescue. Fortunately he is trained to get in and out of his spacesuit quickly, because after he opens the first seal on his helmet, he's made an icicle in under a minute. At night time on Pluto, he becomes so cold that his nervous system [[spoiler:becomes a superconductor. This allows him to think until the sun switches him off.]]

** In TimothyZahn's HandOfThrawn Duology, exiting a maintained environment(say, a station) and going through a stretch of vaccuum(say, a hangar that's been blown open) to get to another bit of atmosphere(say, a ship), all without a personal mag-con field or suit or anything, is called "cold-shirting" and is apparently only possible if the stretch of vaccuum is short enough. Still, when Luke goes into a hibernation trance and lets himself be blown into space, and a minute or so later goes through a hangar door and is caught by Mara Jade in a CrashIntoHello, she doesn't mention if he's cold.

*** Plus, he was attached to a messager drone-basically a guided missile with the warhead replaced with a data-storage device. Thats why he was bleeding; he was using his hand to block the self-destruct mechanism.

** These people are also very, very close to the sun (close enough that [[spoiler: a slight malfunction in the solar shields tears a hole in the hull]]), so even though they're in the "shade," the temperature should probably be much higher. On the flip side, however, another couple of minutes pass before the frozen crewmember is seen shattering. So they probably shouldn't have frozen, but given that they did run with that, the shattering isn't quite as silly as it may seem.

** In the original piolot "Serenity" Shepherd Book tells the undercover Alliance policeman, "As I understand it, it's awful cold outside." But truth be told, in {{Firefly}} they have many odd expressions and manners of speech, so it may be kind of an inside joke among those involved.

** Spacing characters appears to be something of a running gag on ''Farscape'' as most of the ongoing characters have at one point found themselves exposed to vacuum, with D'Argo holding the record for most (accidential and intentional) spacings. Crichton, however, is the only one to exhibit cold-related issues.

**** And most ships have little to no windows, humans only have them for romanticism. Perfectly shown by the differences between the first and second ''Normandy''; the [=SR-1=], built by the Alliance military only had a single window, a tiny strip in front of the bridge. The [=SR-2=]; partially built by a civilian organisation and a paramilitary one, have windows all over the ship, including two massive ones in Port and Starboard Observation. Armour sheets come down to cover the most vital ones, but in a worst-case scenario Shepard's gonna find his fish sucked out into vacuum.

* The main character in MightySpaceMiners holds his breath and makes a running long jump between ships. He lands near the door and starts scrambling to open the airlock. The only visible sign of injury happens during this when he winces and some blood comes out of his ear.

*** One possibility is that the water solidified not due to temperate, but pressure. Since Macross' FTL is described as "Folding Space", it does seem to imply that some things would get compacted.

* ''[[DragonridersOfPern All The Weyrs Of Pern]]'' has dragons [[AC:[[RecycledInSpace In Space]]]] with their riders, having to work on the spaceships quickly before they freeze to death. However, it's actually a very nice aversion. Dragons can survive without air for about 15 minutes. The temperature problem comes from the spaceships having been powered down for 2500 years, plenty of time for them to reach equilibrium with the environment. Fortunately, dragon claws are on a par with aerogel when it comes to insulating ability.

* ''MassEffect'', with its excellent research and hard sci-fi approach, nailed their aversion of this trope. The [[AllThereInTheManual Codex]] goes quite in-depth about heat management. Ships have many ways of dumping heat, from radiative stripes on the hull, oft called zebra-stripes, to a liquid-droplet heat exchange system used in extreme battle conditions. It is also noted that heat is the predominant concern in an engagement, and that ships ''must'' disengage when the build-up is too great. Battles near a planet are brief and frantic because the star's radiative heat causes the ships to overheat faster. It is also noted as the reason why ''Normandy'' cannot use the stealth system for too long: heat is stored in special sinks within the ship, but if left operating for too long it would eventually fry the crew. In fact that is the ''only'' way to have StealthInSpace.

**** And most ships have little to no windons, humans only have them for romanticism.

* Averted by of all things StarWars, where ships have force fields for hangar doors- force fields that are actually scientifically sound- and people walking around inside without the slightest indication that it's even chilly. The [[StarWarsExpandedUniverse EU]], on the other hand, says that these "magnetic containment fields" hold in atmosphere but let heat escape, making these hangars chill quickly - however, the people saying this are pilots, who don't know all the technical workings of their own X-Wings, let alone force fields. It could well be that the fields themselves make the air cooler - the Medstar Duology seems to hint at this, when a dome meant to keep insects and spores out malfunctions and causes the inside to get very cold.

->''Ah, Kirk, my old friend, do you know the [[FrenchPoliticalSystem Klingon]] [[OlderThanTheyThink proverb]] that tells us revenge is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold... in space.''

