So, I searched around the forum and apparently no-one picked up on this: Why is space cold in the future?

Seriously, hard vacuum is one of the best insulators known to man - if it wasn't vacuum Thermos flasks would not work. In a star system, especially with direct LoS to the star and anywhere near the habitable zone, the biggest issue anyone has regarding temperature in the void is getting rid of excess heat. This is why the Apollo astronauts wore suits with giant refrigeration units on the back.

So how come you start suffering cold damage if you nip outside for a walk in the year 40,000? Is this a fluff issue? Does GW's version of the universe just happen to have freezing cold, conductive vacuums for some reason?

Standard soft sci-fi / space fantasy convention.

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Beware, you are dangerously close to nerdrage by mixing reality and 40k. Attempts to use your foolish 'facts' and 'science' in this context will bring down nerdly wrath.

It's 39k years from now, what did you expect? Of course the universe is colder, it has had time to cool, DUH.

Von Todkopf said:

Emperor forgvie me, but I laughed.

Von Todkopf said:

That is the best answer for that question I have ever seen.

Space would actually cool you down, to quote tvtropes:

"Since there is no pressure in a vacuum, the boiling point of water will plummet, causing any water to immediately begin boiling (the boiling point of a liquid is dependent on the pressure around it). Since some extra energy is needed for water to change from liquid to gas (aside from the energy needed to reach the boiling point), it will sap a little heat from anything it happens to be in contact with. This evaporative cooling will likely cause some freezing on a person Thrown Out The Airlock — the eyes and mouth, for instance — but will just make their death slightly more unpleasant (and blurry), rather than instantly turning them into a Human Popsicle."

Also I strongly advice against touching anything that has been in space for long.

Mostly the best explanation is becauce 40k is not a realistic world. It's universe do not obey the same rules as ours.

moslty everything is based on the depth of space, or the shadow side of things where humans would be and where you would technically suffer freezing temperature close to absolute 0.

When facing the sun any unprotected flesh will be burnt instantly by radiations, heat, etc. Dense clouds of matter could refract light a bit but it would need to be pretty dense...

ItsUncertainWho said:

Why thank you, both IUW and Saibot. I blush'd, whereas I was expecting to have troll'd. Tragedy averted.

On a more topic-related note: consider the proposition that the "cold" referred to is a metaphysical cold - i.e. the solitude of the soul when faced with the abyss of the empty space, no?

Von Todkopf said:

You are on a roll.

To quote someone on the official 40k boards.

"Why do you expect reality in a game where you travel light years on a ship several kilometers long to fight with swords?"

Actually, fighting on ships in space i'd be more likely to see people fight with knives and swords then guns. Less risk of a blow out.

BaronIveagh said:

If the ship has armour strong enough that the ship can be boarded, then the armour should be strong enough to simply ignore anti-personal weapons.

Bilateralrope said:

Um. What? That's like saying that if wood is strong enough to be used as a building material it should be immune to fire, for all the sense that made.

Personally I give most external walls and such an armour value of 25. If they miss, it's a 25% chance that they hit a wall that faces the Void. Roll damage, see what happens. Did a lot for stopping my players from lugging lascannons and meltas along to crew riots and boarding actions.

25? No, really... I just quickly checked in the DH Apocrypha vehicle rules (don't have ItS yet) and a mere guncutter has 30 armour on front and 25 on the rest of the hull. Surely, a capital ship would have a little more, no? 35, 40, how about in the vicinity of these numbers?

The explanations every time it turns up is that a gunfight with armour piercing weapons is likely to break something important, not that it will puncture the main hull. Power lines, air filters, fuel tanks and so-on, many of which will cause immediate explodey death if someone puts a plasma burst into them.

On shuttles and the like a hull breach does become more of a possibility, though still heavily unlikely.

The worry isn't to punch through the ship's armor - a 40K starship's hill is probably as strong as battleship's armor belt - proof against anything that's not vehcile-mounted, bar a few oddities that send chunks of matters into the warp no matter how strong or the like (and even those would have to affect quite big chunks to get through).

