(this entry contains bad recollections and show spoilers and mentions of gore, sources at bottom)
The show is Voltron: Legendary Defenders (the Netflix remake) for context. I don't remember the exact episode but I think maybe first season, second at max, some Galra person possesses the Castle of Lions and locks an airlock with Lance still inside. At first it's a minor inconvenience, but then the external door starts to open and Lance is soon holding on for dear life against the vacuum force of space. He survives this.
I didn't have any issues with this scene when I first watched it. For one, Lance tends to brush up with death fairly often in the series, quite literally in like season 6 of the show. And even then, it's typical of spacey shows like that to ignore oxygen needs and pressurization every so often for the sake of the plot. Now though, as I try to lay out a proper set of floor plans and diagrammish sketches for the Mother Goose, and mourn the removal of Voltron from Netflix, this scene aggravates me just a little.
There was this incident in 1983, on the Byford Dolphin oil rig out near Norway. The clamp on a diving bell had detached as the divers were entering their living quarters. Both the diving bell and living quarters were kept under high pressure, to make it easier to work down in the ocean. When that bell slipped, the initial crack was only 5 inches or so, but that was enough for all the pressure inside to escape. Nobody inside the now-decompressed space survived, but the most gruesome death of the victims was the man right in front of the bell when it slipped. The force of the pressure escaping sucked him right through that crack, organs first.
What Lance experienced wasn't as sudden or explosive as that, I presume, but slow depressurization has its dangers too. Take Helios Airways Flight 522. A maintenance error caused the cabin to not pressurize in the air, resulting in loss of consciousness and brain death (suffocation of the brain? hypoxia? i think that's the word) in all crew and passengers but 2. That was on Earth, where there was still air in the atmosphere. Lance was in space.
I don't know I just think Lance should have fainted or something.
In any case I'm thinking about this because the station only has one airlock right now: the landing bay. There is an escape hatch in the cockpit but it's one door which is more like a wall for how hard is to open. which is a good thing actually? anyway the Mother Goose I plan to fit with two big airlocks: a main and auxilary landing bay; an emergency exit room, and a sort of lab space that is capable of regular exposure to the vacuum. Unless I can figure out how to give the goose its own atmosphere, the goose needs safety measures to prevent a ship-wide catastrophe. I'm thinking of sort of the individual doors to every room being capable of acting as an airlock, and maybe having a system for keeping the number of open airlocks low. Also, an extensive alarm system, obviously.
That is all.
sources