Free fall in a centrifugal space ship? I have read the basics on O'Neil cylinders. A tube with a five mile diameter rotating almost 23 times an hour would produce forces akin to earthlike gravity at the rim. There would be a space in the center where weightlessness would occur. The tube is filled with air.
My primary question is that if a person were floating in this space, no restraints, no walkway and found their way out of that space (center towards rim, starting at a modest velocity, like a run), what would the effect be? I assume they would accelerate due to air currents and eventually crash into a wall at the rim, but that this wouldn't look exactly like a gravity free fall. But I'm not sure. It seems like it's a slow moving centrifuge that would eventually accelerate said person.
The two subsequent things I'm mostly interested in are what the chances of survival are and what kind of mitigating effects could be used. Would a parachute do anything or act like a sail, speeding one up?
 A: When an object moves from the center of a rotating craft radially outwards, they experience something known as the Coriolis force. This fictitious force arises due to the difference in rotational speed between inner and outer radii (outer points travel faster). Without going too much into the technicalities, it basically means that an object moving radially outward will be deflected "backward" with respect to the craft, while an object moving radially inwards will be deflected "forward" with respect to the craft. 
This force depends on the velocity at which one walks outwards from the center to the edge. In your case, we assume that the person is walking at $5 \; \mathrm{m/s}$ outwards, which is a typical speed, along a hallway pointing directly outwards. Using the equation for the acceleration due to the Coriolis force, $2\Omega \times v$, where $\Omega$ is the angular velocity, we get a value of about $0.5 \; \mathrm{m/s^2}$ (towards the wall of the hallway). This will definitely be noticeable, but is unlikely to cause major damage (provided the hallway isn't too wide).
In addition, the person will also gain a velocity of $v = r \Omega$ with respect to the rim of the tube when they reach it, where $r$ is the radius of the tube. This value is about $320 \; \mathrm{m/s}$, which can prove fatal.
