At Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:08:58 EST samtkc wrote:



I hope this question is not too far afield (or too morbid), but does
anyone know what would happen to a dead body after 25 years of drifting
in space inside a spaceship? I am writing a story that includes the
possibility of a astronaut dying while on a mission and his spaceship
drifting for 25 years before it is found. I would appreciate any
suggestions about how a body would decay in this situation.

Well, "decay" in the normal *earthly* understanding implies organic
rot, which is a process involving bacteria and/or insects. In a
*sterile* space environment, this is not going to happen, at least not
for very long (lack of air, too cold, lack of bacteria and/or insects,
etc.). Depending on how 'clean' the spaceship is, there will be little
or no *organic* decay. Loss of air pressure will affect the body,
depending on the sort of space suit (if any) the astronaut is wearing.
If he/she is wearing a current issue NASA suit -- the sort the Apollo
crews wore -- (basically a reinforced balloon) and if the air leaks
out, the body will be a mess. If he/she is wearing a 'skin suit' (sort
of like a scuba diver's wet suit, but reinforced with wires and/or
heavy duty elasic -- currently under development at MIT for use with
the proposed Mars missions), the body will be kept intact (the head in
an open 'fish bowl' helmet might be a different issue). If the
astronaut is NOT wearing a space suit, then when the air leaks out of
the ship (25 years is plenty of time for some high speed grain of sand
to punch a hold somewhere), the body will be a decompressed mess. Oh,
under hard vacume, the 'water' (most of a body's mass is water), will
have boiled off.


Sam





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