Down here on Earth, the main way we transfer heat is through convection, transferring our own body heat into the air around us. Since space is a near-perfect vacuum, this is right out. (This actually makes space a very good insulator; consider the vacuum flask. ''Cooling'' is actually the biggest difficulty in designing modern spacecraft.) The only way you can get colder is by transferring heat into another object (say, by applying your face to a handy asteroid) or by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body radiating it out into the vacuum]]. Heat exchange through radiation is ''vastly'' slower.[[hottip:* : "Vastly" can be tricky. A human with surface area 1.5 meters squared, an emissivity of .85 and a skin temperature of 300 K will emit 3000 joules in five seconds which is akin to walking out naked towards the south pole on its coldest day. Using information from [[http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/human-body-specific-heat-d_393.html here]] and a few simple assumptions seen [[http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&safe=off&q=3000+J+%2F+5s+%2F+%283470+J%2Fkg%2FK+* +60+kg%29++in+K+%2F+hour&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=9816131e5c8df5d1 here]], you'd lose about 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Farenheit) per hour. The reason we don't feel this tremendous heat loss ordinarily is because we are ourselves receiving a comparable amount of black body radiation from the matter surrounding us.]]

Down here on Earth, the main way we transfer heat is through convection, transferring our own body heat into the air around us. Since space is a near-perfect vacuum, this is right out. (This actually makes space a very good insulator; consider the vacuum flask. ''Cooling'' is actually the biggest difficulty in designing modern spacecraft.) The only way you can get colder is by transferring heat into another object (say, by applying your face to a handy asteroid) or by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body radiating it out into the vacuum]]. Heat exchange through radiation is ''vastly'' slower.[[hottip:* : "Vastly" can be tricky. A human with surface area 1.5 meters squared, an emissivity of .85 and a skin temperature of 300 K will emit 3000 joules in five seconds which is akin to walking out naked towards the south pole on its coldest day. Using information from [[http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/human-body-specific-heat-d_393.html here]] and a few simple assumptions seen [[http://www.google.ca/#hl=en&safe=off&q=3000+J+%2F+5s+%2F+%283470+J%2Fkg%2FK+* +60+kg%29++in+K+%2F+hour&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=9816131e5c8df5d1 here]], you'd lose about 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Farenheit) per hour. The reason we don't feel this tremendous heat loss ordinarily is because we are ourselves receiving a comparable amount of black body radiation from the matter surrounding us.]]

Down here on Earth, the main way we transfer heat is through convection, transferring our own body heat into the air around us. Since space is a near-perfect vacuum, this is right out. (This actually makes space a very good insulator; consider the vacuum flask. ''Cooling'' is actually the biggest difficulty in designing modern spacecraft.) The only way you can get colder is by transferring heat into another object (say, by applying your face to a handy asteroid) or by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_body radiating it out into the vacuum]]. Heat exchange through radiation is ''vastly'' slower.[[hottip:* : "Vastly" can be tricky. A human with surface area 1.5 meters squared, an emissivity of .85 and a skin temperature of 300 K will emit 3000 joules in five seconds which is akin to walking out naked towards the south pole on its coldest day. The reason we don't feel this tremendous heat loss ordinarily is because we are ourselves receiving a comparable amount of black body radiation from the matter surrounding us.]]

** Actually gets quoted in Episode 1 when Amidala tells Anakin that "space is cold" when he's whining about it. Of course, she's a polititian and not a scientist, so she could be wrong. Also, Anakin is from a desert world, and that ship undoutedly has AC.

**Actually gets quoted in Episode 1 when Amidala tells Anakin that "space is cold" when he's whining about it. Of course, she seems quite unintelligent in most other respects, so she could be wrong. Also, Anakin is from a desert world, and that ship undoutedly has AC.

* The crew of the Apollo 13 had to shut down the heating system to conserve power after an explosion crippled their ship. ''After three days'', the astronauts reported ''near''-freezing temperatures in the Lunar Module and even condensation and ice forming on the interior. However, this was because the ship was designed to radiate ''extra'' heat and make up the difference with heaters. After all, it's a lot easier to make heat than get rid of it. Shown in [[{{Apollo13}} the movie.]]
* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_T-13 Soyuz T-13]] or rather the space station Salyut-7 they were repairing was frozen to -40 centigrade due to power system failure. it wasn't instantaneous of course.

The reason is that heat transmission only occurs in three basic ways: convection (transferring heat into some other substance which then moves away), conduction (transferring heat into some other substance which stays put) and radiation (transferring heat as usually infrared light). Since empty space doesn't contain any "other substance", the first two don't work, and the third is much slower.

The reason is that heat transmission only occurs in three basic ways: convection (transferring heat into some other substance which then moves away), conduction (transferring heat into some other substance which stays put) and radiation (transferring heat as raw energy). Since empty space doesn't contain any "other substance", the first two don't work, and the third is much slower.