History Main / SpaceIsCold

* Very specifically {{averted|Trope}} in [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0124.html this]] ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' comic.

** Played with in [[http://www.schlockmercenary.com/2017-09-19 this]] strip: the notes take care to remind us that space is not cold, and then offer an explanation for why bodies might rapidly freeze anyway.

* In Earth orbit you'd slowly work your way up to a heat stroke, and then die. You'd get a severe sunburn in just a few minutes since the effective intensity of the Sun when outside the atmosphere is about one and half to three times as strong as on the surface of (most of) the Earth on a hot, sunny day. In about half an hour you'd have second degree burns on most of your body exposed to the Sun. If the bends don't get you, you will eventually die from overheating.

* Probably the first-ever appearance of this was in the 1954 SF movie ''Riders to the Stars'', in which this happens to one of the eponymous astronauts. He drifts for a moment right in front of the camera view, so that you can see that he's been turned into an Instant Mummy. Unlike most of these examples, the writers have an excuse; [[ScienceMarchesOn empirical evidence on the effects of the vacuum of space on the human body was rather lacking back then.]]

* ''Series/StarTrekPicard'': Towards the end of season 3: one of the big bads gets spaced, and they freeze rock-hard within the space of half a minute before shattering on a nearby hull. However, it's unclear if the unusual alien physiology of the being in question played a part in this.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus'': The first episode features the class landing on Pluto, which has an atmosphere that is very cold but also ''extremely'' thin (at most estimated to have 1/350,000 the air pressure of the surface of the Earth). After Janet is stubborn about leaving Arnold forces the issue by removing his helmet, his head instantly [[InstantIceJustAddCold is covered in ice]], [[HarmlessFreezing but the only long-term effect is a cold]]. The AndKnowingIsHalfTheBattle segment points out Arnold could not realistically survive, but claims the cold should have affected him even ''more'', instead of pointing out the many other negative effects of exposure to a near vacuum.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' episode "Cop and a Half-wit", one scene in Peter and Joe's police work montage has them busting down a door, only for it to turn out that they're on a space shuttle. They immediately get sucked out into space and freeze to death before [[LiterallyShatteredLives shattering]], then they're both perfectly fine in the following scene.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/StevenUniverse'' episode "Warp Tour", Steven accidentally sticks his head out the Warp Pad Stream. Garnet pulls him back in, saying "It's cold, and there is not much air". And indeed, any liquid outside the stream freezes instantly, such as Steven's snot (he had an allergy, it's '''not''' [[GrossoutShow that kind of show]]) or [[spoiler:the goo from the defective Robonoid]].
* ''WesternAnimation/LoveDeathAndRobots''. In "Helping Hand", an astronaut is [[DramaticSpaceDrifting adrift in space]], so she removes her glove and [[LawOfInverseRecoil throws it in the opposite direction]] to propel herself back towards her spaceship. Her hand freezes up in less than a minute, so when she misses her chance to grab the spaceship [[LifeOrLimbDecision she breaks off the frozen arm]] and throws it away as well.

* In ''Literature/{{Chindi}}'', one unlucky pilot is hit with a blast of cold (followed immediately by ExplosiveDecompression) after a hull breach. Another man is trapped in a compartment separated from the ship by the process of rescuing him, and it's a race to complete the rescue as everything inside it starts icing over.

* Averted in ''LightNovel/StarshipOperators''. While normally ships aren't worried about their own heat generation, it's certainly possible for external source to induce heat into a ship at far faster rate than the ship can radiate out. In fact, several ships have been killed by overheating them with repeated laser fire.

Nonetheless, "cold space" is a near-universal trope in SpeculativeFiction, to the point that [[TheCoconutEffect aversions are met with disbelief]].

This all aside...you still WILL freeze in (deep) space. It will just take much longer than you'd think.

An inversion of ConvectionSchmonvection, Space Is Cold is the widely held misconception that space is in itself "cold." We hear SpeculativeFiction writers talk about "the cold depths of space" or "the freezing void." If you get [[ThrownOutTheAirlock thrown into space]] without a spacesuit, you're going to freeze straight away, assuming you don't [[ExplosiveDecompression explode]].

The first reason is that temperature and heat are physical properties of matter. Space is the exact opposite of matter. Space is the absence of all matter -- or close enough that the difference is academic. Asking "what is the temperature of space?" is like asking a bald person what their hair color is. This means you cannot touch space because there is nothing to touch in the first place. This in turn means heat loss by convection or conduction cannot happen in space. Like matter, energy can't be created or destroyed. Things cool off when heat goes from them ''into'' the surrounding matter, even the air; nothing for the heat to travel into means the heat doesn't leave you. (Touching the surface of your spacecraft, however, can be a whole different story). This is how a thermos works, by the way; there is a near-vacuum surrounding the storage space, preventing heat from passing through.

