We still had troopers with backpacks and air hoses hanging around on the outside of the Death Star though. 😉
Also, the DS is bristling with enough conventional firepower, it could probably ruin your whole day if it orbited over your location and cut loose.
Well, some suspension of disbelief still counts. (Not that we needed it for the “space slug” scene in ESB, but some stil apply.)
Also, as I pointed out on another thread about half a year ago, if the DS really made scientific sense (e.g. if it had a gravitational pull), then those stormtroopers would not have been standing where they are in your screenshot, but rather like this;
But that’s kind of my point, and the real beauty of Star Wars when compared to other franchises. It has just enough fantasy and magic to make it unique and interesting, just enough from real-life to make it relateable, but also just enough real science fiction to make it seem more real and serious.
So yes, stormtroopers need space-suits and oxygen tanks when going for a space walk, but if you try to rationalize the ESB space slug in a scientific sense rather than in a fairy-tale sense, it’s not going to make a lot of sense.
(BTW, in the old thread you quite accurately compared the space slug to the Monstro the whale sequence in Pinocchio. So i think you get what I mean.)