if you were in space without a helmet would you explode?

Question: if you were in space without a helmet would you explode?

Asked by matambn01 to Donna, Jo, Mark, Stuart, timcraggs on 24 Jun 2010 in Categories: General.
- Donna MacCallum answered on 22 Jun 2010:
  
  I believe that you would not be a pretty site – without air pressure I think that you expand and go boom!
- Joanna Buckley answered on 22 Jun 2010:
  
  Hiya matambn01! 🙂
  
  It’s not as gruesome as you might imagine. Don;t believe the movies! We wouldn’t suddenly swell up or have their eyes pop out of their heads. It is, in fact, virtually impossible to compress or expand organic tissues in this way. Instead, death arises from the response of the free gasses trapped within the tissues. Like the bends when divers rise to the surface too quickly.
  
  So basically, you’ll probably die but it wouldn’t be as mushy as you’d predict 🙂
- Mark Lancaster answered on 22 Jun 2010:
  
  Yes this’d happen before you suffocated – the only reason we don’t explode on earth is that atmospheric pressure presses on the body keeping everything in – if you remove the atmosphere and the pressure then the water etc inside us would exert a pressure that is not balanced and that is sufficient to break open the skin and we just explode – messy….
- Tim Craggs answered on 24 Jun 2010:
  
  I think you would, though I am not sure, and I definitely do not want to try it!

Question: if you were in space without a helmet would you explode?