Outland and the Aliens movies series

[Tosk]

There are three. The first and third are the worst, one is a guy who cuts his air-hose open and instantly explodes, and the other is the guy who shoots open the area he is in and similarly explodes right away. The other one is less of a problem, a guy who takes an elevator down into the mine and is inside out by the time he gets there.

so the question is, has there been a scene (aside from the "pinhole" scene in Resurrection) where the human who did the spacing was exposed to vacuum or near-vacuum in the process?

There isn't, IIRC.

In Alien, Ripley is suited when the Alien gets ejected.
In Aliens, there is still atmosphere a-plenty when the Queen gets the boot.
Alien 3 doesn't have any relevant scenes. Same goes for Prometheus and Covenant. Always suited in when space.

The closest you'll get is the aforementioned Resurrection, but there are no humans present. Call is an Auton and Ripley is a super-Alien-clone-hybrid.

 

[Christopher]

The first and third are the worst, one is a guy who cuts his air-hose open and instantly explodes

Holy cow, it's even worse than I remembered.

The closest you'll get is the aforementioned Resurrection, but there are no humans present. Call is an Auton and Ripley is a super-Alien-clone-hybrid.

Even so, if the Outland vacuum effect is powerful enough to instantly blow apart a human body, basically the equivalent of having a grenade go off inside them, then logically it should have a proportionately powerful effect on any life form, even a superhuman one. I could sort of excuse it for a xenomorph because they have armored exoskeletons that are shown to be tough enough to withstand nearly anything short of heavy military weaponry or extreme thermal shock (I found a YouTube video about "How to Kill Xenomorphs," apparently part of a series about "How to Kill" movie monsters), so they've sort of got built-in spacesuits. But I don't think Call and clone-Ripley were shown to be indestructible. Alien-verse androids seem to be pretty soft-bodied and squishy.

Oy, this is a disgusting subject.

 

[Tosk]

For what it's worth, Synthetics can withstand conditions that humans can't. (David says he only wears a spacesuit so as to make people feel comfortable in Prometheus.)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

There are three. The first and third are the worst, one is a guy who cuts his air-hose open and instantly explodes, and the other is the guy who shoots open the area he is in and similarly explodes right away. The other one is less of a problem, a guy who takes an elevator down into the mine and is inside out by the time he gets there.

Actually, there's kinda a fourth decompression scene too. But it happens off-camera between scenes.

Their jail involves keeping the prisoners in pressure suits, and the cells are evidently hard vacuums. One of prisoners is assassinated, and the reveal of that is that the hose has been cut, IIRC. What you see is blood/guts dripping up (again, IIRC) from the cut hose as if in zero-gee. So the cells are also insulated from the artificial gravity (also, IIRC* you sorta see the prisoner floating in the cell earlier when he's still alive). The implication is that the prisoner exploded inside his suit from their version of explosive decompression.

* - Sorry for all the IIRCs, but it's been decades since I've seen the film, and I'm getting fuzzy on its details.

 

[Tosk]

I did forget about that guy, thanks for the heads-up. The cells are specifically marked "ZERO G" but there's no word of decompression...but then, why would he need a spacesuit otherwise? So you're almost certainly right about the intent of that scene.

Plus, it's actually five! I forgot another. One of the gunmen at the end gets trapped in a walkway and is killed by Connery and Sternhagen opening up the tube to space, and the second gunman shoots the greenhouse wall out, getting blown into space and we see his little twirling form 'splode once he's out there.

It really is silly but I still put Outland in my mental Alien folder, regardless. Con-Am is a Weyland Yutani competitor.

Edited to fix utter stupidity. If only I could do that in life.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The cells are specifically marked "NO ZERO G"

Oh, they are? OK, well I mangled that part of it. But didn't the blood drip up from the cut hose? And wasn't the prisoner, like, suspended in the center of the cell?

 

[Tosk]

No, I'm just an idiot. They say two things, and I combined them in my head. Fuh.

They say "ZERO G"
and
"No Artificial Gravity"

Even though I effed up the words, my thought process was agreeing with you. Which is why it probably made little sense the way I originally worded it. Sorry about that.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Ahh... Thanks for checking!

