On the darker side of space, there have been accidents, mistakes and technical faults that have caused injury, pain, maiming and unfortunately death. Of the ways to leave the mortal coil in space, few are painless but most are less painful than their earth bound compatriots as asphyxiation so often comes into play, rending the suffering party completely unconscious within seconds or minutes. Grim, but better than fully experiencing the ordeal. However, one particular accident is especially harrowing when thinking of the accidents that could happen in space. We have all seen Arnie's fantastic turn in The Red Planet when he is exposed to the vacuum (which there isn't on mars?) of space and his eyes and face swell to bursting. For one poor astronaut testing a space suit, that terrible eventuality became a reality. In 1965, during the height of the space race, NASA was testing a new type of space suit in the closest environment they could create to a pure vacuum - which is damn close. The Manned Spacecraft Centre at NASA contains a vacuum chamber in which a test subject entered in a space suit at pressure of around 1psi. The space suit was faulty and the test subject was exposed to a soft vacuum (as opposed to a hard vacuum, which is the total vacuum of space). After fourteen seconds the test subject lost consciousness, and within another 15 seconds the chamber was re-pressurised with oxygen. However, it was enough time for the subject to feel the water in his eyes begin to burn and his last memory before becoming uncurious was the liquid saliva in his mouth begin to boil on his tongue. Thankfully, the subject was fine as the human body is remarkable adept as remaining pressurised internally.
