• Question: How do people get out of a space rocket?

    Asked by James to Eoin on 19 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Eoin Carley

      Eoin Carley answered on 19 Nov 2014:


      Hello James! Interesting question. As you may know from any space movie, if you open the door in space, everything goes flying out the door. This is because there is very very little pressure in space, and the high pressure in the spaceship forces everything out the door. It is one of the basic ways gases or fluids behave, things ALWAYS flow from high to low pressure…it’s why we get winds on Earth. Anyway, astronauts cannot simply open the door to space. They have to enter something called an ‘air lock’. It is basically a little room, cut off from the rest of the spacecraft. The astronauts get in there space suits, enter the air lock and shut themselves off from the the rest of the spacecraft. Air is slowly pumped out of this little room and when all the air is gone, they can open the door to outer space safely. Since the air lock is cut off from the rest of the spacecraft, no air will be sucked out and they can easily exit their spaceship.

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