Trope-a-Day: Thrown Out the Airlock

Thrown Out The Airlock: While purportedly an old space tradition to deal with pirates and mutineers, in practice, the penalties attached to littering anywhere remotely close to a trafficked orbit and the sheer waste of organic compounds are more than enough to persuade most salty spacedogs to Just Shoot ‘Em… or at the very least, throw ’em out there on a line so you can get ’em back.  A few of the dimmer and more brutal kind of pirates – and slavers, et. al, who really don’t want to get caught with their cargo – excepted.

Firing the buggers out of a missile tube, warhead included, or deliberately aiming them into a decaying orbit (in this case with suit), on the other hand… that’s been known to happen.  But it’s still kind of a gratuitous way to make a point, even to the aforementioned dim and brutal pirates and slavers, and definitely still something regarded as an atrocity, if a minor one.

Of course, the average naval anti-piracy patrol doesn’t have to pick up after the aftermath of that sort of pirate very often before its commanders are feeling just a mite atrocious…