the ballon ruptures violently and completely in the span of seconds because of the elasticity of its material. Hab construction is incredibly more rigid. Thus the opening where atmo is escaping from dictates a max flow rate. Only so many atoms and molecules can fit through an opening even at perfect compression. Further laws of concentration gradient and the force of gravity will also place limits on the flow rate and the total amount that can flow. Te take a gorier example if you punctured your femoral artery, the contents of which are under much more extreme pressure than a habitat's atmo. untreated you will bleed to death in a few minutes and still some blood will remain inside you. Now increase the scale from a person to a cluster hab and minutes can go easily to hours depending on the size of the aperture. further hans likely kept the opening in the airlock deliberately small in order to generate maximum vortex strength to clear the dust.

It'll depend (primarily) on three factors: Size of the hole Volume of air Pressure of air The easiest hab I can calculate a volume for is an O'Neill cylinder, also, some habs and ships will (SHOULD) have main sections cut that are separated from one another. Clusters and LaFrance rigs come to mind. So, O'Neill cylinder, no separations, radius 500 meters, length 2000 meters, pressurized to 1 atmosphere, 1.5 E 9 cubic meters. If we assume someone left a door open (oops) that is one meter in diameter, and that the amount of air leaving will be directly proportional to the pressure of air remaining (it's not, should be less than that, but I'm not up on my fluid flows). From 1 atm, I read the expected velocity of air leaving is 380 m/s [on further review, this may not be accurate, but you get the idea], so max loss is 300 cubic meters of air per second. At that rate (which won't be maintained) an O'Neill cylinder will goto vacuum in 1389 hours, or eight weeks. A large vessel, with one main compartment that holds 1 E 6 cubic meters of 1 atm air and and an identical airlock will goto vacuum in about 56 minutes (it won't, this is still assuming the flow stays at max). The above ship at half an atmosphere, same problem, will take two hours (lower pressure means less initial velocity for the air escaping). What really matters is how long it takes before the air becomes too thin for biomorphs and / or movement. At around a quarter of the time to evacuate, air pressure will be three quarters the initial value. Unless someone starts turning up the oxygen (it should be higher in the half atmo situation to start with), biomorphs are going to start having a bad time. After three quarters of time to evacuate, pressure that was one atm will be the same as Everest's summit, after which most biomorphs will stop having a bad time. Oxygen reserve and low pressure acclimation will help stretch the operational time one has.

Even if you're in something which is segmented and self-quarantining (like a Cluster hab, or any reasonable design for a ship which is bigger than a room) you then run into the ol' Dead Space problem of "boy howdy, I really need to get into/pass through this module which is currently exposed to hard vacuum and mostly depressurized". Now really any long-term citizen of a hab which could reasonably be exposed to the void should be wearing smart vac clothes and keep a light vac suit and spare O2 bottle next to the first aid kid and fire extinguisher in every module - but that's not a guarantee. Also, if you're in a micrograv situation that's a lot of force which may suddenly catch small objects and tussle them about. It'd be very thematic to Eclipse Phase to be performing maintenance or some kind of space autopsy and suddenly there's an +800 mile an hour wind storm in your module throwing your plasma torch or scalpel set around, even if for just a couple of seconds. At least actually spacing your entire body is unlikely unless it's a literal booby trap like outlined in X-Risks.

It depends on the size of the hole relative to the size of the room. In fact this is true for balloons too: if you blow up a balloon without tying it off, and then unpinch the neck, it will deflate gradually. Still quickly, at a steadily declining rate (the pressure exerted by the balloon decreases as it deflates), but certainly not instantly. Similarly, if you're able to very carefully punch a hole in a balloon without rupturing it, the air will flow out at a rate that depends on the size of the hole (all other things equal of course). The instant popping is not because the air sees any opening at all and immediately goes "I'M FREEEEE", popping is the result of a cascading structural failure that tears the balloon wide open. If you used an explosive to blast away half the room, then yeah that section would pretty much depressurize instantly. If your airlock takes up an entire wall section, that'll probably do it pretty damn quick too. If it's about the size of a manhole though, and the room you're trying to depressurize is about the size of a garage, it'll actually take a noticeable amount of time. A couple seconds at least ("a couple" meant in the broadest possible sense, an accurate answer would involve calculus). A room the size of a church or warehouse would take longer than one the size of a garage of course, unless you imagined one of those multi-story parking complexes when I said "garage". Way at the other end, a hole made by a bullet or micrometeor will very slowly leak air out of the room, and people inside might hear a high pitched whistling sound if it happens to resonate at the right frequency. Unless a structural failure blows it wide open of course.

jackgraham wrote:

Paper (why would you have that? never mind...)

Maybe you're working on the "The Dunce" (see Firewall p. 96), on perhaps the dullest Firewall assignment you might ever get. Only biomorphs are allowed and with no advanced forms of entertainment. They're the backup plan in case something goes wrong with Firewall attempting to figure out basilisk hacks. Entertainment from at least 30 years before the fall is popular there. I had to give an answer to that! :) *quickly hides before getting slapped.

Maybe not literal woodpulp paper, but arranging organic molecules into sheets is probably something you could hack a maker to do, and like ORCA says, you can't hack a dead tree. Physical "eyes only" is about as secure as you can get short of running QE lines. I mean, unless you're fighting literal telepaths.

A decent approximation of the rate of decompression from a space habitat into vacuum is that the gas will escape at the speed of sound, which will change as the pressure drops. You can use the velocity of the gas and the area of the hole to approximate the gas escape. The easiest to use I've found is the one-one-ten-hundred rule. A 1 cm2 hole in a 1 m3 volume will reduce the air pressure tenfold in 100 minutes. This time scales up proportionately to the volume, and scales down proportionately to the size of the hole. It's a little inaccurate, but the easiest to use at the table (provided you have volume measurements for habs on hand). If you want to get serious, this is a good resource: http://www.geoffreylandis.com/higgins.html This is generally helpful, and what I generally use: http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html