Inspired by @wildfaewhump‘s various posts about sending their Fae into space, let’s talk about various whumpy things you can do in sci-fi settings with spaceflight, alien planets, etc.
The whumpee is on a rocket that fails catastrophically in flight. The Launch Escape System gets them away from the explosion, but the massive G-forces leave them badly bruised and maybe even with broken bones. If this happens late enough in a launch they might get a double whammy when their spacecraft’s going so slow that it reenters too suddenly and abruptly.
The whumpee’s spacecraft suffers from a landing mishap. Maybe not all the parachutes open fully, maybe the landing airbags don’t fire, maybe they land way off-target and in unsuitable terrain like a lake (has happened IRL, a Soyuz crew were trapped underwater in a sunken capsule for 9 hours), a steep slope, or dense forest, and have to survive in the middle of nowhere until they’re rescued.
Spacecraft life support failures! Loss of oxygen or slow-ish cabin pressure loss is no fun for whump because you just don’t even notice hypoxia. On the other hand, heating/cooling failures? Now you could be stuck in a freezing cold or dangerously hot enclosed space for days on end, trying to stave off hypothermia or heatstroke.
The whumpee is accidentally or intentionally exposed to vacuum! (happens in 2001: A Space Odyssey). This isn’t fatal if the exposure duration is short enough and you don’t try holding your breath, but exposed bodily fluids (i.e. tears, saliva) will vaporize, and tissue will swell severely, so once the pressure comes back and they regain consciousness that might be painful. I’m not sure if someone could survivably injure their lungs if they panicked and didn’t let the air out fast enough: the sources I found said it would just rupture the lungs and inject large amounts of air into the bloodstream, causing a fatal embolism. Also note: your blood won’t boil because it’s enclosed; however blood would probably evaporate out of an open wound that was exposed to vacuum. So, y’know, if something were to cause a large puncture in both the whumpee’s spacesuit and their body.
Prompts for Alien Whumpees:
The whumpee is from a planet with lower gravity. Just standing up requires way more effort, especially when carrying any weight, holding onto something like a ladder may be very difficult, and a fall could badly injure them!
The whumpee is from a planet with a cooler star and/or thick atmosphere that blocks out almost all ultraviolet light. On Earth, they aren’t aware of the danger and suffer severe sunburns very rapidly. Also applies to humans on a planet around a hotter star or with less UV absorption in the atmosphere.
The winged whumpee is from a planet with lower gravity and/or a much thicker atmosphere, and find that their wings are too small to lift their own weight on Earth!
The whumpee is from a tidally locked planet, and WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE SUN JUST DISAPPEARS?
The whumpee is from a moon of a gas giant, and the hemisphere where it’s always in the sky and might be hundreds or even thousands of times brighter than the full moon in the night sky. Earth is just so dark at night even when our little moon is out - and a lot of Earthlings’ artificial lights don’t help as much as you think! Their planet has kind of a blue-white color, so their eyes are adapted to be most sensitive to blue light in dark conditions, whereas humans tend to prefer more yellow-ey light. Fortunately crappy fluorescent lighting and high-color-temperature LEDs which most humans hate make the whumpee feel a little less homesick.