* In ''Literature/HaloTheColeProtocol'', [[ManipulativeBastard Peter Bonifacio]] ends up trapped in an escape capsule in space and contemplates whether he'll asphyxiate or die of hypothermia when the electricity, and therefore heat, run out. Possibly TruthInTelevision (Literature?) given that it's not stated how long the air supply in the capsule is good for and it likely would get quite cold within a few days of the heaters shutting off, if that long.
* ''Literature/TheCulture''
** ''Literature/{{Excession}}'', by [[Creator/IainBanks Iain M. Banks]], has a particularly bad example: Upon being Thrown Out the Airlock, a character's eyes and mouth freeze (which is realistic), followed instantly by a description of his ''brain'' freezing over in a matter of seconds.
** By the time he wrote ''Literature/SurfaceDetail'', Banks had apparently learned from fans who wrote in about that. A character's ship dies and she contemplates the irony of how her body will probably be recovered frozen solid after several weeks even though she's actually going to die of heatstroke.
* In ''Literature/HaveSpaceSuitWillTravel'', Creator/RobertAHeinlein very carefully averts this trope, and explains why it needs averting. The biggest problem with engineering a spacesuit is getting rid of heat generated by the body.
* In Joe Haldeman's ''Literature/TheForeverWar'', it is also carefully averted: The PoweredArmor used by the military on frigid planets around dead stars actually requires radiators to boil away the heat and keeping most of the suit's outside cool enough not to boil the solid hydrogen or methane they are standing on; If a radiator malfunctions, the human inside runs risk of dying of the ''heat'' in the vacuum of space.
* In Creator/CSLewis's ''Literature/OutOfTheSilentPlanet'', all space travel is in the inner solar system (from Earth to Mars and back), so the sun is relatively near to Weston's spaceship, always visible, and makes things very hot within the ship. When Ransom comments, "I always thought space was dark and cold," he is met with scorn for his naivete. "Forgot about the Sun, did you?"
* In Creator/JohnRingo's ''Literature/IntoTheLookingGlass'' series, the Alliance Space Ship ''Vorpal Blade'' comes complete with a very long extendable heat exchanger, specifically due to how the lack of convection will eventually overheat the ship. Combat is often limited by the heat. The ship also has to stop every so often while just traveling around in order to "chill out" (as the procedure becomes known on the ship).
* ''[[Literature/DragonridersOfPern All The Weyrs Of Pern]]'' has dragons [[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, and the dragons are equipped with special gloves to insulate their paws.
* In Creator/JamesSwallow's TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} ''[[Literature/BloodAngels Deus Sanguinius]]'', when Rafen gets to the spaceship on the outside of a shuttle, he, despite his gear having its vacuum seals intact, suffers from the "incredible cold" and is stiff afterward.
* In Creator/CJCherryh's ''Literature/ChanurNovels'', it is mentioned that the cargo hold is really cold because they only turn the heating on when they're actually working inside. This might be accurate, though, as the amount of time they spend between stations is indeterminate due to time dilation.
* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1'' averts this. It says that if you hold a lungful of air, you can survive for up to 30 seconds. [[spoiler:Which, luckily for Ford and Arthur, is all that they needed.]] A lungful of air, on the other hand, might have led to ExplosiveDecompression; this is amended in [[VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1984 the computer game]], where it's changed to hyperventilating and emptying your lungs.
* "Literature/WaitItOut" by Creator/LarryNiven 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. [[AndIMustScream This allows him to think until the sun switches him off.]]]]
* Nicely addressed and averted in Creator/CharlesStross's ''Literature/TheAtrocityArchive'', in which a character is able to wear a thin, non-insulating suit to walk on a no-atmosphere planet and begins to feel uncomfortably cold in the suit only after he's entered a facility with a pressurized atmosphere.