 

[Christopher]

"Dripping up" would not be zero gravity, it'd be negative gravity. Zero means there's no pull in either direction. Too many productions I've seen mistake weightlessness for buoyancy. Or they mistake the absence of a thing for its opposite and have things "fall up" instead of just hovering in place.

I was about to say "I look forward to when we start making movies in space for real so all the bad science in space movies will go away." But then I remembered that there's still plenty of stuff movies get wrong about real-life phenomena in defiance of everyday experience or common sense -- like having thunder sound simultaneously with lightning, or having the Moon be perpetually full, or having a car's driver keep looking at their passenger for a long conversation without losing control of the car, or having someone slice the palm of their hand open to draw blood and have no trouble using that hand afterward.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

"Dripping up" would not be zero gravity, it'd be negative gravity. Zero means there's no pull in either direction. Too many productions I've seen mistake weightlessness for buoyancy. Or they mistake the absence of a thing for its opposite and have things "fall up" instead of just hovering in place.

Yep. But it is clear that they intended it to indicate zero gravity, and not negative gravity, despite it being wrong for all the reasons you said.

I'm not sure what the actual reason for the mistake was, though. It's easy enough to get the effect as described in-camera, by simply turning the camera upside down; in the absence of any clarification of intent, I think it's possible that that simplicity in its execution might have influenced the decision to go with it.

 

[mos6507]

I shudder to think what Christopher would think of the Jimmy Neutron movie... His head would probably explode from the bad physics of those kids going off into space without any environmental protection whatsoever.

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[Christopher]

I shudder to think what Christopher would think of the Jimmy Neutron movie... His head would probably explode from the bad physics of those kids going off into space without any environmental protection whatsoever.

Comedies are a different matter. I loved the bit where they lampshaded it by having Carl ask that question and not letting us hear Jimmy's "perfectly reasonable explanation." It's fine for something to be ridiculous and nonsensical in a comedy; the problem is when something's ridiculous and nonsensical in a "serious" movie.

Besides, a human body being largely unaffected by vacuum exposure is actually much closer to the truth (aside from the whole breathing and hearing issue) than a human body instantly splashing like a water balloon on exposure to vacuum.

 

[publiusr]

I could sort of excuse it for a xenomorph because they have armored exoskeletons that are shown to be tough enough to withstand nearly anything short of heavy military weaponry or extreme thermal shock .

Actually, I'd think the exoskeleton would make them brittle--more likely to burst than a human--jor maybe just at the seams

Oy, this is a disgusting subject.

Even more disgusting is that movie style decompression actually has happened--at depth--on 5 November 1983 at 4:00 a.m

Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the 60 centimetres (24 in) diameter opening created by the jammed interior trunk door by escaping air and violently dismembered, including bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.

Location? The Byford Dolphin, a drilling rig equipped with a diving bell.

 

[Christopher]

Even more disgusting is that movie style decompression actually has happened--at depth--on 5 November 1983 at 4:00 a.m

If it was in the depths, then we'd be talking a pressure differential far greater than the one atmosphere or less between a spaceship interior and vacuum. So it's not something that could really happen in space.

 

[publiusr]

Unless the diving bell were brought up to a surface base on Europa.

Going from benthic pressure to pure vacuum at the surface...yikes.

 

[Christopher]

Unless the diving bell were brought up to a surface base on Europa.

If the surface of Europa is "in space," then so is the surface of Earth.

 

[JD]

Actually, I'd think the exoskeleton would make them brittle--more likely to burst than a human--jor maybe just at the seams



Even more disgusting is that movie style decompression actually has happened--at depth--on 5 November 1983 at 4:00 a.m

Investigation by forensic pathologists determined that Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner door, was forced through the 60 centimetres (24 in) diameter opening created by the jammed interior trunk door by escaping air and violently dismembered, including bisection of his thoracoabdominal cavity, which resulted in expulsion of all of the internal organs of his chest and abdomen, except the trachea and a section of small intestine, and of the thoracic spine. These were projected some distance, one section being found 10 metres (30 ft) vertically above the exterior pressure door.

Location? The Byford Dolphin, a drilling rig equipped with a diving bell.