Shopping Maul said:
I don’t know how plausible Leia’s space walk is. For all I know her survival in that moment (Force aside) is entirely scientific. But it looks ridiculous. It takes me out of the film because I start questioning it - “hang on, does that even make sense?”. Yes, it’s a universe where muppets lift X-wing fighters with a gesture, but somehow this moment is a mood-killer.It was a little weird, and the way they did the visuals made it look a little silly. Ultimately I just went with it, mostly for the reasons you mentioned. I mean, if you can pull an object to yourself, why not pull yourself toward an object? If we’re putting future stories in a creative box labeled “if it didn’t happen in the original three or six, it can’t happen”, there wouldn’t be anywhere to go. That’s generally where I stand with most of the more controversial things being discussed around here.
The plausibility of the space walk in general? Force aside, yes, it’s generally accepted that you can survive in vacuum for a short time. Maybe a minute. Because of the near-zero pressure, your tissues near the skin would get puffy, and all of the moisture on the exposed surfaces of your body would boil away (saliva, etc). Only ‘mistake’ I noticed was that they seemed to make her look ‘iced over’, which is a common thing to do to someone exposed to vacuum in TV and movies. But that wouldn’t happen very quickly. Your body temperature is well above freezing, and in vacuum there’s no convection or conduction to move heat - you only cool off via direct radiation - so you would more likely overheat than get cold. Of course you’d lose consciousness after a few seconds at best, so you’d probably never notice…
In short - surviving the spacewalk itself is fine. They also did it correctly in that she would need immediate hospitalization for decompression injuries. But in a universe that has bacta, no problem, right?
Cool response - thanks! It’s fascinating to me just how Star Wars credulity works, and how varied and nuanced it can be. And yes, Bacta heals all wounds as they say…