* Creator/GregEgan's ''Literature/{{Orthogonal}}'' trilogy averts this and makes the aversion key to the plot at several points. Because of their BizarreAlienBiology, the aliens that serve as the trilogy's cast don't seem to need to breathe, but they are at near-constant risk of fatal hyperthermia -- sometimes [[SpontaneousHumanCombustion explosively]] -- even under mundane circumstances. Their greatest risk during an unprotected EVA is not asphyxiation, but burning to death from the inside out. (Their "spacesuits" are designed more to keep air flowing over the skin and then vent it to space to disperse heat, rather than to let them breathe or maintain any atmospheric pressure.)
* Inverted in-universe in Creator/HalClement's "Sun Spot". 'Grumpy' Ries has to spend a couple hours keeping an astronomical camera, and its operator, from getting cooked on the surface of a comet making a ''very'' close pass by the Sun. When he comes back inside, the observatory's doctor offers to treat him for burns. Ries points out he's been manhandling sacks of frozen methane and other ices which were still at the temperature of interstellar space. "Break out the frostbite remedy, will you, please?"
* MissionLevity averts this: When space suits are breached, there is generally a bit of frost from rapidly expanding moisture (such as blood), but no flash freezing. (The suits are also equipped to deal with decompression to keep the wearer alive for a while.)
* Averting this is a major point in ''Literature/TheMoteInGodsEye'' and its sequel. Spaceships radiate heat using their [[DeflectorShields shields]]. When under fire, the shield generators generate heat faster than it can be radiated. Shields in this universe are essentially impenetrable, so space battles only end when one ship accumulates too much heat and vaporises itself. In the sequel, the Moties have developed a way of increasing the radius of their shields as they heat up, giving them a larger surface area to radiate heat and allowing them to last much longer in combat that human ships. Unfortunately for them, the only wormhole out of their system ends in the atmosphere of a star (which they don't know about), so their expanding shields end up absorbing heat much faster and destroying them rather than allowing them to fight their way out.
* Surprisingly averted in ''[[Literature/LineOfDelirium Emperors of Illusions]]'', where two characters bail out of a doomed ship in PoweredArmor not really meant for long-term vacuum exposure. One of the characters is wondering what will kill them first: the lack of oxygen or them boiling in their own armor (i.e. due to the heat build-up and few ways of shedding it). They get rescued by a DeusExMachina before this happens, though.

* Averted when First Literature/{{Lensman}} Virgil Samms has to visit Pluto and has a custom-made space-suit to protect him against the extreme cold. The book takes the trouble to point out that space itself is not cold; the hazard lies from him coming into contact with Pluto's long-frozen surface.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]
* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' is often guilty of this, as seen in the page quote. Averted, though, in ''[[Series/StarTrekEnterprise Enterprise]]'' when Captain Archer is spaced during the fourth season. The portrayal of the effects of spacing are exceptionally accurate.
* When the engines fail in the ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' episode "Out of Gas", it's asserted that ''Serenity'''s crew will freeze to death before they have time to run out of air, because the power is out and thus so is the heating. This has some basis in fact. Engines build up a lot of heat, so logically a spacecraft would be designed to vent heat efficiently. Without an engine to generate heat, a system designed to vent it efficiently ''would'' cause the ship to get cold quickly.
* ''Series/DoctorWho'': "Four To Doomsday." Wearing just an air-helmet, the Doctor explains that he can survive about five minutes in open space. Vacuum is apparently not a problem for his exposed skin; the time-limiting factor is explicitly named as the intense ''cold''.
** In "The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe", the Doctor again is exposed to space, and seems to have no issues even with the cold (and he has no air helmet). He is concerned about burning up on reentry ... so he dons a spacesuit as quickly as possible (as if that would help ... and actually, it apparently does).
*** That space suit is a really futuristic advanced "impact suit", that through some technobabble absorbs most of the force of the impact but also repairs the damage to his body afterward. The Doctor even says "the suit isn't done repairing me yet". He leaves a pretty big crater on the ground where he hits.
* In an episode of ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', Crichton jumps between a spaceship that is about to explode and one that isn't. He doesn't have a spacesuit, and he prepares himself by hyperventilating to oxygenate his blood. He jumps, closes his eyes, and adds additional propulsive force by firing a blast rifle. He survives with little more than skin capillary damage, but it's not a pleasant trip--the first thing he does upon arriving safely is start screaming in pain.
** 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 (accidental and intentional) spacings. [[GoodThingYouCanHeal Fortunately]], thanks to his BizarreAlienBiology he's alright as long as he's recovered within about 15 minutes. He later voluntarily goes out into space with only a breathing mask.
* In ''Series/Avenue5'', being exposed to the vacuum of space will immediately cause you body to freeze completely solid even before you leave the airlock.
* ''Series/StargateSG1''. One episode had O'Neill and Teal'c exposed to space for several seconds so they could be rescued from a stray fighter craft--Carter even instructs them to do some heavy breathing first, then exhale as much as possible. Once they're rescued, O'Neill is visibly shaking, but whether it's due to cold or just good old-fashioned near-death trauma isn't really specified. In any case, nobody ever flash-froze.
** At that point they'd been drifting for at least twelve hours with the heating turned to the minimum possible level in order to preserve their compromised life support power. Jack even says that he's "done the freezing to death thing before" when trying to convince Teal'c to turn the heating back up a little bit.
*** In addition, their life support has almost run out, and they are suffering from carbon dioxide poisoning (actually portrayed correctly -- it's not lack of oxygen but rather excess carbon dioxide that the damaged life support system isn't able to remove). The carbon dioxide levels are ALMOST but not quite fatal, so they are already in pretty bad shape when they open the canopy.
* ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' is mostly accurate in its portrayal of space, but plays this trope as straight as it could; pretty much every person vented into space in one way or another is immediately shown being frosted over. The most striking example is probably the one where two crew members are locked in a damaged airlock, and they get colder as the air pressure lowers. Possibly based on the aerosol can effect, where the can cools down as the contents are released, but this is only because the process of the can's contents changing from liquid to gaseous form takes energy, something which would not apply to escaping air.
* Being a show that usually does the research, ''Series/TheWestWing'' gets it right in the S1 finale "What Kind Of Day Has It Been?" The space shuttle ''Columbia'' is experiencing problems preparing for re-entry, with Toby's brother on board:

