Is Alec Ryder really dead?

Three is longer than a couple as you say.  Did that one minute or two minutes make a difference? Don't know. It's too bad Caryle didn't say anything about that when talking with Ryder after being asked how his/her father died.

Still curious if they recovered Kirkland's body. I also wonder if they recovered Alec's body.

I assume the faking death theory. 

Heh, I understand how you feel about it.

Even the greatest minds can be corrupted, for example, The Illusive Man. And Alec Ryder was always an idealist.

Maybe the AI SAM in his head started to corrupt him or feed him with ideas.
 Alec also was never close to his kids but he was very paranoid and over protective over his wife. He couldn't let go, which is understandable, but this would also drove him into madness.

Well, maybe he wouldn't fake his death but he could perhaps, in time, change. Maybe he discovers something in Andromeda and does not share the knowledge - would already suit his secretive persona. Maybe he makes the deal with the devil to save his wife and his closest ones. Maybe he, in some point, gets exiled.

And a player could then choose to spare his father or not and with consequenses.

Many possibilities.

But they just killed him off.

Judging by the memory of Alec revealing to his child that there is still hope for Ellen Ryder, it seems fair to assume he is indeed dead for now.

I see this come up a lot, but I'm not convinced that it would've been practical.

This is essentially a space suit, not a breather mask. It seals and presumably repressurizes each time it's attached to the head. How much air would've been lost with each swap? We can't say. Air pressure on H7 was 2.3 atmos, so not enough to really make much of a difference being bare-faced for a few minutes. The atmosphere is mostly Argon and Nitrogen, which makes it completely non-toxic (despite what our protagonist says). It's not life sustaining, but it won't actively harm a person. Maybe if Alec could've held his breathe for 2-3 minutes, which is not as easy as it sounds, then Scott/Sara could followed with the same. This seems iffy, given the circumstances and quick decision-making necessitated.

Ultimately, I doubt it was solely lack of air that killed Alec. He may've been able to survive with no lasting damage, depending how quickly the shuttle arrived. He chose to transfer SAM+ to his child, though, and no doubt experienced huge trauma in severing his special connection. (The real question is would he even need to do this? Could SAM fully integrate with as many members of the team as desired? Maybe this is outside its design? Again, we can't say. We have to go with the facts presented.)

Ultimately, it's very easy to present a number of reasons as to why sharing the helmet may not have been a realistic option. I'd hardly call this bad writing, as some do. They could've explained his death better, no doubt. I think being able to pay a visit (or more than one) to a cryopod holding Alec's remains could've added a lot to the game. Still, this is more a lack of detail than a case of presenting an unreasonable scenario.

The fact that his death is explained so poorly is bad writing.  If the scene is to have impact, you have to understand why it is happening.  Details that call into the question the necessity of such a sacrifice cheapens the scene.

I think it's just your perceptions as other posters indicated above my post. Bad writing is star wars EU novels.

We need a spacesuit expert to settle the technical question. But at worst, that just means that they were getting a technical issue wrong, and this would hardly be the first time Bio did that.

It was clear that Alec died, yes.  But it's unclear why he had to die.  A shuttle evac was only 3-4 minutes away.  The atmosphere was unbreathable, but not especially toxic, and they both still had their air supplies (if not a sealed suit).  It strikes me that survival was plausible for both.  Not to say one or both may suffer debilitating damage, of course.  But with immediate medical treatment, they both could have pulled through.

I mean, it's not like they were exposed to vacuum and atmospheric reentry...

Because if Alec sacrifices himself doing something that's clearly not survivable, but enables his child to live, that's touching.


If Alec sacrifices himself doing something idiotic when they both could have survived, that's stupid. 

But die from what?  It's a Nitrogen-Argon atmosphere.  You'll suffocate in that eventually, but it's not toxic.  The temperature was 17 Celsius, which is perfectly livable.  

So what's so bad about the atmosphere that it will kill you dead with 3-4 minutes of exposure?