stinkychops said:
My thoughts precisely. The likelyhood of him getting picked up by friendly spacecraft instead of
A.) Asphyxiating
B.) Being hit by a laser/debri
C.) Being picked up by enemy troops either by spacecraft or landing on their ship
D.) Floating off out of sight
E.) Being blown to pieces in the explosion
F.) Killing himself and rescuer as they compromise their vacuum as he tries to enter their ship
Is a pretty big longshot. Red Leader wasn;t thinking when he panicked and suggested to "eject"
Issues A, D, and F are explained away in the Star Wars novels as overcome by common technology, as would be expected of any space-based civilization. C is still better than being dead, since he is just a pilot and won't be tortured for information on other rebel cells. The first part of B is not likely, because space is huge, and gunning ejecting pilots is damn near impossible from a ship traveling as fast as a TIE Fighter. It can hardly be done from an F-15, much less a faster TIE.
Which leaves us with E and part two of B. If he was far enough away, he wouldn't be killed by a shockwave as explosions tend not to propagate very well in space. The worst he would have to worry about is debris, and that is still a long shot due to the very nature of space. The most realistic assessment is that he wouldn't have drifted far enough away, and would have been pulled back towards the Death Star by it's gravity (Artificial or natural) and been close enough to catch the debris. But likelihood of debris collision is relative to distance from the explosion. If he is outside a few kilometers of the surface (ejector seats tend to throw you quite far from a damaged starfighter...) he would probably have survived long enough for a shuttle to locate his radio beacon and pick him up. (Look up the EPIRB, or Electronic Position Indicating Radio Beacon, for an example of how technology from the twentieth century overcame the problem of locating vessels in distress in HUGE swaths of space. All pilots carried the Star Wars equivalent into battle.)