* ''Series/BabylonFive'': Dr. Stephen Franklin recounts an event in his childhood wherein a kid was spaced accidentally. Although, to the show's credit, the body was frozen after having spent hours outside.

** The novel [[Literature/RedDwarf Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers]] also plays it straight. When a disgusted Lister has the ship's emergency backup milk supply (consisting of dog milk) dumped into space, it instantly freezes into a dog-milk asteroid.
* In the ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000'' episode feature ''Film/TheAtomicBrain'', Tom Servo attempts to give the weather as the weather robot "Weather-Servo 9". As soon as he's raised up, the first thing he complains about is how cold it is. Thankfully, he's warmed up... by the passing by meteor shower.

-->Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids,\\
In fact it's cold as hell.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''VideoGame/DeepRockGalactic''. The Wormhole Special beer can teleport the dwarf who drinks it anywhere inside of the Space Rig - as well as outside of it, which instantly freezes them solid. Thankfully, HarmlessFreezing is in effect, and the dwarf also gets teleported back to where they started after several seconds.

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* Very specifically averted in [[http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0124.html this]] ''Webcomic/DarthsAndDroids'' comic.
* Averted in ''Webcomic/{{Freefall}}'', when Helix says he does not need air to survive, and Florence replies that he is air-''cooled''. Rather fortunate as he was apparently planning a "really funny joke" once they got into space.

** Used correctly. When Schlock gets lost in space without a spacesuit (he doesn't need air), the footnote mentions that while he was in danger of freezing to death in the shadow of the planet, the much bigger danger was falling out of the shadow and burning to death in the direct light of the star.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2012'', when Lord Dregg is betrayed by the Triceratons, he freezes shortly after they [[ThrownOutTheAirlock fire him out the airlock]].

* Averted in ''Film/{{Avatar}}'' -- if you pay close attention as the ship arrives, you'll see heat sinks glowing red hot. It is also mentioned in the background that the first ISV, needing to use cold superconductors, was over 3 times the size due to the extra thermal load of the cooling systems for the engines, requiring much larger radiators.

* The movies of the Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse such as ''Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxy'', [[Film/GuardiansOfTheGalaxyVol2 its sequel]] and ''Film/AvengersInfinityWar'', while showing a more realistic depiction of what'd happen if one was thrown in space without protection, follow this trope to an extent, as anyone who is exposed to the vacuum gets their skin covered by a layer of frost.
* Averted in, of all places, ''Film/TheLastJedi'', where [[spoiler: Leia spends about half a minute in outer space with no obvious signs of damage. She does, however, pass out from lack of oxygen after using the Force to pull herself back to the ship.]]

* ''[[Literature/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, and the dragons are equipped with special gloves to insulate their paws.

** In the first '' Franchise/StarWars'' special, Jar-Jar comes onboard an Imperial ship to visit Darth Vader. Vader tells him to get into an escape pod before the Separatists attack, believing that Jar-Jar won't know that the CIS has been wiped out, when in actuality he's put him into [[ThrownOutTheAirlock the airlock]]. Upon being jettisoned into space, Jar-Jar instantly freezes to death.

