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The first and most obvious hazard is the lack of oxygen which could cause an astronaut without suitable protective clothing to suffocate.

In fact space is practically a vacuum (there is virtually nothing there at all), this means that unprotected astronauts can suffer from "decompression sickness". This is because at earth's surface there is a significant pressure acting on everything from the weight of the air in the atmosphere. On earth we don't normally notice this as we are used to it. All the fluid and dissolved gasses in our bodies is broadly at the same pressure as the atmosphere and so the two cancel each other out. However in space where there is no atmosphere pushing down or around an astronaut, the pessure is not balanced and without protective clothing, dissolved gasses in the blood and other tissues will come out of solution forming bubbles which would be extremely painful and rapidly prove fatal and would cause significant swelling.

On earth we are protected from significant amounts of solar radiation by the atmosphere and the Earth's magnetic field. In space no such protection exits and so astronauts face significantly increased exposure to all types of radiation.

There is also the increased risk of meteoroids (small metallic or silicate clasts ranging from sand grain size upwards) that travel at very high velocities causing damage to space vehicles (or in extremis killing astronauts) because there is no atmosphere to burn up (due to air resistance and friction) these debris.

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13y ago

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