Talk:Sky People/Crime and Punishment/@comment-173.226.71.162-20150505135742

The first thing the condemned would notice is their saliva and tears "boiling" in their eyes and mouth. The lack of pressure would cause their bodily fluids to rapidly sublimate out through every orifice, basically freeze-drying them alive. Any attempt they made to hold their breath would just result in barotrauma of the lungs (lung rupture). The ear drums would catastrophically rupture, as would the capillaries of the eyes. And imagine the worst sinus headache and case of intestinal bloating imaginable on top of that. It would probably take 10-30 seconds to lose consciousness. Death within two minutes. It's a particularly gruesome and undoubtedly agonizing way to die.

Also wasteful. You can't explosively jettison a person out of an airlock without venting a considerable amount of both oxygen and water into space along with them. If conserving resources is their primary concern on the Ark, they're doing it wrong.