What consequence arises from the significant loss of water mass due to vacuum exposure?
Answer
The remaining structure becomes far less dense, potentially leading to a light, brittle husk.
Water constitutes a significant percentage of soft tissue mass in a living or recently deceased human body. When exposed to a vacuum, this substantial mass—potentially over 50% of the initial body mass—is lost rapidly through ebullism and sublimation. This massive reduction in volume due to water loss directly results in a significant decrease in overall density for the residual structure. The remaining material consists primarily of non-volatile components like bone and residual, radiation-damaged organic material, resulting in an extremely light, brittle husk compared to the original mass.
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