The Truth About Star Wars Characters Breathing in Space

In the Star Wars universe, characters generally cannot breathe in the vacuum of space. While there are instances in the films and expanded media where characters are shown surviving briefly in space, such as Leia Organa, the general rule is that characters cannot survive without assistance from special equipment like space suits or being inside ships.

Airless and Inhospitable

The vacuum of space is devoid of breathable air. Most characters in the Star Wars universe require oxygen to breathe, and as a result, scenes often show characters using space suits or being inside ships to survive in space. The technical details about how long someone could survive without oxygen are often glossed over for dramatic effect but realistically, humans can only survive a few seconds in a vacuum before losing consciousness and suffering serious harm.

Leia's Survival

If you're referring to Leia being able to fly back to the Raddus after the ships suffered an explosive decompression, the answer is still no. When someone is "spaced," they don't die instantly. They will lose consciousness in a matter of seconds and die in a couple of minutes. Additionally, they won't instantly freeze because the only way they can lose body heat in a vacuum is through radiation.

Those seconds of consciousness are what allowed Leia to get back to the Raddus. She was using force to effectively pull the Raddus to her, and using Newtonian physics, she managed to pull the almost three and a half kilometre-long ship with the reaction of her being pulled to it.

Special Equipment for Survival

Not without special equipment. In The Empire Strikes Back, we see that Han, Leia, and Chewbacca wear what look like oxygen masks when they disembark from the Millennium Falcon on what they assume is an interplanetary asteroid. However, they do not seem to suffer from or even be concerned about any other hazards of exposure to hard vacuum or deep space. If they are immune to vacuum, one wonders if they even needed the oxygen for anything other than verbal communication.

They went outside in the first place to remove mynocks, which implies that the Falcon's sensors could have indicated whether there was sufficient pressure for them outside the ship before they exited. This could also mean that the ship has a force field holding the atmosphere in, but why would it pressurize the bubble with a non-breathable gas?

Other Instances of Surviving in Space

We do see other instances in the films of interiors that are apparently open to space. In these cases, some kind of force field is holding the atmosphere in, such as the Millennium Falcon. However, it's unclear why the ship would carry a special inert gas just for this purpose or why it would store enough gas to pressurize a fairly large bubble around the ship rather than just continuously vent it.

We do not believe that the main sentient species in Star Wars can survive in space but EVA (Extravehicular Activity) seems to be a very casual affair, using whatever the technology is that they use in Star Wars to facilitate it. There clearly are organisms in their universe that are capable of living in deep space.

Despite the fantastical elements in the Star Wars universe, the rules of survival in space are quite strict. Both the visual and narrative elements often require the use of space suits or confined environments to ensure the safety of the characters.