From a reader:
Jonah:
At the wide-screen ‘Cinerama” showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey that I attended in New Orleans 1967 (I was then twelve), there were pamphlets provided that addressed the very question of what would happen to humans in a vacuum. This was because — as you’ll surely recall — Dave was briefly exposed to the vacuum of space when he blew the explosive bolts on his pod to re-enter the spacecraft when HAL wouldn’t “open the pod-bay door.”
Anticipating that the scene would be controversial (what a different time . . .), the pamphlet explained that a human body would not explode in the course of a brief exposure. Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke’s devotion to realism was also enough that there was no sound until Dave closed the door and filled the bay with air. What other space movie has ever been that accurate? (For example, Star Trek at least once showed the Enterprise “tilted” in mid-space after being hit . . .)