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We've seen it in movies; James Bond or some other tough guy hero hanging onto the outside of plane at 30,000 feet while attempting to stop the villain's nefarious plan, but could a human being actually survive that kind of situation?

The answer is no, Jason Kring of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University told popsci.com. The assistant professor of human factors and systems told the site that at 30,000 feet, "The air in their lungs… would expand so quickly they would, for lack of a better term, explode," Kring said. He goes on to say the low atmospheric pressure would allow the air to expand our lungs like a balloon, and the temperature, which could be 30 degrees or more below zero, would make survival problematic, causing extremities such as the eyes or mouth to "freeze almost instantly".

Survival in this kind of situation is possible, however. Gizmodo reported that Captain Tim Lancaster was sucked out of the British Airways BAC 1-11 airliner he was piloting at 17,000 feet when the improperly installed windshield of the plane blew out. According to the site, even though Captain Lancaster had spent a number of minutes hanging out of a plane traveling 391 mph before others crew members were able to pull him back in, he came through the situation with only minor frostbite and a few broken bones.

In almost any situation involving loss of cabin pressure the average passenger is likely to find himself or herself in, experts tell Gizmodo the risk is quite low.Should there be a loss of cabin pressure, pilots are trained to immediately descend to 10,000 feet or lower where air pressure and oxygen levels are safe for humans. Even if the hole is fairly large, it would take longer than you might expect to lose cabin pressure. "It would take about 100 seconds for pressure to equalize through a one square-foot hole in the body of a 747," Geoffrey Landis, a physicist at NASA's Glenn Research Center said to Discovery.com. Of course, the now famous oxygen masks will also deploy, insuring there will be no shortage of breathable air.

That being said, there have been people who have survived the conditions of the upper atmosphere. Felix Baumgartner recently made history with a skydive from 128,000 feet, but of course he was wearing a suit similar to those used by astronauts to survive in space.