But a ship is filled with an awfull ot of techonogical bits and parts that aren't bulletproof and will be troublesome if they get punctured - insulation on high voltage power lines, oxygen tanks, electronic bits, that sort of things. Those are the real trouble, especially is you're well inside the ship - if there's one hundred meter and twleve decks between you and the void, the odds for making a hole to the void are very, very small. Even with a heavy meltagun.

crisaron said:

So basically if you're in LOS of a nearby star, replace cold damage with heat damage... but really, either you're going to get saved from hard vacuum by plot or you're going to die painfully from exposure. So the details aren't likely to matter in most cases.

@Errant

Um. What? That's like saying that if wood is strong enough to be used as a building material it should be immune to fire, for all the sense that made.

No, it's more like saying that if armour is designed to withstand barrages of guns that would make modern day generals wet themselves, trying anything with less than a heavy meltagun (hooked up to a fuel tank, because you'll need quite some time) is a little like expecting a skyscraper to keel over if you kick it really hard.

As for the armour question and personnel level fights puncturing it. The best thought I could come up with is that starship armour against starship weapons does not necessarily make up the void sealed hull, it is layered over the top. When part of an armours effectiveness comes from ablation, having a 'pressure hull' under the main armour means that damage that cracks and buckles the armour is still effectively dissipated yet leaves the hull underneath sealed, but the wrong hit in the wrong place with the wrong weapon inside can put a hole in it. This seems to fit best.

Aureus said:

We haven't talked about radiations yet either. Avergae space suit can widstand a few hours only of radiation right now

If one should be in such a problematic state as drifting in space with no proper protection, the person must be rescued within maximum 2 minutes. Why? Lets see;

1. Like someone mentioned earlier, the vacuum makes water boil. Humans consist of ca 70% water... boiling water is bad enough to touch, but having it inside of the body? Death is imminent.

2. The boiling of water makes the body fluids into gases which then fills the human and blows up the skin like a balloon. Tissues are ripped asunder.

3. The longer this continues the faster the skin-ballon goes POP and red goo is all there is left.

So yeah, the temperature-changes isn't what kills

Written over in game-rules;

1. 2d10 dmg, soaked by half toughness every turn.

2. at this stage the damage gains Tearing (after about 5 turns).

3. Forget fate-point.

I don't know that you need to "forget fate point" though. The "fate point" by definition represents fate favoring the PC. Burning it just means that, if it is at all possible, they are rescued somehow. This is true for ANY death trap, the void doesn't get special consideration.

Burn a fate point, some miraculous coincidence saves the PC. It is up to the GM to come up with a miraculous coincidence and give the PC a chance at survival (passing shuttle, ensign briggs in the teleportium got a lock, bad guy saves PC because they are somehow important to his plans, slurped into the warp by a demon interested in the PCs fate).

Fate being fate, it doesn't necessarily have to be a situation that is GOOD for the PC in the long run...

Svarte Hanske said:

Umm... the reason water boils in a vacuum is that there is no external pressure preventing it from doing so. Water inside the body is not going to boil because the body provides that pressure.
True, any naturally moist areas of the body that are exposed to vacuum will boil, but they'll boil cold (before freezing solid), as there's nothing to make them directly heat up. The transition between liquid and gaseous states is most definitely not exothermic, so without a heat source (greater than the human body), they steal that energy from the surrounding material, hence the rapid boil-to-freeze.
Likewise, there will be some pretty impressive outgassing and tissue damage from several orifices, which will rather quickly freeze solid (see above explanation), and some unpleasant cell damage and capillary ruptures near skin pores, but not from boiling and ballooning tissues.

Look at this page for a good example of the kind of damage that is done.

And yeah, fate-point burning means that the GM has to think of a (mostly) plausible method of surviving a situation. Of course, such survival doesn't have to be pretty... Mind you, if someone were so spectacularly unfortunate to find themselves going on an unprotected space-walk, I'd be thinking of an ass-pull along the lines of a phone number of a flat in Islington where they'd almost made it with a fit girl, two years previously

I'd say that spending the Fate Point puts the burden of coming up with an acceptable explanation for survival on the player rather than the GM. The GM is the one that must be convinced that the explanation is acceptable.