Thrown Out the Airlock/Quotes

You know, what the folks back home don't understand--the ones who've never left Earth--is just how dangerous space can be. Aside from incidents like this, just the everyday reality of living your days and nights in a big tin can surrounded by a vacuum. I remember my first time on a transport on the Moon-Mars run. I was just a kid, maybe seventeen. A buddy of mine was messing around and zipping through the halls. And he hid in one of the airlocks. I don't know, I guess he was going to try to scare us or something. I don't know. But just as I got close, he must have hit the wrong button, because the air doors slammed shut, the space doors, opened, and he just flew out into space. And the one thing they never tell you is that you don't die instantly in vacuum. He just hung there, against the black, like a puppet with his strings all tangled up--or like one of those old cartoons where you run off the edge of a cliff and your legs keep going. You could see that he was trying to breathe, but there was nothing! And one thing I remember when they pulled in his body--his eyes were frozen. [long pause] A lot of people make jokes about spacing somebody, about shoving somebody out an airlock. I don't think it's funny. Never will.

—Dr. Stephen Franklin, Babylon 5, "And Now For A Word"

The Junkman: One wrong move, and you'll be sucked out an airlock.
Sheen: Cool, an airlock!

Jimmy: We won't survive being sucked into space.

'Sheen: Oh. But still, an airlock!

—The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius

"Put that thing out the airlock."

—President Laura Roslin, Battlestar Galactica Reimagined, to pretty much every Cylon she encounters.