You raise a few questions.
One is simple- can water vaporize in space, without air? The answer
is yes. The water vapor in the atmosphere isn't stuck to air molecules,
but exists as water molecules bouncing around independently. You can
easily have a gas with only water and no air. In fact, when you boil
water the bubbles that form under water are almost pure water vapor,
without air.
Now the nearly empty space that the vapor would go into may be
intensely cold, but it has almost nothing in it to get warmed up. In
other words, it has a very low heat capacity. It wouldn't cool the
water down significantly. However, the water would get cold for another
reason. Exposed to a vacuum, it would boil away. Conversion to the
vapor soaks up a lot of energy, the latent heat of vaporization. All
the surroundings would cool down, including the water that had not yet
boiled off.
You can actually freeze water by putting it in a vaccum using this
effect. Some vaporizes and the rest is cooled enough to freeze. I
really can't calculate whether in your story you should expect ice
plugs to block up the holes or not. In the long run, the water would
evaporate (sublimate) from the ice also, leaving nothing.
Mike W.
(published on 10/22/2007)