* ''Anime/TheOrbitalChildren'': When the power on the space station runs out at the end of episode 1, the station gets progressively colder and the atmosphere begins to leak, reducing the air pressure on board. While the leaks would reduce the air pressure on board, exactly how that would make it colder on board is never explained (the station is in low-Earth orbit).

* ''Anime/TheOrbitalChildren'': When the power on the space station runs out at the end of episode 1, the station gets progressively colder and everyone seems to be worried about freezing or running out of air.

* At the end of the second part of ''Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure'', the literally indestructible Cars is defeated by launching him into space. He tries to get back by venting his body's stored air to send him back to earth... but the water vapor freezes, sealing off the holes he uses to vent, and he ends up [[AndIMustScream drifting through space for eternity until his mind shuts off, effectively killing him]].

* As is the case with most of the rest of the game, VideoGame/KerbalSpaceProgram accurately portrays the non-temperature of space. A vessel that is heated too much in the atmosphere before going into space will retain its temperature, and you will have to use electric charge and radiator panels to get rid of excess heat generated by machinery, electronics, or friction while in space. Trying to operate the temperature or pressure scan experiments while in space will result in the game reminding you that, as there is nothing to take the temperature of, the device will read nothing. That'll give the boys in R&D something to think about.

** In "Dream Job", Lumpy sets Sniffles' dream projector to a scene where he's likewise frozen, but is shattered by a fast-moving space rock instead.

* Cooling issues provide the major limitation on spaceship construction and travel in ''Literature/TheCitizenSeries''. Ships cool in the Continuum even poorer than in realspace, so they have to store their waste heat in large iron heat sinks aboard, which leads to a variant on the [[[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/expeditions/expedition30/tryanny.html Tyranny of the Rocket Equation]]. Iron produces drag on moving objects when present in the Continuum, meaning that ships produce even ''more'' heat pulling their own heat sinks. Once they make planetfall, ships have to cool their heat sinks with pumped-in fresh water, a process that takes days and tends to cause rainstorms across the region.

* ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1'' averts this. It says that if you hold a lungful of air, you can survive for up to 30 seconds. [[spoiler:Which, luckily for Ford and Arthur, is all that they needed.]] A lungful of air, on the other hand, might have led to ExplosiveDecompression; this is amended in [[VideoGame/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy the computer game]], where it's changed to hyperventilating and emptying your lungs.

While you would freeze in space eventually, you will not freeze instantly. SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay. In brief, there are two reasons why. Before exploring them, it's worth noting that "freezing" specifically means "heat leaves you". There are two ways heat can leave you: convection/conduction and radiation.

* ''Fanfic/TheNextFrontier'': One of [[CaptainsLog Jeb's blog entries]] opens with him musing that one of the more under-appreciated achievements of the Kerbin Space Agency is forcing filmmakers to raise their realism game because so many Kerbals know firsthand that SpaceDoesNotWorkThatWay... then plaintively notes that here he is, huddled shivering under a blanket and wearing several layers of clothing. The reason for this is that the ship he's on has almost everything except life-support, the SubspaceAnsible and a few of the instruments shut down while the heat-exchanger is still running at nearly full capacity, in the hopes of keeping a low profile so they can get ready to make FirstContact.

The first reason is that temperature and heat are physical properties of matter. Space is the exact opposite of matter. Space is the absence of all matter--or close enough that the difference is academic. Asking "what is the temperature of space?" is like asking a bald person what their hair color is. This means you cannot touch space because there is nothing to touch in the first place. This in turn means heat loss by convection or conduction cannot happen in space. Like matter, energy can't be created or destroyed. Things cool off when heat goes from them ''into'' the surrounding matter, even the air; nothing for the heat to travel into means the heat doesn't leave you. (Touching the surface of your spacecraft, however, can be a whole different story). This is how a thermos works, by the way; there is a near-vacuum surrounding the storage space, preventing heat from passing through.

* Inside the orbit of Venus, you'd bake to death fairly quickly- but still not instantaneously, mind you. Even at Mercury's closest solar approach, equatorial surface temperatures top out around 700 Kelvin (~800°F, or 426°C)- this is only a third the temperature of your typical charcoal fire, and almost twice as hot as your average kitchen oven's highest temperature. Like putting your hand on a grill, it'd be harmful but survivable for brief exposures.
* In Earth orbit you'd slowly work your way up to a heat stroke, and then die. You'd get a severe sunburn in just a few minutes since the effective intensity of the Sun when outside the atmosphere is about 1.5 to 3 times as strong as on the surface of (most of) the Earth on a hot, sunny day. In about half an hour you'd have second degree burns on most of your body exposed to the Sun. If the bends don't get you, you will eventually die from overheating.